We're diving into the latest research on COVID-19. Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen joins us to seperate fact from fiction. We talk masks, immunity, death rates and an uncertain future. Then, John Shull joins us as we countdown the Top 5 Minor Injuries.

Interview with Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen

Speakers

Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless

Dr. Angela Rasmussen: Virologist

Nick VinZant 0:13

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, we're going to talk about viruses and the worst minor injuries.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 0:24 It can transmit efficiently between people in the right circumstances and it can also cause disease in some of those people. And it's very rare that you find a virus like this particular virus that can do both of those things very well. And so that's when it becomes really dangerous. I'm very worried that in the fall, as people start getting sick from cold and flu season normal, normal influenza like illness, we're going to see this get even worse. So the politicization and the the steering away from evidence driven public health policy. See has been tremendously damaging.

Nick VinZant 1:03 I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. Our topic today is an important one. We all know the impact that COVID-19 has had. And it doesn't look like it's going anywhere in the near future. So we wanted to have a guest on that could really give us from a scientific perspective, what this virus really is, what it does, and what the future is going to look like. Because there's just so much either on purpose, or by accident, misinformation and misconceptions that are out there. And I think that she just does a fantastic job in this interview, of clearing that up and focusing on what's really important and what really what we really need to do to stop this This is biologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen from simply like a virus standpoint, what's different about COVID-19? Like why this virus Why now?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 2:11 So this virus is we know about this virus family. It's not that different from other coronaviruses. It's mostly most closely related and most similar to SARS coronavirus, classic that caused a major epidemic in 2003. But it is a different virus. So it's not a completely new virus in the sense that we already knew that Coronavirus existed. We already knew that beta Corona viruses which this is a subset of those Corona viruses can cause disease, including severe respiratory disease like COVID-19 in people. But this virus itself is a member of that family that we had never met before December of 2019.

Nick VinZant 2:56 Was it just any new virus is going to do something like this or put could Potentially, or was there something specific about how it operates that allowed it to have the impact that it has?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 3:06 Well, so there's a there's a couple things. And that's a more complicated question than it seems like on the surface. So in theory, any type of virus that infects animals could conceivably adapt to infect humans. The vast majority of them however, do not. Most viruses are adapted to replicate within the host that they normally circulate in. So it's important to understand when talking about viruses that viruses can't replicate on their own. They're obligate parasites, so they have to infect a host. And if a virus has been circulating in a specific type of hosts, so for example, as for this virus bats, it adapts to those that to those bats, and it becomes very efficient at infecting and replicating and transmitting to other bats. What can happen when he goes systems are disrupted. If this virus gets to encounter a new type of hosts that it can infect, then it has the potential to either insect and transmit efficiently between those hosts. It also has the potential to cause disease in those hosts. And it's very rare that you find a virus like this particular virus that can do both of those things very well. So this virus, and we don't really understand what led it to become adapted to transmitted efficiently between people. But it has the effect that it can it can transmit efficiently between people in the right circumstances and it can also cause disease and some of those people. And because it can transmit so efficiently and because it started spreading around the world before we were really able to recognize and contain it. That's why this virus has become a pandemic, when many other emerging viruses have not. But there are a lot of different emerging virus pieces that have come out that have become human pathogens. One example of this is Ebola virus which emerges periodically, and most recently emerged in a place that had never been before in West Africa, for example, MERS coronavirus, and SARS coronavirus classic. Were both new coronaviruses to us when they emerged in the Middle East firmers and in China for SARS coronavirus, classic So, it's not unheard of for these viruses to emerge and cause disease in the human population. It is it is much more unusual for one to be as transmissible as this viruses and also cause severe disease in such a large population. Can I'm dumb this down a little bit for me, it's kind of like an athlete with size and speed. I think that's it. That's it. That's a great way to put it and this is more like this is like the type of athlete who might play multiple positions for example. So there They're uniquely adapted to be effective on both sides of the ball. If you're thinking about like a football player, it has both that transmissibility feature, you can think of that I guess as speed. And it has the ability to cause disease, which you could think of, I guess the size,

Nick VinZant 6:16 in terms of how much we know about this virus right now. One, we know absolutely nothing like we don't even have a name, 10 we've got this thing completely figured out. Where do you think that we are right now?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 6:29 I'd say we're probably about four. We do have a name this virus is called SARS coronavirus. We do actually have its full genetic sequence that was the first pieces of data that actually came out in early January. So that's how we know that this virus is so closely related to SARS coronavirus, classic which is why it is called SARS coronavirus. Two. We know what it uses as a receptor which is essentially like a lock that it unlocked to get into the cells that it's infecting. That's a key thing that viruses have to do, we know that it uses a molecule called Ace two, which is the same as ours classic to get into cells and replicate. We know about a few of the things that it does once it gets inside those cells, both to facilitate its own replication and to mute immune responses that the host will raise against it. And we're starting to learn a few things about the types of immune responses long term that it generates. But other than that, there's still many, many questions about this virus and how it works. And people are probably going to be studying it for years to come after this pandemic is over.

Nick VinZant 7:40 Is that number of like a four on the scale of knowledge, is that unusual for this amount of time that has passed or is that about par for the course?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 7:49 No, that's actually really good for the amount of time that's passed. So even though it feels like during pandemic time that that, you know, this, these months have just dragged by For some people, you know, being stuck at home and our lives have changed so drastically It feels like a long time that this virus has been with us. But actually, the data is coming out faster than any any emerging virus outbreak I've been involved with before. I should I should add that when I mentioned the genetic sequence for this virus was released on January 10, you know, really only less than two weeks after the whole world started hearing that there was this new virus circulating in China. By contrast, the first genetic sequence from the 2014 to 2016 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, took six months to be published. So we are really learning about this virus at an unprecedented pace. If we did not have the technology and the sort of connectedness that we have globally now, we'd probably be a lot further behind where we are now in terms of what we actually know about this virus.

Nick VinZant 8:59 If we can kind of address some misconceptions or popular things that are out there really quick masks? Yes, no.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 9:08 Yes. Masks are definitely important. We don't have a lot of good evidence about how well they work in terms of being able to assign numbers to it. But it's starting to become increasingly clear that they do. And just, you know, out of precautionary, cautionary principle, I think people should be wearing masks in public at any time, just because there is enough evidence that does suggest they can reduce risk by some amount of exposure. So masks are definite. Yes, for me, I think that everybody should be wearing masks. Everybody should be getting comfortable with them. Unless of course, you have some medical condition that counter indicates them, but very few people actually do. Most people can wear a mask safely. And so I encourage everybody to get comfortable wearing a mask because I feel like we're probably going to doing it for for many months to come.

Nick VinZant 10:02 herd immunity is that a possibility?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 10:05 herd immunity is definitely a possibility with a vaccine. I don't think that herd immunity is feasible with natural herd immunity, which first of all isn't really a thing that that people have ever really thought about. herd immunity is a term that was developed to describe what happens when a sufficient amount of the population is vaccinated against a virus. So yes, herd immunity is definitely possible with vaccination. Once we have some safe and effective vaccines that are available, herd immunity is probably not possible by having the entire the entire population get infected, or you know, for anywhere from 50 to 80% of the population get infected. for a couple reasons. We don't really know how good long term protective immunity is from a natural infection and there are some indications that it may wane After a certain period of time, we just really don't know enough about it. But second is really an ethics issue. If it's 60% of the population, say, of the US, or let's just even say 50% of the population, the US population is about 350 plus million. So half of that is what 170 5 million people, if this only has a 1% case fatality rate, which it looks like it's hovering somewhere around there. No, those are still millions of deaths that we would see just in the US alone if that many people were to get infected with this virus. We also don't know about the long term consequences of being infected with this virus and recovering from it. There have been reports and some people who've recovered who are having persistent problems. They may have lung injuries or reduced lung capacity. They may have neurological issues. There are a lot of things we don't know about this virus. So herd immunity, definitely a possibility with a vaccine. I think it's coming Completely unsafe and possibly not, not really something we can achieve with natural infection,

Nick VinZant 12:07 you know, for kind of just the average person, like, what should I really be paying attention to? Because there's so much noise around everything. And what you hear one day isn't what you hear the next day. What should I really be like? Okay, you should look at this, and you should pay attention to this.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 12:23 Yeah. So this is one thing that has been incredibly difficult to communicate with the public about, and that is that science scientists have been dealing with this pandemic from day one, knowing the same amount that the general public knows about this virus, which is not much. And so a lot of the the recommendations have changed over time as we've gotten new evidence to support them. masser Great example, actually, at the beginning of this pandemic, there was not a lot of evidence about how mass usage could help reduce transmission at population level. And as I mentioned, there's still not a ton of evidence that there is some that masks can help. So the mask guidance has changed for that reason to go from maybe you can wear a mask if you want to. Definitely you should be wearing a mask in public. Even if it's not an N 95 particulate respirator. That's one great example. I think what people should be paying attention to, is really the the long term eyes on the prize kind of perspective. We need to have a vaccine as soon as possible because that is the thing that is going to end all of the stayhome recommendations that we've been dealing with. And I know it's very difficult because it's summertime. Nobody wants to be stuck at home for months at a time, and many people can because of the economy. But the guidance really hasn't changed as far as that goes since March or April and that is that by staying home by minimizing exposure risk. You can keep yourself and your family safe until a vaccine is available. So pay it's To the vaccine studies that will give people an idea I think of when we might have a vaccine and just yesterday, you know, some encouraging phase one clinical trial data came out about the moderna vaccine that suggests that, you know, it's safe and it and it can advance to the next stage of clinical trials, which is great news. So I'd encourage people to not get so hung up on, you know, changing guidance. The things that they can do individually to protect themselves are the same. So avoid crowds. Don't go out except for essential errands. Physical distancing, wear a mask in public practice good hand hygiene, and just really encourage your neighbors to also do so we've seen what happens when states reopen too quickly. That's what's going on right now in these hotspots. states like Texas and Arizona and Florida. We want to avoid that. So people should just as much as possible. Take as many measures as they can to reduce their own risk and the risk to their families going forward until we do have a vaccine.

Nick VinZant 15:07 Do you think that the worst is behind us? We're in it or is it ahead of us?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 15:12 I think it might be ahead of us. And that's really unfortunate but in the US anyways, our our national leadership has really failed to communicate this and and frankly, the politicization of this pandemic has really undermined trust between the public and the public health officials who are making these evidence based recommendations to people. If, if people are already not inclined to believe the experts and not just biologists like myself, but also epidemiologists, physicians, public health, policymakers, etc. It's going to be very difficult to stop to flatten the curve again. People have already shown that they don't have much of an appetite for more lockdowns and even in these states. Were cases, hospitalizations and now, deaths are beginning to surge. People are still very skeptical of the need to take these precautions. So I don't see us making a concerted effort the way that we all did in March and April, to stay home and flatten the curve, enough to get these outbreaks that are going on under control. And we're coming up on flu season. In the fall when influenza also began circulating. Hopefully people will get their flu shots, but we may run into a situation where people are at risk of getting either influenza or COVID. And that is a pretty frightening prospect because the really damaging stuff that's happening in these hotspot states isn't necessarily just that all these people are getting COVID is at the hospital systems do not have the capacity to care for all of them. And so that's when it becomes really dangerous. I'm very worried that in the fall as people We'll start getting sick from cold and flu season normal, normal influenza like illness, we're going to see this get even worse.

Nick VinZant 17:09 When this kind of all started when it really got the public's attention. We talked to a pandemic historian. And one of the things that he said was whenever you're talking about any kind of pandemics, any kind of a public health issue, eventually society makes the decision, how many deaths they're willing to accept? Do you think that that's ultimately what we're going to decide in this case?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 17:33 Well, that's an interesting perspective. Because at the beginning of this pandemic, when the University College London model came out, our sorry the Imperial College model came out which suggested that without any of these precautions in the US, we could have as many as 2.2 million deaths. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet. But, you know, we're at a much lower level than that. And we decided that point that that was an absolutely unacceptable number of deaths. It seems that at least in terms of federal political leadership, that has sort of changed maybe and, and it appears they might now be willing to accept more deaths than the hundred and 30,000 plus deaths that we've had in the US. So I think that is unfortunately a correct observation. And I'm just can, you know, I'm very concerned and disappointed with our current leadership that that that number is something that keeps getting bigger and it seems that it's becoming more and more acceptable for more people to die.

Nick VinZant 18:38 It's definitely an interesting thing about humanity. How if you set the bar really high, and you say 2.2 million and suddenly mentally we become okay with like, 300,000 and then if you know and then inches up, we just kind of stopped paying attention.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 18:53 I hope that we don't stop paying attention. I think that and I've read that that is part of the the All strategy at this point for dealing with this is just basically the people are going to get used to others dying in their communities. And I just refuse to believe that we as a society are okay with that. Granted, there is evidence that certain, you know, certain groups of people, we've already seen how this has disproportionately affected black and brown people, that those numbers might be more acceptable for some people, people who are not racial minorities. I think that it's it's really difficult and ethically fraught. When you get into deciding who is okay, who am I okay with dying, and who am I not okay with dying? I think that it's, it's not acceptable to have any preventable deaths. And that's, that's the attitude that we need to have as a society. That's certainly my attitude. I really hoped that that people do not become so cynical and a nerd to this pandemic that they'd be I'm okay with, you know, 300,000 400,000 500,000 deaths,

Nick VinZant 20:05 if you were to look at it from a scientific standpoint, when we talk about how we responded to it as a country, what was the biggest mistake that we made?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 20:14 I think that the biggest mistake we've made, really is is allowing this virus to become politicized. I don't want to point to any one specific thing. From the beginning, though this virus has been politicized when we decided to issue a travel ban against China. But not all people from China. It was just foreign nationals coming from China, but anybody who's American could just come right in. That's not an effective way to do a travel ban if you're trying to prevent cases from being imported into the US. And that's a that's a good example, a virus doesn't care what passport you're carrying. A virus doesn't care which country you're in. You're a citizen of bye letting anybody in from places where there were was uncontrolled community transmission and not requiring them to undergo any kind of quarantine or monitoring. That's not an effective travel ban. And sure enough, we imported a lot of cases. We also imported a number of cases from Europe. And those are also circulating. We know now. The Coronavirus Task Force had those daily press conferences for a long time in which misinformation was being just basically spread outright of people were taking hydroxychloroquine because the president said that he liked the idea of the drug without any evidence that it actually works and it doesn't appear to work, at least not very well. People ingested bleach when the President was musing about whether or not disinfectant could somehow be used as a treatment for COVID-19. So we've seen all of these different situations in which political concerns have driven public health guidance. And that has been incredibly harmful. We're seeing it we're still seeing it now. And as of yesterday, the CDC is no longer tracking data on hospitalizations that's going to be tracked directly at the White House that's going to further muddy the water and our own understanding of communities that are at risk in the US. So the politicization and the the steering away from evidence driven public health policy has been tremendously damaging.

Nick VinZant 22:33 why doesn't it affect kids?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 22:36 That's an excellent question that we don't know the answer to. It does seem that there for many coronaviruses including SARS classic and MERS, there is an age dependency where older people are more likely to get severe disease but the bottom line is we don't really know the basis of that. We do know, however, that children are not immune. They're not reserved. They can be infected with this virus and in rare cases, they can get very sick. And in some cases they can die. So children aren't completely off the hook. But yes, it we don't really know what the basis is for their seemingly having less severe disease than older people.

Nick VinZant 23:20 I don't I'm not sure if this is a word, but in the broader viral logical is that a word? is a word it is a word, okay? In a broader biological sense, like when you study a virus, what are you what are you studying?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 23:35 So when you're a biologist like me, you can study a lot of different aspects of a virus. But the broader definition of a biologist is just somebody who studies viruses. Some people study entry, so they study how viruses get into cells. Some people study replication, which is the study of how those viruses copy their genomes which they need to do to make new viruses. Some people Study the immune response to those viruses. Some people studied broader host responses to the virus, which is what I study. So all these different aspects, some people are very, very mechanical about it. And they study the viruses almost as though they're little machines. And they're thinking about all the different the different parts of the virus, like a car, for example, like you can sort of take it out, take it apart and try to figure out how it works. And, as I mentioned before, all viruses need to have a host. So sometimes some of us study the interaction with that host, and how those different parts of the virus work with different kinds of hosts. So that's what I study and I study how really the virus and the host interact with each other,

Nick VinZant 24:46 Viruses in general, but are they trying to kill us or what are they trying to do?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 24:51 So viruses aren't trying to do anything because they are not sentient, so they don't have desires they don't have motivation. They are really machines more than anything, they're little biological machines that are evolutionarily driven to replicate themselves. And that is, you know, sort of every biological entities fundamental,fundamental motivating drive is really to propagate your species. So that's really what viruses have evolved to do is basically make more viruses and make them more efficiently. So no viruses aren't really trying to cause disease. And it's thought that over long evolutionary periods of time, when they are adapting really well to a certain host, that they that they do become what we call attenuated meaning they cause less disease, sometimes they cause no disease. And that's why one one of the reasons why we think that oftentimes bats, which carry Corona viruses in nature, don't get the Don't get very sick, although we still don't know much about that. But it's probably because those viruses are very well adapted to their hosts. So they can replicate efficiently in them. They can make lots of new viruses and transmit to new hosts, but they don't trigger the bad immune systems and they don't cause severe disease. So, oftentimes, we think that that's also why when a new virus comes into a new population, like for example, a bat coronavirus, getting into humans, it might cause more severe disease because the the virus is not adapted to the human host. And so it's triggering responses that themselves can be harmful. And and then you end up with COVID-19. But there's still this is still a very active area of research. And there's a lot of gaps in our knowledge there.

Nick VinZant 26:47 I hope this question makes sense, the way I'm about to phrase it, I feel like I'm gonna phrase it horribly. But when we get infected, like are we just getting one virus or do a bunch of the viruses have the same kind of accumulate and then they all attack us at once. Or how does that how does that work?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 27:04 Oh, that's a really great question. And in fact, it's one that's really at the basis of sort of some of the guidance that people need to take to reduce their exposure risk. So in theory, or actually in a plate of cells in the lab, you can take one infectious virus particle and establish an infection, but in reality, you need a lot more. And part of the reason for that is if you just think of this virus in the way that it's transmitted, you have to get it into your nose. And there are a lot of barriers that are in your nose. Your nose has a distinct physiological shape. It's not just as you know, a single tube. It's a complex network of nostrils and nasal passages and and then your airway. And there's nose hairs, there's mucus, there are all these barriers to a virus getting in and finding its receptor, getting into a cell Getting around the sort of innate alarm systems that are there to protect against viral infection and to finally establish an infection. So it probably tastes and this is really more of a question of probability. It probably takes a lot of infectious virus particles to get past all those barriers and establish an infection in which they can then start making more viruses. The problem is, we don't actually know what that number is that you really need to get past all those barriers, we would call that the minimum infectious dose. We don't know what that dose is, but it's almost certainly more than a single viral particle.

Nick VinZant 28:38 Do you have a few minutes for some listeners submitted questions?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 28:41 Sure.

Nick VinZant 28:42 What do you hate more Facebook or Twitter at the moment?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 28:46 Oh, Facebook, I don't even really go on to Facebook anymore. I find Twitter to be much more useful in terms of following experts and in terms of being able to avoid some of the more harmful misinformation and disinformation sources. Also, all of my racist relatives are on Facebook and they're not on Twitter. So I prefer Twitter.

Nick VinZant 29:10 You really can avoid the relatives a lot easier on Twitter, I feel like right?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 29:15 Yeah, absolutely.

Nick VinZant 29:17 With all of the sanitizing that's going on right now, are we risking creating more resistant antibiotic bacteria?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 29:27 No. So as long as you're sanitizing with household disinfectants and hand sanitizer, that's alcohol based. There's nothing in there that is an antibiotic, you're not going to be creating new antibiotic resistant bacteria. If you do if you are using hand sanitizer that's based on an antibiotic for example, triclosan. You shouldn't be using that because first of all, those are those are ineffective against viruses. But second of all, they can promote antibiotic resistance and the bacteria that are around us

Nick VinZant 30:00 Worst or wait, oh, sorry, best movie about a viral outbreak.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 30:07 That's a hard one because there are most of them all have their problems. I guess contagions probably the the most scientifically accurate. outbreak certainly is not. I Am Legend certainly is not anything with zombies really is not. I would say probably contagions the most scientifically accurate but all of all of those virus outbreak movies have problems because that's not really the timescale how you know, in which pandemic spread as you can see, even for this virus, it's, it's taking place over months, the 1918 flu pandemic took place over years. So a lot of times that they're sort of accelerated, they also really oversimplify how the policymaking process works, and how organizations like the CDC work or the NIH, but yeah, probably contagion is the most scientifically accurate.

Nick VinZant 31:09 From a scientific standpoint. What what's the most interesting virus?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 31:13 Well, I'm partial to Ebola because I've studied it a lot. And Ebola was it's kind of a virologist cliche, but I read the hot zone when I was like in high school, and I thought it was really neat. And that's kind of how I got interested in viruses. So I guess Ebola is always going to be kind of my favorite. But I mean, all viruses are very interesting. They're all very different from each other, and even viruses within the same family like Corona viruses. They all are just a little bit different enough that individually they're fascinating to work on. So I certainly not to knock SARS coronavirus, too because, you know, trying to figure out the the mysteries of this virus as a scientist has been one of the more rewarding aspects of this pandemic. In a pandemic, were you The vast majority of the news is not good. And I'm pretty pessimistic in general about how it's going. But it has been very interesting to study this virus and kind of learn about it in real time.

Nick VinZant 32:11 Can you answer this one or not? This one just says, Are we this dumb?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 32:18 Yes. I'll just leave it at that. But evidence suggests Yes.

Nick VinZant 32:24 It's so bad, though. Like, you would think that we're but okay. Is it people or is it a person who is that dumb? And I don't mean that in any kind of political sense. But like, Is it just the nature of us as people that yes, any kind of herd thing? Is this dumb? Or are we personally this dumb?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 32:43 No, I think I think it's like a herd thing. It's like a population level stupidity. And I think it's just because you know that the discourse is gonna be dominated often by the lowest common denominator and unfortunately, The voices that are kind of spreading that lowest common denominator around are very loud. And they have some very enthusiastic supporters. And I think collectively as a society, you know, we haven't really learned, we haven't really learned our lesson ever. And that's why, you know, there's that old adage that, you know, history repeats itself about history repeats itself. I think that this, this happens over and over again. And our technology is much better, obviously, than a 1918. Our, you know, our circumstances as an as a global civilization I think are much different. But we are making some of the same mistakes. And some of that I think, is human nature and some of it is just the fact that we have not learned how to apply the lessons of the past to our reality today.

Nick VinZant 33:49 Oh, and on this one. Do you have any good news?

Dr. Angela Rasmussen 33:54 Yeah, I mean, the vaccine for moderna seems to induce potent antibody response. So that's good news. It's advancing and clinical trials. And the clinical trial for the Oxford vaccine, which I think is being manufactured by AstraZeneca are starting to wrap up and they might even be wrapped up by the end of the summer, meaning we'll have a vaccine probably sooner than later, which is excellent news. It's still not immediately good news. But it's it's very encouraging news at the very least.

Nick VinZant 34:26 I want to thank Dr. Rasmussen so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have a link to her on our social media accounts. We're Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and she is a fantastic resource on Twitter for unbiased, non political, scientific information about what is really happening with this virus and what you need to do. We've also included links to her in the RSS feed that's on this podcast.