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Science Friday

Valley Fever, Citizen Science Month Finale. April 24, 2020, Part 1

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Life Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When you think of fungal infections, you might think athlete’s foot or maybe ringworm—itchy, irritating reactions on the skin. But other fungal diseases can cause much more serious illness. One of them is Valley Fever, caused by the soil fungus Coccidioides. In 2018, over 15,000 people were diagnosed with coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as Valley Fever, in the United States, mainly in the American West, and in parts of Mexico, and Central and South America. But the numbers could be much higher: The disease is commonly misdiagnosed and the hot spots are difficult to pin down. Plus, the endemic region could grow with climate change.  Science Friday digital producer Lauren Young takes us into the Central Valley in California—a Valley Fever hot spot—to learn more about how the disease spreads and the people it harms. She tells the story in a new feature on Methods, from Science Friday, using video, sound, and pictures, gives you a flavor of the challenges faced by scientists working to solve big problems.  Ira brings on Valley Public Radio reporter Kerry Klein, who helped us report this story, to tell us more about the communities Valley Fever is impacting and new treatments. He also talks with UCSF microbiologist Anita Sil to dig deep into fungal pathogens and the latest research.  This year’s Citizen Science Month may be winding down at the end of April, but you can help researchers collect and analyze their data all year long.  This week, citizen science platform Zooniverse has not one, but four projects you can help with: data analysis tasks that will hopefully calm, soothe, distract, and divert you from life in a pandemic. Whether it’s identifying cute raccoons in camera trap photos, looking for seasonal wind on Mars, identifying how antibiotics kills tuberculosis in petri dishes, or even transcribing the cursive of old letters from anti-slavery activists—Zooniverse wants to help you find diversion in data. Ira talks about these projects—and how to get involved with Zooniverse—with co-lead Laura Trouille, vice president of citizen science at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. Learn more about Zooniverse and other SciFri Citizen Science Month partners at sciencefriday.com/citizenscience. And join our citizen science newsletter for all the latest updates on our online events here!

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. This hour we'll talk about an illness called Valley Fever

0:05.4

that is caused by breathing in a soil fungus. We'll hear from patients and talk about the latest

0:11.2

treatments. But first, we learned this week that the first death from coronavirus in the U.S.

0:17.0

happened on February 6th. This is a big deal because before now, we thought the first death was

0:23.6

three weeks later on February 29th. So what does this changed coronavirus timeline mean? Here to talk

0:30.8

about that and other short stories in sciences. Annalie Newitz, journalist and author based in San Francisco.

0:37.3

Welcome back, Annalie. Hey, thanks for having based in San Francisco. Welcome back, Annalie.

0:38.6

Hey, thanks for having me. Let's jump right into this story about a shifted coronavirus timeline in the

0:44.3

U.S. There were two people who died before February 29th. Tell us about this. What's going on here?

0:50.5

So this new timeline starts in Santa Clara, California. That is a city kind of in the

0:58.4

Silicon Valley area. And what we know is that both of these deaths were originally chalked up to

1:06.4

some kind of influenza, but a medical examiner, an intrepid medical examiner, decided to send a couple

1:13.7

tissue samples off to the CDC.

1:16.5

And when we found out that indeed it was coronavirus, it completely changes our picture of how

1:23.8

the disease was spreading, because these two people do not appear to have any connection

1:30.2

to travelers, nor had they traveled. So it seems like these are examples of community spread.

1:37.6

And so it means the virus was around longer than we thought, right?

1:41.6

Much longer than we thought, potentially, and also spreading within the

1:45.8

community. So this is not something where, you know, people were coming in from outside. So that suggests

1:51.3

that, yeah, it had been spreading in Santa Clara County for quite a while. So why is it that we are just

1:57.8

finding out now that the people died of coronavirus before our first official

2:03.1

death?

...

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