It's Monday, September one. I'm mo Kelly from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. One team from Massachusetts General Hospital considered whether Google searches for g I issues might be a way to spot COVID nineteen hot spots. Early Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor for Popular Science, lays out how your computer key strokes may serve as a stroke of genius in weathering the pandemic in future months. Thank you for coming on today. Yeah,
thanks for having me. I'm excited. One team from Massachusetts General Hospital has considered whether Google searches for gastro intestinal issues might be a way to spot COVID nineteen hot spots. Early, tell me about some of the methodology that they used. Yeah, so basically they decided that, um, you know, there's so many symptoms of COVID nineteen UM, and a lot of them are respiratory symptoms, shortness of brass, fever UM. But a few people and a narrow percentage, about ten percent
actually get um gastro and techno symptoms. So that's vomiting or diarrhea or just overall abdominal teene. And they found that those people tend because of you know, no one likes to experience those symptoms. They tend to Google share symptoms. And they considered whether a correlation between a searching for these gastro and texto symptoms would then correlate with being
able to predict when a COVID nineteen hot spot would occur. So, if there will be a spike in cases based on people searching for these g I symptoms on Google, that's fascinating because in this web MD world, I would say, it would seem to me that we would be searching for anything and everything all the time just because we're I would say latent hypochondriac. If you will always worried about any and all symptoms, How do they do this
to the best of your knowledge? How do they drill down as far as the random searches from the very specific searches about something that which is impacting someone. If that makes sense, Yeah, definitely. So they use Google trends and basically look to at and specifically narrowed down to just gas or and testo symptoms, searching only or looking for those symptoms only. Yes, I will also attest that I am a frequent WebM be used or even have the help before. Okay, so the symptoms have they been
consistent from hot spot to hot spot? In other words, what they found maybe in China as far as people what they may be googling, has that been shown to be the same in nature or trending the same in the way that what we saw maybe in New York or other places. Yeah, it's a really good question, and right now it's still a little bit hard to tell.
They found some protesting data in this study was actually published back in July, and when we did our story, we interviewed a couple more gas rontologists and what they have said is that g I symptoms are definitely can definitely be part of COVID nineteen UM, but it's usually only a small percentage of those people. So about ten people actually developed GI symptoms and then go on to
have COVID nineteen. But what they found was that it can't be predictive because first people are always searching their GI symptoms that seems like and then second all the people in that ten groups, all the people that have those GI symptoms then a little while later ended up getting the other symptoms, the other more common symptoms of COVID nineteen. So it's definitely seems to be the case
that these g I symptoms can predict COVID nineteen. But it's just that not everybody is going to be getting these GI symptoms. It's only about ten I want to go people, and so the big question um is whether or not we can use the small ten percent to predict whether big spikes will happen. I want to go back and get something you said. I want to make
sure I understood you correctly. Are you suggesting that maybe these g I symptoms are usually leading the way as COVID nineteen enters the body and the body shows symptoms, these are usually the first symptoms that people would see
in some of these cases. Yeah, definitely. So again it's only ten percent of people usually experience these GI symptoms, but in that it's usually the g I symptoms first, followed by later these more common symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath, or lower respiratory symptoms that would seem strange and I'm not a physician, I'm just playing one
on the radio, it seems right now. But in terms of what we would classically think of a respiratory disease, we were told about how the disease would enter through our mouth or nose or our eyes, but the first symptoms would have nothing to do with that. It would be actually the other end of the body. Is that correct? Yeah, it's actually interesting. I mean there's you know, COVID nineteen is a new disease, so there's still so much we
don't know about it. But researchers have been able to pinpoint what they think is a mechanism that makes this
occurrence makes sense. So there are these receptors called A receptors, and they sit on various cells in the body, and they happen to sit on UM cells in the lungs and in the arteries, but then they also happened to be in the gastro intestinal tracts, And so researchers think that maybe it's UM the virus that is attaching to these AC receptors in the lungs and the arteries and other areas that are more common UM attacked in COVID nineteen.
But then they're also hitting the GI tracks first. But also the question of whether of why it hits your stomach or your whole GI system first before it hits UM, your upper respiratory system or your lower respiratory system. Rather, that's still very much unknown. I understand that this is a for lack of a better phrase, a white paper at this point. It is a study. But have there been any practical applications as of yet with this information
to help people in real time? There haven't yet, and that's a great question and great things to point out. There haven't been any more more substantial UM studies or you know, real time usage of this yet, but a lot of researchers think that it could be a good way to predict COVID nineteen hotspots and going forward, UM, these researchers and potentially the one will be able to keep tracking this data and see if they can actually use it um as a predictor of where COVID nineteen
could not. Knowing necessarily how the flu progresses through the body, whether it's similar or not in this way, is there any overlap from what you know or what you can see as far as how the symptoms materialize in the body for the flu and will that in any way
impact this particular study. Yeah, that's a good question. Um. The fluid definitely attacks the body in similar ways to COVID nineteen, but also different ways as well, because there are two different diseases than two different viruses that are hitting our inne systems and the rest of our bodies. So it's hard to tell right now because COVID is so new, um, but it is an interesting question that I think a lot of researchers will be investigating over
over the next year. She's Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor or Popular Science. Claire, thank you again for coming on today. Thanks, this was great. Thanks for having me. I'm O'Kelly and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For the day's big news stories, you can check out the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.