Do NYC Birds Hold The Clues To The Next Pandemic?

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Most viruses that become epidemics in humans begin in other animals. It's how scientists suspect COVID-19 emerged. And now, less than five years after the start of the pandemic, some scientists are concerned about another disease that could do something similar: bird flu, or H5N1. Over the past year, the virus has spilled into cows and other animals — even infecting some people working closely with the animals. Some scientists hope to build a more resilient public health system by finding ways to detect and to track viruses as they spread in animals.

One team in New York City is doing this by tapping high school students from underrepresented backgrounds. Together, they create a more equitable field of biologists while they also sniff out what could be the next pandemic.

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0:00.0	JD Bants and Tim Walls are squaring off in their first and only debate on Tuesday.
0:06.0	The NPR Politics Podcast has you covered with all the news and analysis ahead of the
0:11.0	Vice Presidential debate.
0:12.0	Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast wherever you get your podcast.
0:16.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:21.0	Hey Shortwaivers, Anil Oza here.
0:25.0	Previous shortwave fact-checker, current reporter with Stat News,
0:28.0	and I'm dropping in to tell you a story about pandemic preparedness.
0:32.0	And look, for many people,
0:34.3	pandemics will last thing they want to be thinking about,
0:36.9	but it's important when possible to know where and when
0:40.6	pandemics will arise.
0:41.9	Even though it can be hard for researchers to get that work
0:46.2	funded. I had to write a grant proposal so I wasn't initially do something like
0:51.0	similar to like what we're doing now I think it was a being coronavirus detection in New York City because that's a different
0:55.4	virus entirely and then I ended up doing like the more molecular side of avian influenza. This is Maisha Alum, a researcher in New York, currently working on
1:05.8	Aian Influenza Surveillance.
1:08.3	I met her at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan,
1:11.0	so she could tell me about a grant that she's working on.
1:13.4	I wrote about like a certain time of interference response within Avian influenza and a certain cell
1:20.3	line. But one thing I left out is that Mycha's in high school. That grant was just a homework assignment.
1:30.0	The Mycha is part of an important effort to understand how viruses move through birds.
	...

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