Coronavirus update, Typhoid Mary and 200th anniversary of the first sighting of Antarctica

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the recent coronavirus outbreak spreading around the world, and concerns about people being infectious before they exhibit any symptoms. Professor of Virology at Nottingham University Jonathan Ball explains infection rates, quarantines and why he's worried about it spreading to the developing world. 'Alice in Typhoidland' is a new exhibition in Oxford recording how that city dealt with typhoid. It’s called that after one of its 19th century residents, Alice Liddell (the girl after whom Alice in Wonderland was named). Her father Henry Liddell was the Dean of Christchurch College and together with his friend Henry Ackland was instrumental in closing off Oxford's open sewers and thereby combating some of the causes of the disease. The exhibition also explores the fate of Typhoid Mary – one of the most famous asymptomatic disease carriers in history. Exactly 200 years ago, 30th January 1820, at 3:30 local time, the continent of Antarctica was spotted for the first time by a British expedition captained by Edward Bransfield, on the Merchant Ship The Williams. But they weren’t the very first: 3 days earlier - on 27 January - a Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev spotted what is now known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf. The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is spearheading celebrations. Camilla Nichol is its CEO and she describes the history of the icy continent and how it's become the protected scientific reserve it is now. Producer - Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:40.1	Hello You, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 30th of January 2020
0:46.8	I'm Adam Rutherford it's the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica by Russians Maybe by Brits one or the other we'll get
0:55.1	to the bottom of that later. Curious and curious sir the fate of typhoid Mary the city of
1:00.9	Oxford comprehensively dealt with typhoid in the 19th century.
1:04.0	So what can we learn about epidemics from the history of science and from Alice in Wonderland?
1:10.0	Well, we start with a rather more current infectious disease, the ongoing coronavirus epidemic that
1:15.4	originated in China within the last few weeks.
1:18.4	It's continued to spread.
1:19.9	The latest reports are that more than 170 people have died from the lower lung infection caused
1:25.0	by the virus and 7,700 confirmed cases in mainland China in every province now, though
1:32.1	this is likely to be a significant
1:33.9	underestimate. Infections have been identifying people all over the world, including in the
1:38.2	U.S., in Canada, Australia and a dozen other countries, and notably in Germany and Japan
	...

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