Patient Zero
The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.
- Duration
- 1h 17m
- Broadcast on
- 14 Nov 2011
- Audio Format
- other
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The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.
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So if we said where we are, I'm on tape yet. Starting us off today are our producers Lynn Levy and Sean Cole. Very pretty day to be on an abandoned island where victims of contagious disease were quarantined and one in particular who lived here, died here, never believing that she was, in fact, sick and dangerous. So this is a story that just begins when? Well, it's actually starts in 1906 and it doesn't start on the island, it starts in Oyster Bay. Oh, nice neighbor. Very nice. There was this one rich family on vacation there. And their daughter gets sick. She gets sick first. This is Judy Levitt. I am a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin. And she wrote a book about this story. So basically the girl, the daughter, has a fever. Then her sister comes down with it and then her mom and a maid. About six out of eleven and the family gets sick. And with this disease, the fever is just the first part of it. Both diarrhea or constipation are reported. So it can go either way, I guess. What is it? Typhoid. And they couldn't figure out what had caused the disease. So they called in this sanitary engineer named George Soper. With the public health department, he was a go-to guy for outbreaks like this. Back then, the department of public health was thinking, you know, would you get sick because of something dirty near you? In the well or in the pipes. Yeah, so he looks into all of that. Did a whole test on the house and the water and everything. Couldn't find anything. And so he starts talking to the family. And he started quizzing them all. And they remember they had a summer. He builds up this whole picture of several outbreaks going back years. 1900. Mameranek. A New York family had a house for the sun. 1902. Dark Harbor. 1904. Seven cases. Sands Point. New York. Autumn. 1906. Wister. 1907. New York City. All these cases.
Transcription truncated.
The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.