Should we worry about the latest Omicron subvariants?
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 568 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2022
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Should we worry about the most recent Omicron subvariants, BA 4 and BA5? They are the subtypes of the Covid-19 virus now dominant in southern Africa and spreading elsewhere. New research suggests that they are better at evading our antibody defences than other forms of the virus. Columbia University virologist David Ho explains the findings and what they means for us. Also, reducing air pollution makes agricultural crops grow better, how large wildfires warm the upper atmosphere, and the dolphins in the Red Sea which use secretions from corals and sponges as preventative medicines.
This week’s CrowdScience is dedicated to bodily fluids – and why humans spend so much time spraying them all over the place. From snot and vomit to sweat and sneezes, listeners have been positively drenching our inbox with queries. Now presenter Marnie Chesterton and a panel of unsqueamish expert guests prepare themselves to wade through…
One listener has found that as he ages, bright light seems to make him sneeze more and more – with his current record sitting at 14 sneezes in a row. He’d like to know if light has the same effect on other people and why?
Sticking with nasal fluids, another listener wants to know why she’s always reaching for a tissue to blow her endlessly dripping nose and yet her family seem to produce hardly any snot at all. Could it be because she moved from a hotter climate to a colder one?
CrowdScience reveals the answers to these and other sticky questions… if you can find the stomach to listen.
Image Description: Coronavirus COVID-19 virus Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:29.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. Thank you for downloading the Science Hour from the BBC World |
| 0:34.9 | Service with me, Roland Pease. A sneeze may be a reflective way for |
| 0:39.9 | us to clear our noses, but for a virus, it's the start of a new journey. From a virus perspective, |
| 0:48.1 | the sneeze is a brilliant strategy to achieve transport to a new host. So maybe we're sneezing to work as mobility |
| 0:56.6 | service agents for viruses. Flying mucus, just one of the precious bodily fluids |
| 1:02.2 | investigated by crowd science later in the podcast. And talking of spreading diseases, |
| 1:08.0 | were first catching up on the latest mutants of COVID on science and action. |
| 1:13.1 | This edition also includes the harm done to crops by poor air quality, |
| 1:17.5 | the impacts of wildfires on the atmosphere, |
| 1:20.3 | and what passes for self-medication amongst dolphins. |
| 1:24.8 | The adults lead a calf to a particular bush-like coral called a gorgonin. They deliberately |
| 1:34.5 | rubbed themselves through the fronds. It all gets explained later. It's six months since we |
| 1:42.9 | first talked about the Omicron variant of COVID here on Science and Action. |
| 1:47.5 | Springing from nothing, it seemed, with over 30 mutations compared to the original strain, |
| 1:52.7 | it raced around the world, quickly displacing Delta, the variant that dominated the headlines in 2021. |
| 2:00.2 | Case rates surged to almost four times the previous peak, |
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