Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger,
Speaker 1: and we have both been sick for like two weeks now,
Speaker 1: off and on. You and I have been alternating sicknesses. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least two different illnesses have have managed to wander
Speaker 1: their way through my household. Um my son is on
Speaker 1: his second illness this week, getting over something with a
Speaker 1: fever and a scratchy throat. I had it a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago and even took it with me to
Speaker 1: Disney World, uh or right before entering Disness Forward Disney World,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually enter the park, uh with with the illness,
Speaker 1: and you went to Disney World the same time. I
Speaker 1: went to Seattle and I caught I don't know if
Speaker 1: I got it from you or Jonathan Strickland, our colleague
Speaker 1: had laryngite this last week and he sits across from me.
Speaker 1: But sure enough, the day I got on the plane,
Speaker 1: I came down with something and I had a horrible
Speaker 1: fever by the time I got to Seattle for my
Speaker 1: vacation and was just shivering and Luckily I had three days.
Speaker 1: I ended up getting better before I attended Emerald City
Speaker 1: Comic Con last week. Otherwise I would have been patient
Speaker 1: zero at an Emerald City and infected everybody. The nomenclature
Speaker 1: that's usually used at big conventions like that is concruct
Speaker 1: because you just bound to pick something up with that
Speaker 1: many people breathing on each other and touching each other.
Speaker 1: I know people who just have like hand sanitizer in
Speaker 1: their pockets at all time, and they're just constantly like
Speaker 1: rubbing their hands within their face. But you know what, like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna just get it no matter what. Well it's
Speaker 1: you're you're combining several different things here. You have to
Speaker 1: the convention where like you said, a lot of people
Speaker 1: type space, um you know, sometimes physical interaction. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, if you were flying there, then
Speaker 1: you're in and you're on that in the airplane vironment.
Speaker 1: So you're in this this sealed tube with all of
Speaker 1: these coughing, hacking, breathing people, and it's just gonna the
Speaker 1: illnesses are gonna be passed around. Like I think, I
Speaker 1: look back on the times when when I've gotten sick
Speaker 1: with something you know, notable, and I usually don't don't
Speaker 1: get that sick, but it's it generally follows international travel
Speaker 1: um or at least like a long journey by plane.
Speaker 1: This is no joke. Every single year I get sick
Speaker 1: one time, like like a major way, and it's always
Speaker 1: when I go on a vacation. Always, it always happens.
Speaker 1: Last year I went to Portland, got sick the minute
Speaker 1: I got there. And it's it's either airplanes or maybe
Speaker 1: it's like I'm relaxing and I'm letting my immune system
Speaker 1: drop or something. But I'll say this what you're just
Speaker 1: talking about with the coughing. Has anybody ever been on
Speaker 1: an airplane where somebody isn't hacking. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: like there's always gonna be someone hacking. Theres always gonna
Speaker 1: be that crying child. Yeah, exactly, It's just part of traveling.
Speaker 1: But so we're circling around this. But our topic for
Speaker 1: today is actually the idea of a patient zero, of
Speaker 1: the first patient, the first victim bringing a disease to
Speaker 1: the human populace. Yeah, or if not to the human
Speaker 1: populace as a whole, then at least to a center
Speaker 1: of population um. These are also known as index cases,
Speaker 1: that's really the more official title, uh, the patient zero
Speaker 1: is the sexier sort of media word for for this
Speaker 1: type of individual. And it's really misleading. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a misnomer, and it's misleading. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about why. Yeah, And and in order to discuss why,
Speaker 1: I think it's important that we we also isolate some
Speaker 1: of the mythic and fictional variations of this trope, because
Speaker 1: we're talking about the idea here that some illness or
Speaker 1: some flaw and character, and these two are often intermingled,
Speaker 1: and myth can be traced back to a single individual,
Speaker 1: And then how are we supposed to feel about that
Speaker 1: single individual and being humans and doing what we do.
Speaker 1: We usually look upon them with the stain and and
Speaker 1: write a narrative in which they're somehow the bad guy
Speaker 1: forgetting us all sick. And we know we've talked about
Speaker 1: mythology on this podcast a lot in the past, and
Speaker 1: about how how powerful these uh, these mythological ideas are
Speaker 1: even if we're not consciously invoking them. So I thought
Speaker 1: it might be a good idea to just look at
Speaker 1: some of these mythic examples and and see how they
Speaker 1: are reflected in our modern view of the patient zero. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let's start with what we can think of
Speaker 1: as you know, like original sinners or o G sinners. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous is, of course Pandora. Pandora's
Speaker 1: the first woman created by the gods. She opens a
Speaker 1: jar or a box depending on on on on your reading,
Speaker 1: and in doing this she unleashes all the sort of
Speaker 1: non specific evils of the world. So thanks a lot, Pandora.
Speaker 1: Now we have evil in and Uh it's very easy
Speaker 1: to see that is a gendered narrative. Certainly our our
Speaker 1: friends who used to do stuff. Mom never told you. You
Speaker 1: You probably have an episode on a Pandora somewhere about
Speaker 1: the myth of the It's all Pandora's fall or it's
Speaker 1: all Eve's fault. Yeah, even is the other big one, right? Um?
Speaker 1: Eve the first woman? And uh and and as encountered
Speaker 1: in the Old Testament, Uh, she makes the mistake of
Speaker 1: listening to a talking snake was of course Satan, who
Speaker 1: convinces her to disobey the creator guide and eat of
Speaker 1: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and
Speaker 1: this transmission only leads to their expulsion from the earthly paradise,
Speaker 1: our mortal legacy of having to work and wear clothes
Speaker 1: and experience painful childbirth. So again, a very gender to
Speaker 1: blame game going on here. This one uh, primordial woman
Speaker 1: made a mistake aired in judgment listen to a talking snake,
Speaker 1: which is really a bit unfair, right because I've always
Speaker 1: looked back on that story and it's like, what is
Speaker 1: there as talking snake? You really threw a curveball here
Speaker 1: while having a talking snake? I think didn't all animals talk?
Speaker 1: I don't know my Bible that well, Joe should be,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure that in the Garden of Eden
Speaker 1: all animals talked. But maybe here's what I don't remember that,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's from the Disney version that well, that's
Speaker 1: where I was going was I was thinking, like, is
Speaker 1: the talking snake the same snake from from the Jungle Book?
Speaker 1: Like an ancient relative? Yeah, exactly, maybe some cub uh,
Speaker 1: but certainly a Pandora eve. These are both examples of
Speaker 1: of of of a essentially a patient zero for human suffering.
Speaker 1: Another big one from from from the Old Testament is
Speaker 1: of course Kane. Uh. He's the first born son and
Speaker 1: his crime is a bit more complicated because you get
Speaker 1: into this issue of his sacrifice versus abel sacrifice able
Speaker 1: being his brother. But however you want to attribute it,
Speaker 1: He's remembered as being the first murder of his brother Abel.
Speaker 1: So God punished Kane to a life of wandering and
Speaker 1: set a mark on him so that no man would
Speaker 1: kill him. Yeah, that that is actually a bit of
Speaker 1: mythos is popping up in a lot of popular culture
Speaker 1: fictional lately, the mark of Kine and the idea of
Speaker 1: bearing that that that mark of the first murderer. It's
Speaker 1: a little different than disease, but I think that in
Speaker 1: Kane's case, it's definitely one of those like this is
Speaker 1: why humanity is so burdened, right, Yeah, And all three
Speaker 1: of these are examples to where the idea that the
Speaker 1: stain never watches away, right, humans are always going to
Speaker 1: be stained with original sin and or uh, females are
Speaker 1: always gonna have some degree of blame. Right. Or in
Speaker 1: the case of Kine, it it's carried on through through
Speaker 1: Kane's children. Uh. It indeed, like as if it's an
Speaker 1: infectious agent. Yeah. Absolutely, Now, we also have plenty of
Speaker 1: examples of monster patriarchs and matriarchs we have a kidna
Speaker 1: the Greek from Greek myth, so this is the mate
Speaker 1: of the giant Typhon, and she gave birth to such
Speaker 1: monsters as Cerebus, the Hydra, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the gorgon, um,
Speaker 1: uh Cilia, et cetera. I have just been reading Chuck
Speaker 1: Wendig's book Zeros, and it's um not at all about mythology,
Speaker 1: but it is about cyberculture and artificial intelligence, and they
Speaker 1: heavily play off of the ecodnah Typhon mythology within the
Speaker 1: sort of classifications of AI. Yeah, there's also lilith the First,
Speaker 1: a wife of Adam according to Jewish mythology, and you
Speaker 1: see later treatments, especially in fiction and vampire fiction, where
Speaker 1: lilith Is is held up as this demon or the
Speaker 1: first vambuire and uh to to to draw in a
Speaker 1: less mythic and certainly more pop cultural example, I'm I
Speaker 1: was always a big fan of Blade two lad to
Speaker 1: the Fantastiermo de Toro movie, and that has a wonderful
Speaker 1: patient zero plot in it. Yes it does. Yeah, The
Speaker 1: whole plot line here is there's a patient zero for
Speaker 1: a new strain of vampiresm when it turns the vamps
Speaker 1: into reapers who feed on the blood of vampires. And
Speaker 1: so you have this character Jared Nomack who's the sort
Speaker 1: of tragic supervillain of the of the film. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's an interesting take on it because, like you can
Speaker 1: look at vampiresm mythology in general as being about disease, right,
Speaker 1: but then this sort of flips it on its head.
Speaker 1: It's a disease for the disease carriers in a situation
Speaker 1: where the disease changes, there's something is tweaked in the
Speaker 1: illness and suddenly it becomes all the more dangerous. And
Speaker 1: that kind of mutation is is actually very real and
Speaker 1: part of what we're going to talk about today with
Speaker 1: these ideas of patient zeros in major epidemic breakouts. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: what are a few more here We've recently been talking
Speaker 1: about the expanse Yeah, and there's the character Juliet mal
Speaker 1: on that show who's infected with the protomolecule and that
Speaker 1: becomes a major plot point in the first book, in
Speaker 1: the first couple of seasons of the show. In Stephen
Speaker 1: King's The Stand. Uh, some of some of you King
Speaker 1: fans that they might remember that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: one individual, Charles Campion, I believe. Is he the security
Speaker 1: guard who like ends up like leaving the base when
Speaker 1: he's not supposed to believe, so he becomes eight. He
Speaker 1: becomes the patient zero for Captain Trips super flu the
Speaker 1: stand is truly like the epidemic story of our time.
Speaker 1: I I anytime I get a really bad flu. I
Speaker 1: referred to it his Captain Trips. Yeah, And there's this
Speaker 1: movie that came out maybe two or three years ago
Speaker 1: that I thought of. It's called Contracted. They've made a
Speaker 1: sequel to it as well. It's a zombie movie technically,
Speaker 1: but it's about, uh. The whole thing is about a
Speaker 1: woman who contracts zombie ism I guess as a sexually
Speaker 1: transmitted disease from a patient zero, and it's a slow
Speaker 1: burn of her basically like going through the initial stages
Speaker 1: of the disease. The movie ending with her turning into
Speaker 1: a zombie. But apparently Contracted, to which I have not seen,
Speaker 1: is about finding the patient zero, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of a familiar trope to some of these films, such
Speaker 1: as The Ring and potentially even it follows like I've understand,
Speaker 1: I've understood that if they do a follow up film,
Speaker 1: that's going to be what it deals with is kind
Speaker 1: of blaming the agent, I mean, the patient zero there is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is sort of an element of that in the
Speaker 1: in the original. It follows if they ever come out
Speaker 1: of the sequel that kind of h I kind of
Speaker 1: hope they believe it where it is. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that they need to find out whoever the
Speaker 1: first person is, who's contracted this curse, because that's our
Speaker 1: human tendency, right, we want to find out where did
Speaker 1: it begin? Uh? Who can we blame? Um? And it's
Speaker 1: it becomes this complicated game that is both both that
Speaker 1: that has certainly elements of of of important science to it, uh,
Speaker 1: and in terms of containing and figuring out how the
Speaker 1: illness works, that also draws in all of these less
Speaker 1: scientific mythic ideas. So let's unravel this a little bit.
Speaker 1: What what is exactly a patient zero or an index case?
Speaker 1: So as we've been discussing it, we're essentially talking about
Speaker 1: the first known patient to exhibit symptoms of a given illness. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's one that plays out into so many
Speaker 1: of our dramas about infectious disease. Some of the examples
Speaker 1: we didn't touch on that have been mentioned in some
Speaker 1: of our sources, or contagion that came out in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: twelve Monkeys and twenty eight days later came out in
Speaker 1: twenty in two thousand and two, and the outbreak was
Speaker 1: in a lot of my notes. Yeah yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: But as Robert mentioned earlier, scientists prefer the term index case.
Speaker 1: The reason why is identifying a single person as the
Speaker 1: patient zero both gives an incorrect impression about how a
Speaker 1: disease might emerge, and it insinuates that somebody should be
Speaker 1: blamed for the outbreak right. Um. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's important to find out what's going on with these
Speaker 1: cases because then if you know their history, you can
Speaker 1: help researchers determine how and when the upbreak started. So
Speaker 1: some refer to this as detective work, or actually start
Speaker 1: referred to as shoe leather epidemiology in one of the articles.
Speaker 1: Uh So, basically, the idea here is you backtrack the
Speaker 1: disease and once patient zero is identified, you try to
Speaker 1: figure out how they got sick, So were they in
Speaker 1: contact with a certain species of animal or what kind
Speaker 1: of activities did they do right before they got sick,
Speaker 1: or how exposed were they, Like do they have open
Speaker 1: wounds or did they breathe something in did they ingest
Speaker 1: something or was it just something in the air. So,
Speaker 1: what today's research is really going to ask us to
Speaker 1: consider is that this is a state of harnessing scientific
Speaker 1: authority to enact coercive measures while drawing upon contemporary beliefs
Speaker 1: that either race or class or sexuality could lend to
Speaker 1: the patient zero's propensity for disease. Because when patient zero
Speaker 1: is defined as someone with distinguishing traits, whether that's behavior
Speaker 1: or sexuality or race, it makes it easier for those
Speaker 1: of us with different characteristics to reassure ourselves that we're
Speaker 1: not at risk. This doesn't have to do with us, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And they typically locate disease origins as being in quote
Speaker 1: pre modern parts of the world. So there's a concern
Speaker 1: that this narrative deflects attention away from the structural factors
Speaker 1: that can affect transmission and health health outcomes. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's it's also incredibly difficult to nail
Speaker 1: down a patient zero. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these ideas that certainly works better in fiction than
Speaker 1: it does in reality. Yeah, absolutely, it seems right, like, uh,
Speaker 1: twenty eight days later, it's really easy to say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: the monkey bit this person and then this person spreading
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like like, it's it's very
Speaker 1: easy to do it that way. That's not how the
Speaker 1: real world works, right, I mean, it's it's irresistible from
Speaker 1: a fiction all standpoint because it invokes those myths. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, actually finding that individual there. We're going to
Speaker 1: discuss some cases of alleged patient zeros, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, it's a rather difficult ansercise, Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: thing here is that infectious agents can percolate in the
Speaker 1: environment for years, sometimes even decades without being detected, and
Speaker 1: when they do enter the human population, it could be
Speaker 1: through more than just one person. Also, some people are
Speaker 1: more capable of spreading disease than others. So one argument
Speaker 1: is basically, well, instead of thinking of it in terms
Speaker 1: of patients zeros, maybe we should be thinking of super spreaders.
Speaker 1: And there's also a terminology for people who are referred
Speaker 1: to as super shedders as well, and these are the
Speaker 1: people who shed many more types of the virus into
Speaker 1: an environment. So yeah, so we've got a lot to
Speaker 1: unpack here. I think we're gonna see more of it
Speaker 1: when we look at the examples. Now, you might well
Speaker 1: ask yourself, well, how does one become the first carry
Speaker 1: or of a particular illness. Well, the answer here, of course,
Speaker 1: is that that they mutate, They leap from a non
Speaker 1: human host to a human when they adapt and sustain.
Speaker 1: So for many zoonotic infectious diseases, the first step involves
Speaker 1: the species jump. All right, We've seen this, and you've
Speaker 1: seen this in a number of examples that have propped
Speaker 1: up in the news over the years, you know, bird flu,
Speaker 1: swine flu. The idea that these these are strains of
Speaker 1: influenza that have thus far been isolated to a non
Speaker 1: human animal, but through close proximity, this thing is able
Speaker 1: to jump to us and then sustain itself in this
Speaker 1: new host. Yeah, and we're gonna see in some of
Speaker 1: these examples that bats are actually a huge factor in
Speaker 1: zooonotic infections. Uh. The other thing that I was going
Speaker 1: to mention too is this reminds me of our episode
Speaker 1: on the guinea worm, where it was the other way around,
Speaker 1: and that the guinea worm jumped to dogs from humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it isn't. Essentially, we thought we had it wiped out
Speaker 1: and then we found out it it had jumped to
Speaker 1: dogs as a as a new hiding place, thus complicating
Speaker 1: our efforts to eradicate it. Uh and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so anyway they get into a human they can they
Speaker 1: can spread through the human population. And to put that
Speaker 1: in perspective, about six of all existing human infectious diseases
Speaker 1: are zooonotic. So it's not a it's not a case
Speaker 1: where oh this is this. This is a strange situation
Speaker 1: where this this illness jump from one species to another.
Speaker 1: This seems to largely be how how they work like
Speaker 1: this is this is a common factor in in in studying, preventing,
Speaker 1: and fighting infectious disease. So why then, why is it
Speaker 1: important for science to be able to attribute a patient zero. Well,
Speaker 1: there are two main factors here, of course, One is
Speaker 1: the chance to better contain the outbreak. If you can
Speaker 1: pinpoint who brought it, then you can you can follow
Speaker 1: the chain, you can try and contain it. You can
Speaker 1: you can do everything you can to prevent the further
Speaker 1: spread of the illness. Uh. And then second, it's the
Speaker 1: chance to determine where and when the outbreak started based
Speaker 1: on the patient's personal history. It gets one closer, one
Speaker 1: step closer to the to the source because essentially you're
Speaker 1: you're you're condensing the history of the illness to the
Speaker 1: history of the person, right and that can conceivably be
Speaker 1: easier to to to track down Now. An example of
Speaker 1: this in action would be uh when medical professionals traced
Speaker 1: the two thousand fourteen West African outbreak of Ebola back
Speaker 1: to a two year old child who died on December six,
Speaker 1: two thou thirteen. By January one, the child's mother, three
Speaker 1: year old sister, and grandmother had died as well. So
Speaker 1: this this was a town in Guiana, which sits adjacent
Speaker 1: to the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone, so there's
Speaker 1: easy access for it to spread into different regions, which
Speaker 1: explains how it managed to spread through three countries within
Speaker 1: a matter of months. Isolating the patients zero in this
Speaker 1: case allowed researchers to map the trammission of the virus
Speaker 1: and better understood stand how and where it was spreading.
Speaker 1: But as we'll explore, this helpful concept can also spin
Speaker 1: out of control thanks to the complications of of human
Speaker 1: prejudice and just the power of this mythic idea that
Speaker 1: that there's a single individual to blame, there's something as
Speaker 1: complex as the mutation and spread of an infectious disease.
Speaker 1: In fact, I believe in that UH particular Ebola case,
Speaker 1: I believe that there were some factors of witchcraft being blamed. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's important to see, you know, patient zero not
Speaker 1: only works in a medical situation and that like we
Speaker 1: need to apply it so that we can try to
Speaker 1: contain the upbreak figure out what's origins are, but it
Speaker 1: also works from the human cultural perspective of trying to
Speaker 1: understand what's going on, right, right, Why don't we take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we get back, what we're
Speaker 1: going to take a look at some patient zeros of
Speaker 1: note throughout history. Alright, we're back, So, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some patient zeros here. And this first one
Speaker 1: I'm particularly fond of because the story actually comes up
Speaker 1: in the first season of The Nick, which was was
Speaker 1: It is a fabulous Cinemax uh TV series starring Clive
Speaker 1: Owen about the just the rapid advances in the medical
Speaker 1: profession UH in the early twentieth century and it's a
Speaker 1: really rough story for this particular individual. I'm sure most
Speaker 1: of you have been thinking about her as we've been
Speaker 1: talking about patients zero. Of course we mean typhoid Mary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the name itself has become synonymous with someone who unknowingly
Speaker 1: spreads a disease. Yeah, and so typhoid Mary was actually
Speaker 1: a woman named Mary Malone or Malan. She was an
Speaker 1: Irish immigrant and she was forcibly quarantined after officials determined
Speaker 1: that she was spreading disease to unsuspecting families that she
Speaker 1: worked for as a cook. Now, the idea here was
Speaker 1: basically that she worked in these homes and members of
Speaker 1: the homes they would develop typhoid fever. They would get
Speaker 1: it from salmonilla ty fi. So they quarantined her on
Speaker 1: two occasions for a total of twenty six years, and
Speaker 1: she subsequently even sued the New York Department of Health
Speaker 1: because she was basically imprisoned, but she was unsuccessful. Is
Speaker 1: that what they cover in the neck? Do they talk
Speaker 1: about her quarantining They the quarantine is kind of set
Speaker 1: up at the end. It basically there's a character in
Speaker 1: the show who's who inspects outbreaks and tries to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. And there's a strong, uh
Speaker 1: you know, immigrant um aspect of the plot as well.
Speaker 1: But you have a couple of the characters who were
Speaker 1: investigating this outbreak and trying to determine what's causing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean we can see here not only was
Speaker 1: she a woman and it made it gendered, but she
Speaker 1: was also Irish and at the time there was a
Speaker 1: lot of prejudice against Irish immigrants, so of course it
Speaker 1: worked very well for them to say, well, this is
Speaker 1: the person who this whole thing broke out with. It's
Speaker 1: it's her that's responsible for this. She's actually not technically
Speaker 1: what we would refer to as a patient zero though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess she might qualify as a as a as
Speaker 1: a what a super shudder, Yeah, either a super spreader
Speaker 1: or a super shredder. Uh. That sounds like some kind
Speaker 1: of teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. There was super Shredder and
Speaker 1: the second one. I believe it's that they're shredding them mutate,
Speaker 1: but her case, it's actually similar to um that movie
Speaker 1: twenty eight weeks later. So the idea here is it's
Speaker 1: somebody who can spread the disease, but they're also immune
Speaker 1: to it. So she didn't get sick herself, but she
Speaker 1: she was supposedly spreading it to all these other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was an asymptomatic carrier, so which means that she
Speaker 1: carried the disease, she transmitted it, but she exhibited no
Speaker 1: symptoms herself. And that that's what made her inadvertently so
Speaker 1: so dangerous because she didn't seem like a sick person,
Speaker 1: but she was carrying this this this deadly infection and
Speaker 1: made it very easy for them to basically lock her
Speaker 1: up for half of her life. Yeah, I think she
Speaker 1: died in president Actually, Yeah, it's uh, it's interesting that
Speaker 1: we bring this up a course on the week of St.
Speaker 1: Patrick's Day because I think for a lot of modern
Speaker 1: listeners it's it's especially given you know the importance of
Speaker 1: of people of Irish descent in our country and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, the celebration of St. Patrick's Day and that, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's easy to forget that that that Irish immigrants had
Speaker 1: kind of a second class class, a second class citizen
Speaker 1: classification um in in these in these times, not too
Speaker 1: long ago, not very long ago at all. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: of course, another another case is with Chinese Americans, and
Speaker 1: we have an example of that that comes up. This
Speaker 1: was from a similar, similar time period. This was back
Speaker 1: in nineteen d public health officials discovered the corpse of
Speaker 1: a forty one year old Chinese man named a Wing
Speaker 1: Chung ging in the basement of the Globe Hotel. So
Speaker 1: this was in San Francisco, and signs pointed to bubonic plague,
Speaker 1: and indeed this was the start of the San Francisco plague.
Speaker 1: Of that that that there was an issue from nineteen
Speaker 1: o four. So if officials responded to this by ordering
Speaker 1: a complete quarantine of Chinatown, they ordered all white residents
Speaker 1: to evacuate and had mandatory a house by house fumigation
Speaker 1: and vaccination for all of the residents. So it's another
Speaker 1: case in which, yes, on one level, there's a rational
Speaker 1: attempt here to contain the spread of an infectious disease,
Speaker 1: but there's also this element of race and social standing
Speaker 1: that's playing into it. You know, the idea, well, let's
Speaker 1: get let's get all the white people out and let's
Speaker 1: deal with the problem here, which are the Chinese people.
Speaker 1: And just how ridiculous and ultimately grotesque that notion is
Speaker 1: and and potentially ineffective in containing the the the illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You see how in these American examples, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about HIV a lot later, uh, that they
Speaker 1: they're immigration scares essentially, right, and in the case of
Speaker 1: HIV it's a scare of sexuality. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: could very easily see, given our current situation with immigration
Speaker 1: here in the United States, that it would be very
Speaker 1: easy to latch onto a narrative that somebody who is
Speaker 1: either Latino or Middle Eastern was a patient zero of
Speaker 1: some kind in the coming years. Right, that would be
Speaker 1: a very similar uh storyline to what we saw with
Speaker 1: typhoid marry and wing chun ging, uh, basically like demonizing them,
Speaker 1: so that the predominant narrative is, Oh, it's not me,
Speaker 1: I'm okay, I'll be fine as long as I stay
Speaker 1: away from those people, right, I mean, well, you see, Amain,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of discussion in the media, uh
Speaker 1: recently about the idea that we see the exact same
Speaker 1: thing with with acts of violence and terrorism. Right, that
Speaker 1: the idea is that we end up focusing on individuals
Speaker 1: who are mothered in some respect, so it's individual was
Speaker 1: from a from a predominantly Muslim nation or or a
Speaker 1: nation that that is has some connection to these, uh,
Speaker 1: these these cases of violent extremism, and then saying well,
Speaker 1: this is where it's coming from, and then you're just
Speaker 1: missing other fonts of violence, other fonts of terrorism that
Speaker 1: occurred domestically or in other nations that for various reasons
Speaker 1: are not receiving the same level of scrutiny. Right, But
Speaker 1: it happens in other nations too. It's not just the
Speaker 1: United States was certainly was. This is a human wide phenomenon.
Speaker 1: So another example of a of a patient zero here
Speaker 1: or an allegation zero was a a Chinese doctor by
Speaker 1: the name of doctor lu Jeen Loon. This is a
Speaker 1: sixty four year old He was from Guangdong Province. This
Speaker 1: is a home to to Guangzhou for anyone who's trying
Speaker 1: to piece it together in a map. And he spent
Speaker 1: the night in a Hong Kong hotel and according to
Speaker 1: a report from CNN, he may have transferred um his
Speaker 1: virus to at least sixteen other guests staying on the
Speaker 1: same floor, that virus being stars. Yeah, so the idea here,
Speaker 1: this definitely seems to be a case of what they
Speaker 1: call super spreading. It's thought that Lou acquired the disease
Speaker 1: from a hospital that he worked in. So a farmer
Speaker 1: in Guangdong first developed STARS after coming into contact with
Speaker 1: an animal. So we've talked about this already. This is
Speaker 1: zoonotic infectious disease that jumps from one species to another. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's believed that Stars originated in bats actually and
Speaker 1: then spread to other animals like civit cats before infecting humans. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so when the genetic material from two or more
Speaker 1: other viruses infect a single human or really any animal,
Speaker 1: the host itself is referred to as a reassortment event, right,
Speaker 1: And so that that is what is assumed to have
Speaker 1: happened here. A lot of deadly diseases are linked to
Speaker 1: bats in this way, and we'll we'll give you some
Speaker 1: more examples later, but a bowl uh hepatitis, se stars,
Speaker 1: and perhaps mers are all linked to bats. In the
Speaker 1: case of Stars, it's thought that it first spread to
Speaker 1: humans actually in by bats that were infecting horses in Brisbane, Australia.
Speaker 1: Then two people caught the virus from the horses, and
Speaker 1: they think it was possibly from scratches that were exposed
Speaker 1: to infected horse blood. Both of these people died horrible deaths. UH.
Speaker 1: In other diseases, pigs have become infected by eating saliva
Speaker 1: covered fruit that's dropped by bats, and then that subsequently
Speaker 1: infects the humans who eat the pigs. Uh. People can
Speaker 1: also be directly infected by drinking juice from date palms
Speaker 1: that have been contaminated by bats. It's interesting to bring
Speaker 1: bats up because you know, we've been talking about typhog Mary.
Speaker 1: We talked about how she was an asymptomatic carrier. Of course,
Speaker 1: bats are asymptomatic carriers of rabies. Uh. They don't display
Speaker 1: the rabies of uh, you know, they're not foaming at
Speaker 1: the mouth, but they can be carriers of it. And
Speaker 1: that's why we is. Everyone I think has heard if
Speaker 1: you're bitten by a bat, you have to you have
Speaker 1: to act accordingly. Um as if you've contracted great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a different episode for another time, but I would
Speaker 1: love for us to tackle bats in their immune systems
Speaker 1: and and and just their anatomy in general. We did
Speaker 1: a how stuff works video and it was like three
Speaker 1: years ago where we went to dragon Con and we
Speaker 1: interviewed a woman who was a specialist in bats and
Speaker 1: viral spreading, and it was just really interesting. The idea
Speaker 1: basically being that they have these crazy fast metabolisms that
Speaker 1: just process things right out of them. Um, but on
Speaker 1: the other hand, they're also super susceptible to spreading these diseases.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that, in the case of Stars,
Speaker 1: it's thought that a few wild civets were infected by bats,
Speaker 1: and then these civets were caught and taken to the
Speaker 1: market and the virus jumped to humans. You know what
Speaker 1: I immediately think of, here, have you heard about this
Speaker 1: coffee that's made from civit? Oh? Yeah, I have never
Speaker 1: had it, but I haven't familiar with it. But so
Speaker 1: if nobody out there has heard of this, apparently, I
Speaker 1: think in l A it's kind of a thing you
Speaker 1: can buy like a cup of coffee that costs like
Speaker 1: what it's like eighty bucks or something crazy like that
Speaker 1: for one cup of coffee. It's supposed to be like
Speaker 1: the best coffee in the world. So the idea here,
Speaker 1: I think is that, uh, these civits eat coffee beans,
Speaker 1: they digest them, and then when it comes out the
Speaker 1: other end, they're able to somehow process it into coffee,
Speaker 1: not the civits people. It's not coffee itself, just poured
Speaker 1: directly out of there right exactly. They process it and
Speaker 1: it and it supposedly has like this amazing fruity flavor.
Speaker 1: But my first thought was, well, what if these civits
Speaker 1: are bitten by bats and you're drinking this eighty dollar coffee,
Speaker 1: do you then get stars from your coffee? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: can imagine the selling. Look, this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: best cup of coffee you ever have. You're you're gonna
Speaker 1: catch stars probably, but just just just give it a try.
Speaker 1: I meant it. I doubt that's the case. Otherwise people
Speaker 1: would probably be warned about this super expensive coffee. But still,
Speaker 1: it just kind of made me think about that whole thing. Now,
Speaker 1: Dr lu John Lune here Again, he wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: patient zero per se, but it was still a critical
Speaker 1: factor in the spread of the disease because people from
Speaker 1: that hotel traveled and in less than four months, about
Speaker 1: four thousand cases and five fifty deaths from stars could
Speaker 1: be traced back to his stay in Hong Kong. And
Speaker 1: this just makes me think back to our stories about
Speaker 1: traveling while sick, Like when when we have these tales
Speaker 1: of patient zeros or alleged patient zeros. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to apply blame and say, oh, that was so irresponsible
Speaker 1: that person to travel while they were sick and got
Speaker 1: all these other people sick. And yet this is something
Speaker 1: we all do. We all know that if you're sick,
Speaker 1: you should you should probably not travel. We know that
Speaker 1: if your kids sick, you shouldn't send them to school.
Speaker 1: And yet this happens all the time because we had
Speaker 1: we make our plans, we spend money, we have our
Speaker 1: jobs to do, we have our lives to uh uh.
Speaker 1: You all planned out, and then illnesses come along and
Speaker 1: we're generally we generally just try and plow through it
Speaker 1: if we possibly can exactly. I mean, like, so in
Speaker 1: both of our cases, you and I had both invested
Speaker 1: a lot of money and going on these vacations. It's
Speaker 1: not like you're just gonna you can't just cancel those plans,
Speaker 1: because that's a huge you know wash essentially. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know some of you out there are probably saying, well,
Speaker 1: you should have for the for the betterment of mankind,
Speaker 1: for everybody around you. I mean, for my part, like
Speaker 1: I would I think try to wear one of those
Speaker 1: masks or something, or honestly, after this last week, I
Speaker 1: would recommend that everybody just wear one of those masks
Speaker 1: when you're on a plane from now on. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: first really got popularized with stars, right I remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course in um, in much of Asia,
Speaker 1: you still see them all the time in any kind
Speaker 1: of like a public gathering and sporting event. Uh so
Speaker 1: much so that they're like they've they've kind of like
Speaker 1: gotten some like aesthetic designs to them, right, you see
Speaker 1: logos and emblazoned on the Yeah. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the smart way to go. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing people like that on the train or whatever
Speaker 1: and being like, what a germophobe? And now I'm like
Speaker 1: it makes sense, like the German is not sick. Yeah, exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a couple other examples. So. Um there was a
Speaker 1: six year old and I don't think this is his
Speaker 1: real name, but he was referred to as Captain boonemanuk
Speaker 1: Uh and he was a tai boy who was the
Speaker 1: first confirmed casualty of Avian influenza, or as we more
Speaker 1: commonly call it, bird flu. In two thousand four. He
Speaker 1: fell ill and his family reported that he had recently
Speaker 1: scooped up a chicken and that chicken was thought to
Speaker 1: have had the virus. So he's referred to as the
Speaker 1: patient zero for that. We've also got Edgar Hernandez, who
Speaker 1: is a five year old living in the Mexican town
Speaker 1: of Le Gloria, when doctors identified him as the earliest
Speaker 1: documented case of swine flew in two thousand nine. There
Speaker 1: you go with a an example of somebody of Latino
Speaker 1: descent who's blamed as a patient zero. But yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was called the earliest documented case of swine flu.
Speaker 1: They believe this came from again a reassortment event. The
Speaker 1: idea here was that the H one N one strain
Speaker 1: was mixed inside pigs and that created new combinations that
Speaker 1: were more likely to infect people. Edgar Hernandez was the
Speaker 1: first one that they documented. Now for this next one,
Speaker 1: this is the individual that uh, we referenced already when
Speaker 1: we're talking about that ebola case, that two year old.
Speaker 1: But you have some additional information here. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: looks like and I'm probably butchering this name, but the
Speaker 1: name is a meal U Muno uh and like Robert
Speaker 1: had earlier said, it was a toddler living in the
Speaker 1: village of Milandou when he developed a bola uh. So
Speaker 1: Robert mentioned how quickly that spread and that basically it
Speaker 1: was because the town that this happened in it was
Speaker 1: on the intersection of three different countries, so the virus
Speaker 1: spread really easily. This showed researchers just how transmissible uh
Speaker 1: ebola can be and that specifically dealing with the sick
Speaker 1: is a higher risk event for acquiring the affection. Now
Speaker 1: in this case, they were saying, like, look, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's like a medicine man type figure of shaman
Speaker 1: type figure, or even if it's just some kind of
Speaker 1: a medical doctor, that they're basically putting themselves into these
Speaker 1: high risk scenarios where they can then subsequently become super spreaders. Uh.
Speaker 1: In addition to the detective work that the researchers did,
Speaker 1: they were also able to sequence the genomes of nine
Speaker 1: BOWLA viruses that were found in samples taken from seventy
Speaker 1: eight patients and Sierra leone. Uh. This led them to
Speaker 1: believe that the virus was brought to West Africa in
Speaker 1: the past decade by an animal. And so, like we
Speaker 1: said earlier, you know this could this could have been bats. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's also thought ebola can be transmitted through monkeys and
Speaker 1: forest antelope as well. And we've also got a patient
Speaker 1: here who is a sixty eight year old South Korean man. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's thought to be the so called patient zero for
Speaker 1: MERS or Middle East Respiratory syndome syndrome. UH. He was
Speaker 1: an extensive traveler and he had been in Bahrain, the
Speaker 1: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar before returning to
Speaker 1: South Korea. Now, MERS can take two to fourteen days
Speaker 1: before symptoms begin to show, so it's thought that he
Speaker 1: may have transmitted it to twenty eight other people before
Speaker 1: he even arrived at a hospital. That's an important note
Speaker 1: to make because even if you're not a purely an
Speaker 1: asymptomatic carrier of a disease, so many different diseases and
Speaker 1: anonymosis have an asymptomatic period. Uh. This is the case
Speaker 1: in a number of STDs as well, where one is
Speaker 1: carrying the STD, but you're not displaying a lesions or
Speaker 1: you know, or swelling or rashes or whatever. The symptoms
Speaker 1: are of like a full, full blown outbreak. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and so speaking of STDs, now we've we've got the
Speaker 1: big term for patient zero. We're gonna take a break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: redemption of the man who was first designated patient zero,
Speaker 1: or the first man supposedly to have HIV. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we're talking here about Gaeton Dog. Yeah. He is
Speaker 1: often attributed as being the patient zero for the HIV crisis.
Speaker 1: He was a Canadian flight attendant that was accused of
Speaker 1: introducing the virus to North America after he picked it
Speaker 1: up in either Haiti or Europe and do God was
Speaker 1: said to have infected hundreds of sexual partners before his
Speaker 1: death in Now this is where the term patient zero
Speaker 1: was popularized. This shocked me. I thought that that term
Speaker 1: had been around for a very long time, at least
Speaker 1: as far back as typhoid Mary. But it turns out
Speaker 1: it's it's relatively re within our lifetimes. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a This was a major publication. They did
Speaker 1: a TV movie based on it that had the Matthew
Speaker 1: Moods starring. Yeah, stuff to blow your mind. Favorite Matthew Modine.
Speaker 1: He's played the doctor I believe not do different doctor
Speaker 1: from the one who plays and stranger things. Well who knows,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so this the term was popularized in a
Speaker 1: book that was by a game named Randy Schiltz. And
Speaker 1: this book is called in the Band Played On. It
Speaker 1: came out in and it documented the early years of
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis. Schiltz took the medical term patient oh,
Speaker 1: that's the letter oh and turned it into zero in
Speaker 1: the book, describing Dog as a person who continually had
Speaker 1: sex with partners without regard for their health, even after
Speaker 1: his physicians told him to stop. The book also says
Speaker 1: that Dog would purposely show partners his sarcoma legions after
Speaker 1: sex and say things like I've got gay cancer, I'm
Speaker 1: going to die and so are you? H Now the
Speaker 1: reason why the letter oh was misinterpreted as a zero
Speaker 1: this turned into the provocative term patient zero. It actually
Speaker 1: meant oh for outside of California. Uh. And the book,
Speaker 1: but as we said, was made into a film. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind about about Randy Schiltz here,
Speaker 1: and I bring this up because not everyone's problem may
Speaker 1: not be familiar with the book, um and what his
Speaker 1: background is, especially when we're talking so much about mothering
Speaker 1: here and discussing the the outsider as the source of
Speaker 1: an illness. Now, Schiltz himself was a homosexual man, uh
Speaker 1: and he had did. He also eventually died of of HIV,
Speaker 1: though he he held off on finding out for sure
Speaker 1: if he had the illness until he had completed the
Speaker 1: book because he didn't want it to to influence just
Speaker 1: to color his prose um. Again, he was a you know,
Speaker 1: acclaimed journalist in his life, like prior to writing the book.
Speaker 1: So so I want everyone to have the like, the
Speaker 1: proper impression of him before we keep going. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, so what we're going to discover here is that, well,
Speaker 1: Schultz was wrong about dog. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: Schultz necessarily was a bad person. Right now, in terms
Speaker 1: of dogad we talk a bit about the redemption of
Speaker 1: of him as a carrier of the illness. Um it
Speaker 1: he still allegedly boasted of two dred and fifty partners
Speaker 1: a year after he learned of his condition. Um. He
Speaker 1: was highly vilified, as is certainly following this book coming out.
Speaker 1: Many Canadians apparently saw it as a shame on the nation.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that here's this this guy who
Speaker 1: who played such a pivotal role in spreading this this disease.
Speaker 1: And he was one of us, he was Canadian, and
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to feel about that? Uh? And
Speaker 1: and still as sensational as all of this was at
Speaker 1: the time and is vilified as he was following the
Speaker 1: band played on, not everyone at the time was really
Speaker 1: into this sensation. When the book came out in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, pioneering age researcher Professor Marcus Connat of the
Speaker 1: University of California at San Francisco told Time magazine quote,
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been this man, it would have been
Speaker 1: some other. So it's much even though one is, you know,
Speaker 1: instantly inclined to say, oh, this guy's patient zero. Look
Speaker 1: how reckless he was. Look, Look look how terrible he was.
Speaker 1: He should have he should have cared more for his
Speaker 1: for his fellow humans. Uh. If it hadn't have been him,
Speaker 1: it would have been someone else like these. When you're
Speaker 1: dealing with an infectious disease, it's it's not a thing
Speaker 1: of that is born out of human choice. It's not
Speaker 1: something as simple as uh as Pandora opening that box.
Speaker 1: And even then you could say, well, if Pandora didn't
Speaker 1: open it. Someone would have opened you have a box
Speaker 1: setting around. You can't just leave a box with a
Speaker 1: lid on it and expect that nobody's ever going to
Speaker 1: try it out and see what's inside. Yeah, and as
Speaker 1: we're going to find out, you know, not only would
Speaker 1: it have been somebody else if it wasn't Duga, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was already out there. It was already
Speaker 1: in the world. It was already in the human populace.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't in the United States yet. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing here too, right, is that, like the narrative is, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy, this is the guy who brought it to
Speaker 1: the United States, but we didn't care about the people
Speaker 1: who were infected with this in the Caribbean or in Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that that that that everyone in the
Speaker 1: US was somehow, you know, situated in this just on
Speaker 1: another planet, essentially, was completely removed from the threats of
Speaker 1: it via this station in the world. Um. Like, one
Speaker 1: example that comes to mind when discussing all this is
Speaker 1: another case of destructive introduction of an infectious disease, and
Speaker 1: that's uh uh Spanish explorers bringing a smallpox influenza and
Speaker 1: measles into the New World. Now, this of course played
Speaker 1: a huge role in uh and you really can't um
Speaker 1: overestimate the role that's played. It gave them the the
Speaker 1: ability to exert military dominance, uh, certainly with more ease.
Speaker 1: It Uh, it was. It was just a vital factor
Speaker 1: in this this this population coming into the New World.
Speaker 1: And you can easily ask, well, what if what if
Speaker 1: this hadn't have happened, what if they hadn't introduced uh
Speaker 1: uh these illnesses. Well, it's hard to envision a situation
Speaker 1: where it wouldn't have, right, I mean, because people were
Speaker 1: traveling across the world, that the world was getting smaller,
Speaker 1: we were these were some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: first contact between these these these two human populations. It
Speaker 1: was gonna happen. Now you can say, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: would there there are scenarios where you can imagine it
Speaker 1: happening uh uh in a way that wasn't so destructive.
Speaker 1: But but but but these these illnesses were going to
Speaker 1: spread into the New World. There's there's really no way
Speaker 1: to imagine an alternative scenario. I mean unless there was
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, Star Trek prime directive scenario involved. Story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the early colonists had any prime
Speaker 1: directives in mind. What what this makes me think of
Speaker 1: is just from from my you know, local history growing
Speaker 1: up in New England. Uh So, Amherst, Massachusetts is a
Speaker 1: town that my family is just generally from around that area,
Speaker 1: and my mother lives there. It's named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst.
Speaker 1: What a lot of people don't know, even who live
Speaker 1: in the town, is that Lord Jeffrey Amherst purposely gave
Speaker 1: smallpox blankets to the Native American population in the area,
Speaker 1: you know, subsequently killing a lot of people. Uh. Yet
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of the larger towns in
Speaker 1: New England. It's also uh sort of a celebrated bastion
Speaker 1: of liberalism today, which is ironic. And yet here's this
Speaker 1: figure who was essentially engaging in biological warfare via these
Speaker 1: infected blankets. Now, in the case of Douga, there was
Speaker 1: a recent article in Nature that found that HIV in
Speaker 1: fact entered the US several years before he even did.
Speaker 1: They determined this through a genetic analysis of stored blood samples,
Speaker 1: and what they found was that the virus entered the
Speaker 1: US from the Caribbean somewhere around one, and they think
Speaker 1: it was possibly through contaminated blood products like blood plasma.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even human to human interaction. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: of course a big deal. And in a lot of
Speaker 1: the early HIV transmissions. If you're any science fiction fans,
Speaker 1: so they probably remember that Isaac Asimov contracted HIV this way.
Speaker 1: He'd uh, I did not know that because some heart surgery,
Speaker 1: I believe, and uh he ended up contracting HIV from
Speaker 1: the transfusion. But it was so it was so scandalous
Speaker 1: at the time. It was I think ten years after
Speaker 1: his death. Before that that fact was made public by
Speaker 1: his family where they said, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: what happened. The same thing happened in my family. My
Speaker 1: grandfather contracted HIV through heart surgery. Uh. But this is interesting,
Speaker 1: I've never heard about this about Isaac Asimo. But yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing. My grandfather was a doctor, uh, and he
Speaker 1: contracted HIV when he had heart surgery. Uh. And of course,
Speaker 1: because he was a doctor, he didn't want to lash
Speaker 1: out of the medical community or the hospital where he
Speaker 1: was treated at. And so you know, it was just
Speaker 1: something that we dealt with now in in in the
Speaker 1: case of figuring out what went on with Douga. What's
Speaker 1: really interesting here is they used similar techniques to those
Speaker 1: that are used to decipher the badly degraded ancient DNA
Speaker 1: from fossils. So what they did was they found that
Speaker 1: the viral DNA was so genetically diverse that the viruses
Speaker 1: must have been circulating in cities for years prior to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, which is how they picked up all
Speaker 1: these variations. So the researchers believe that HIV first jump
Speaker 1: to United States from Haiti somewhere around nineteen seventy or
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. The samples that they looked at all
Speaker 1: came from the same family tree of HIV and these
Speaker 1: were all the same as the one from the Caribbeans.
Speaker 1: So that suggests that the HIV virus spread from Africa
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean and then to the United States. But
Speaker 1: then again because of some specific markers, they think New
Speaker 1: York was where it specifically went to from the Caribbean
Speaker 1: somehow through these blood plasma products. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting here because we've discussed the you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that these are these are things that emerge from less
Speaker 1: civilized places. They emerge in the wild right in the
Speaker 1: rural areas, but at the same time large centers of population,
Speaker 1: including places like New York Um. You know, certainly one
Speaker 1: of the more the more famous metro metropolitan areas in
Speaker 1: the world. Like a modern city of there there ever
Speaker 1: was one like these are classic incubation sites for the
Speaker 1: illnesses and disease. When you look back at the history
Speaker 1: of infectious disease, uh, for for human beings like this
Speaker 1: is that we see this time and time again. People
Speaker 1: come together, they create these cities. And certainly cities are
Speaker 1: great for for enterprise, for for economics, for cultural ideas,
Speaker 1: but they are also places where diseases uh pick up stain.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I love New York. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places in the world to be.
Speaker 1: But anytime I get on the subway and in New York,
Speaker 1: I've just like it's almost like I get this like
Speaker 1: special vision where all I'm seeing is just like creepy
Speaker 1: crawley potential viruses or bacteria just on everything you know,
Speaker 1: and you just have to go with it, right uh.
Speaker 1: And And of course that's why New York works so well.
Speaker 1: And like apocalyptic disease fiction like the stand right, Like,
Speaker 1: remember there's that scene in The Stand where the Lincoln Tunnel,
Speaker 1: I believe it is, is like all completely backed up
Speaker 1: because everybody just died in their cars and one of
Speaker 1: the characters has to like crawl through the Lincoln Tunnel
Speaker 1: on the pitch black dark, surrounded by all these diseased corpses.
Speaker 1: And it's of course New York makes sense for that setting.
Speaker 1: All right, So we've been we've been dancing around this,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we really come back to this idea, is that, well,
Speaker 1: why do we why do where are we so drawn
Speaker 1: to this idea of patient zero? Why is this this trope?
Speaker 1: Why is this mythic um description? Uh so irresistible? Like
Speaker 1: even if we were not, even if we don't want
Speaker 1: to consciously invoke it, we end up thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And uh and this is this has been a topic
Speaker 1: of some consideration by a number of authors out there.
Speaker 1: There's one piece in particular that came out in Ian
Speaker 1: magazine recently. Um and this is from Leila me and
Speaker 1: in the title of the pieces, the Seductive Lie of
Speaker 1: Patient Zero and the Outbreak Narrative. And I just want
Speaker 1: to read a quick quote from it because I thought
Speaker 1: she really summed summed it up rather nicely. The allure
Speaker 1: of patient zero rests on the ways in which the
Speaker 1: figure allows us to assign responsibility and blame when an
Speaker 1: outbreak occurs. It makes visible the vectors of disease transmission
Speaker 1: and draws attention to the dangers of human contact, creating
Speaker 1: distance between the afflicted and the rest of us. When
Speaker 1: patient zero is defined as someone with distinguishing traits of behavior, sexuality,
Speaker 1: or race, then those of us with differing characteristics can
Speaker 1: reassure ourselves that we are not at risk. A patient
Speaker 1: zero lacks both the capacity for self control and the
Speaker 1: moral conviction to avoid placing others in danger. The more
Speaker 1: he or she strays from established norms, the greater the
Speaker 1: opportunity for reprobation. Yeah. So basically what she's saying here
Speaker 1: is when we stray from the status quo, that's when
Speaker 1: we allow disease to happen. Uh. The idea being that
Speaker 1: patient zeros are culpable, that they're responsible for what they've done. Now,
Speaker 1: the Douga legend of him going around and having sex
Speaker 1: with two and fifty people and then saying ha ha
Speaker 1: ha I gave you Aid's plays very well into that.
Speaker 1: But as we've seen with a lot of these other cases,
Speaker 1: that's not always accurate, right, Yeah, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it comes comes back around to to this, this, this
Speaker 1: trend throughout human culture to confuse illness with some sort
Speaker 1: of a moral uh disfigurement to I mean, or any
Speaker 1: kind of disfigurement really like a physical disfigurement, means your
Speaker 1: soul is twisted in some way, shape or form, right Uh.
Speaker 1: And and even no matter how much we try and
Speaker 1: distance ourselves from that sort of illogical thinking, it has
Speaker 1: a way of creeping back into our to our judgment
Speaker 1: um in the narrative. Here this this this agent zero narrative,
Speaker 1: because this gives us someone to blame off, an escapegoat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and other that makes us feel safer because we can
Speaker 1: always say, well, I'm not Asian, or I'm not poor,
Speaker 1: I'm not homosexual, I'm not this that or the other.
Speaker 1: Whatever makes us feel a little safe. And you know,
Speaker 1: I I think we all find ourselves engaging in some
Speaker 1: level of this when dealing with illness, because just the
Speaker 1: other day I was talking with my wife about about
Speaker 1: our you know, illness creeping into our own family, and uh,
Speaker 1: we're saying, well, you know, we we eat really healthily, Like,
Speaker 1: how how come this is happening to us? And of
Speaker 1: course that that's simplistic thinking on our part, because yes,
Speaker 1: you know, healthy, healthy diet is important that you know,
Speaker 1: boost t immune uh system, etcetera. But to think of
Speaker 1: it as this this barrier, as this golden shield against
Speaker 1: infectious agents that do not work so simplistically. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that that that that gets in the way of
Speaker 1: proper um protection and understanding of these illnesses. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: also have a four year old who's coming into contact
Speaker 1: with all these other four ales who are wiping I
Speaker 1: imagine their their noses or their hands on their mouths
Speaker 1: or whatever and touching each other and then coming home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about incubators for illness. Yeah, any
Speaker 1: pre k kindergarten, first grade scenario is going to be
Speaker 1: exactly that. But you know, at at the heart of
Speaker 1: it that we we want to put a face with
Speaker 1: a threat and then we want to reassure ourselves that
Speaker 1: that face is not our own. And I feel as
Speaker 1: we experience, uh you, we experience some like this when
Speaker 1: we even say, look at mug shots and we we
Speaker 1: want to see the victims of crimes. We want to
Speaker 1: see what they looked like. We have to know the
Speaker 1: face of the afflect, afflicted or affected individual so that
Speaker 1: we can evaluate our own standing in relationship to them,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, And like with all culture, it's basically us
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how the world works by creating
Speaker 1: a story that we can understand, right Uh. And but
Speaker 1: I think like if you sort of peel the layers
Speaker 1: away from that story, you see necessary It isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: always the case with these quote patient zeros. In fact,
Speaker 1: the term itself is such a misnomer really, index case
Speaker 1: seems to be more responsible term. Ye. So you know,
Speaker 1: as we've just said, over the last two weeks, Robert
Speaker 1: and I have been battling off illness. It's that time
Speaker 1: of year. Also, I think a lot of stuff is
Speaker 1: going around. So maybe those of you out there that
Speaker 1: are listening can relate to this. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us and you want to let
Speaker 1: us know your thoughts on the patient zero narrative or
Speaker 1: just you know, in general, how disease is transmissible, you
Speaker 1: can always hit us up on social media. We are
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. And hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to you've specifically the discussion of AIDS and HIV
Speaker 1: was of interest to you and you want to learn more.
Speaker 1: UH we do recommend checking out the International AIDS Society
Speaker 1: or i A S. You can find them at www
Speaker 1: dot i A Society dot org and if you want
Speaker 1: to send us an email, just simply shoot us your
Speaker 1: missive at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Because at how stuff works dot com, I think they
Speaker 1: may joint to foot part propos Part FO