Radiolab - Invisible Allies

As scientists have been scrambling to find new and better ways to treat covid-19, they’ve come across some unexpected allies. Invisible and primordial, these protectors have been with us all along. And they just might help us to better weather this viral storm. To kick things off, we travel through time from a homeless shelter to a military hospital, pondering the pandemic-fighting power of the sun. And then, we dive deep into the periodic table to look at how a simple element might actually be a microbe’s biggest foe. This episode was reported by Simon Adler and Molly Webster, and produced by Annie McEwen, Pat Walters, Simon Adler, and Molly Webster, with production help from Tad Davis. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 45m
Broadcast on: 30 Jul 2020
Audio Format: other

To kick things off, we travel through time from a homeless shelter to a military hospital, pondering the pandemic-fighting power of the sun. And then, we dive deep into the periodic table to look at how a simple element might actually be a microbe’s biggest foe.

This episode was reported by Simon Adler and Molly Webster, and produced by Annie McEwen, Pat Walters, Simon Adler, and Molly Webster, with production help from Tad Davis.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

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WNYC Studios is supported by WISE. WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today. Terms and conditions apply. WNYC Studios is supported by Odo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odo at ODOO.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Wait, you're listening to RadioLab from WNYC. Hey, I'm Chad Eibungran. This is RadioLab, so last week we did a big episode about the 1918 flu thinking about this invisible enemy. This week we've got two stories about a couple of invisible allies. Okay, well, and we're going to kick things off with producer Simon Adler. So we're going to start at a homeless shelter in Boston. Hi, this is Jim. Called the Pine Street Inn. Hey, Jim, Simon here from RadioLab. Oh, Simon, how are you? Thank you for calling. That's my effect. Oh, yeah. How are you? Does now still work for you? Yeah, no, no, it worked. And a very busy doctor there, Dr. Jim O'Connell. Internal medicine doc at MGH and the president of the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. And he says back this past winter as this wave of COVID-19 was making its way towards North America, he and everybody in this community of healthcare providers who work with the homeless were freaked. Really good measures for controlling this is to physically distance and to quarantine, wash your hands frequently and to shelter at home. And when you crawl into our perspective of being a homeless person or homeless provider, those things are rendered just absurd. And we're looking at 500 people sitting in what we were thinking of as a powder cake. And so to try to head this thing off, they did all sorts of preparations. They built tents in various places. They scrambled to find extra beds around the city. How many beds do we need? We were guessing entirely. And every evening, as the homeless folks would return to the shelter for the night, they'd get their temperatures taken and have a brief interview with a shelter worker. Just have you experienced any of these symptoms? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Jim and his team just did what they could and braced for that powder keg to ignite. Yes.

However, by mid-March, with thousands of cases appearing all over the United States, we were not seeing anybody turn positive. No one seems to be getting sick. Now, this was surprising, but Jim says, we've seen this before. We've seen infection diseases hit the homeless population last. And so we sort of laughingly said none of our folks have traveled to China or Europe. So, you know, maybe this thing's just taking its time. But... The end of March draws near. The most reported coronavirus. Major cities across the US are in trouble. 80,000 confirmed cases in the US. The shelter still nothing. We didn't have anybody positive. It's totally baffling. And it wasn't just them. They call up the Los Angeles homeless shelters. Nobody there. San Francisco had not yet seen anyone at the end of March. Basically, nobody in Atlanta. Even in Seattle, they hadn't seen any among the homeless population. So already, they're sort of like, what the hell is going on? We thought we were going to be hit hardest. We aren't being hit. And they're just sort of left in this state of bewilderment until April 2nd, when they get enough tests from the state to do universal testing. We screened and tested everybody. They put 408 people through the test. They shove the thing up their nose. These are sort of the gold standard in tests at the time. They wait a few days. And the results. There were 147 positive tests that night out of the 408. That's about 40%. Wow. Okay. And of those, no symptoms whatsoever.

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