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Science Friday

COVID Near You Citizen Science, Fact-Check Your Feed. March 27, 2020, Part 1

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

These days, our newsfeeds are overloaded with stories of the coronavirus. This week, Science Friday continues to dig into the facts behind the speculation—the peer-reviewed studies and reports published by scientists investigating the virus. But what we know—and don’t know—about the new virus is changing daily, making it hard to keep up. Everyone, for example, wants to know more about possible therapies for treating COVID-19 patients. After President Trump publicly speculated about the tried and true antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, his endorsement sent governors, doctors, and the worried public scrambling to get their hands on the drug. But is there any science to back-up this claim? And what about remdesivir, the antiviral drug that has been used to treat a handful of patients, and is now the subject of several new drug trials? Angela Rasmussen, associate research scientist and virologist at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health joins Science Friday once again to break down the science behind the stories. As suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 skyrocket in the United States, testing availability remains limited, leaving people wondering if their cough is something to worry about. But testing isn’t just a balm for anxiety—public health officials need data about how far the new virus has spread to make decisions about how to best protect people, and where to send critical resources, like masks and gowns. Accurate information is the frontline of defense, but scientists still have pressing questions about the novel disease. For instance, how many people who are infected actually have symptoms? If you do have symptoms, how likely are you to get severely sick? Until we are able to test both healthy and symptomatic people at scale, citizen science can help fill the gaps in tracking who has COVID-19. And the public health team that launched Flu Near You to track seasonal flu symptoms is now doing just that: soliciting your symptoms in the Covid Near You project. Covid Near You co-founder John Brownstein of Boston Children’s Hospital explains what questions the project may help answer, and what trends Covid Near You will track—including why this data is so valuable to public health efforts. Sign up at www.covidnearyou.org to report how you’re feeling—whether you’re healthy or have symptoms.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Just a note, due to the need for social distancing this week,

0:06.7

we won't be taking calls during this edition of Science Friday, which was pre-recorded earlier in the week.

0:13.1

One of the biggest issues in the U.S. when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic is testing, getting more tests produced and the struggle to get one if you need

0:24.6

it. But what exactly is the science and technology behind those PCR tests? How do they work? Maggie

0:31.8

Kerth is here to fill us in on that story and other COVID headlines from this week. She is

0:36.9

senior science reporter for 538.com based

0:40.3

in Minneapolis. Welcome to Science Friday. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me.

0:44.3

Let's talk about this coronavirus. It's made up of RNA. And that is what the tests are analyzing.

0:51.2

Can you give us a little thumbnail on that? Yeah, so the tests are all, it turns out,

0:56.8

the ones that we've been using for the past few weeks at any rate are all based around the same

1:01.6

technology. That's true here. It's true in other countries. And basically what's going on is

1:08.1

that a medical professional sticks a swab way, way, way, way up the back

1:12.9

of your nose. And then they take that biological gunk in technical terms. And they first have to

1:21.9

isolate viral material, the RNA, out of that goo, separating it off from mucus, random cells.

1:29.2

And RNA is sort of like, you can imagine it is like half of a ladder.

1:33.1

So if DNA is like a twisted ladder, RNA is sort of like that split in half.

1:38.2

And so the first thing that they have to do is turn RNA into DNA.

1:42.9

That's called reverse transcription. And it's something that can be done with

1:47.7

what amounts to science kits that researchers buy from scientific supply companies. They do that.

1:55.1

And then the next step is something called polymerase chain reaction, which is a long-established technology and method

2:03.3

used for multiplying the numbers of DNA fragments that you have, so that you have enough

2:09.7

that you can actually study. And a big part of what makes the test that we have from the CDC

...

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