Speaker 1: It's Monday, September one. I'm mo Kelly from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: One team from Massachusetts General Hospital considered whether Google searches
Speaker 1: for g I issues might be a way to spot
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen hot spots. Early Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor for
Speaker 1: Popular Science, lays out how your computer key strokes may
Speaker 1: serve as a stroke of genius in weathering the pandemic
Speaker 1: in future months. Thank you for coming on today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I'm excited. One team from Massachusetts
Speaker 1: General Hospital has considered whether Google searches for gastro intestinal
Speaker 1: issues might be a way to spot COVID nineteen hot spots. Early,
Speaker 1: tell me about some of the methodology that they used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically they decided that, um, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: many symptoms of COVID nineteen UM, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are respiratory symptoms, shortness of brass, fever UM. But
Speaker 1: a few people and a narrow percentage, about ten percent
Speaker 1: actually get um gastro and techno symptoms. So that's vomiting
Speaker 1: or diarrhea or just overall abdominal teene. And they found
Speaker 1: that those people tend because of you know, no one
Speaker 1: likes to experience those symptoms. They tend to Google share symptoms.
Speaker 1: And they considered whether a correlation between a searching for
Speaker 1: these gastro and texto symptoms would then correlate with being
Speaker 1: able to predict when a COVID nineteen hot spot would occur. So,
Speaker 1: if there will be a spike in cases based on
Speaker 1: people searching for these g I symptoms on Google, that's
Speaker 1: fascinating because in this web MD world, I would say,
Speaker 1: it would seem to me that we would be searching
Speaker 1: for anything and everything all the time just because we're
Speaker 1: I would say latent hypochondriac. If you will always worried
Speaker 1: about any and all symptoms, How do they do this
Speaker 1: to the best of your knowledge? How do they drill
Speaker 1: down as far as the random searches from the very
Speaker 1: specific searches about something that which is impacting someone. If
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Yeah, definitely. So they use Google trends
Speaker 1: and basically look to at and specifically narrowed down to
Speaker 1: just gas or and testo symptoms, searching only or looking
Speaker 1: for those symptoms only. Yes, I will also attest that
Speaker 1: I am a frequent WebM be used or even have
Speaker 1: the help before. Okay, so the symptoms have they been
Speaker 1: consistent from hot spot to hot spot? In other words,
Speaker 1: what they found maybe in China as far as people
Speaker 1: what they may be googling, has that been shown to
Speaker 1: be the same in nature or trending the same in
Speaker 1: the way that what we saw maybe in New York
Speaker 1: or other places. Yeah, it's a really good question, and
Speaker 1: right now it's still a little bit hard to tell.
Speaker 1: They found some protesting data in this study was actually
Speaker 1: published back in July, and when we did our story,
Speaker 1: we interviewed a couple more gas rontologists and what they
Speaker 1: have said is that g I symptoms are definitely can
Speaker 1: definitely be part of COVID nineteen UM, but it's usually
Speaker 1: only a small percentage of those people. So about ten
Speaker 1: people actually developed GI symptoms and then go on to
Speaker 1: have COVID nineteen. But what they found was that it
Speaker 1: can't be predictive because first people are always searching their
Speaker 1: GI symptoms that seems like and then second all the
Speaker 1: people in that ten groups, all the people that have
Speaker 1: those GI symptoms then a little while later ended up
Speaker 1: getting the other symptoms, the other more common symptoms of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. So it's definitely seems to be the case
Speaker 1: that these g I symptoms can predict COVID nineteen. But
Speaker 1: it's just that not everybody is going to be getting
Speaker 1: these GI symptoms. It's only about ten I want to
Speaker 1: go people, and so the big question um is whether
Speaker 1: or not we can use the small ten percent to
Speaker 1: predict whether big spikes will happen. I want to go
Speaker 1: back and get something you said. I want to make
Speaker 1: sure I understood you correctly. Are you suggesting that maybe
Speaker 1: these g I symptoms are usually leading the way as
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen enters the body and the body shows symptoms,
Speaker 1: these are usually the first symptoms that people would see
Speaker 1: in some of these cases. Yeah, definitely. So again it's
Speaker 1: only ten percent of people usually experience these GI symptoms,
Speaker 1: but in that it's usually the g I symptoms first,
Speaker 1: followed by later these more common symptoms such as fever,
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, or lower respiratory symptoms that would seem
Speaker 1: strange and I'm not a physician, I'm just playing one
Speaker 1: on the radio, it seems right now. But in terms
Speaker 1: of what we would classically think of a respiratory disease,
Speaker 1: we were told about how the disease would enter through
Speaker 1: our mouth or nose or our eyes, but the first
Speaker 1: symptoms would have nothing to do with that. It would
Speaker 1: be actually the other end of the body. Is that correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually interesting. I mean there's you know, COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: is a new disease, so there's still so much we
Speaker 1: don't know about it. But researchers have been able to
Speaker 1: pinpoint what they think is a mechanism that makes this
Speaker 1: occurrence makes sense. So there are these receptors called A receptors,
Speaker 1: and they sit on various cells in the body, and
Speaker 1: they happen to sit on UM cells in the lungs
Speaker 1: and in the arteries, but then they also happened to
Speaker 1: be in the gastro intestinal tracts, And so researchers think
Speaker 1: that maybe it's UM the virus that is attaching to
Speaker 1: these AC receptors in the lungs and the arteries and
Speaker 1: other areas that are more common UM attacked in COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: But then they're also hitting the GI tracks first. But
Speaker 1: also the question of whether of why it hits your
Speaker 1: stomach or your whole GI system first before it hits UM,
Speaker 1: your upper respiratory system or your lower respiratory system. Rather,
Speaker 1: that's still very much unknown. I understand that this is
Speaker 1: a for lack of a better phrase, a white paper
Speaker 1: at this point. It is a study. But have there
Speaker 1: been any practical applications as of yet with this information
Speaker 1: to help people in real time? There haven't yet, and
Speaker 1: that's a great question and great things to point out.
Speaker 1: There haven't been any more more substantial UM studies or
Speaker 1: you know, real time usage of this yet, but a
Speaker 1: lot of researchers think that it could be a good
Speaker 1: way to predict COVID nineteen hotspots and going forward, UM,
Speaker 1: these researchers and potentially the one will be able to
Speaker 1: keep tracking this data and see if they can actually
Speaker 1: use it um as a predictor of where COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: could not. Knowing necessarily how the flu progresses through the body,
Speaker 1: whether it's similar or not in this way, is there
Speaker 1: any overlap from what you know or what you can
Speaker 1: see as far as how the symptoms materialize in the
Speaker 1: body for the flu and will that in any way
Speaker 1: impact this particular study. Yeah, that's a good question. Um.
Speaker 1: The fluid definitely attacks the body in similar ways to
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, but also different ways as well, because there
Speaker 1: are two different diseases than two different viruses that are
Speaker 1: hitting our inne systems and the rest of our bodies.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to tell right now because COVID is
Speaker 1: so new, um, but it is an interesting question that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of researchers will be investigating over
Speaker 1: over the next year. She's Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor or
Speaker 1: Popular Science. Claire, thank you again for coming on today. Thanks,
Speaker 1: this was great. Thanks for having me. I'm O'Kelly and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For the
Speaker 1: day's big news stories, you can check out the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on
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