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What is spillover? Bird flu outbreak underscores need for early detection to prevent the next big pandemic

A biologist who studies how viruses spread from animals to people explains the process of spillover and the risks posed by the new bird flu that has spread…

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Wild birds like pelicans and ducks are getting infected with – and dying from – a new strain of avian influenza and have spread it to farm animals around the world. Klebher Vasquez/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The current epidemic of avian influenza has killed over 58 million birds in the U.S. as of February 2023. Following on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, large outbreaks of viruses like bird flu raise the specter of another disease jumping from animals into humans. This process is called spillover.

I’m a veterinarian and a researcher who studies how diseases spread between animals and people. I was on the Colorado State University veterinary diagnostic team that helped detect some of the earliest cases of H5N1 avian influenza in U.S. birds in 2022. As this year’s outbreak of bird flu grows, people are understandably worried about spillover.

Given that the next potential pandemic will likely originate from animals, it’s important to understand how and why spillover occurs – and what can be done to stop it.

A cup of water containing viruses inside of it, with a fruit bat, chicken and pig standing on top of it. A drop of water with a new virus is falling toward a person, spreading more virus through coughing.
Viral spillover occurs when a virus spills out from an animal population into people. Treana Mayer/BioRender, CC BY-ND

How spillover works

Spillover involves any type of disease-causing pathogen, be it a virus, parasite or bacteria, jumping into humans. The pathogen can be something never before seen in people, such as a new Ebola virus carried by bats, or it could be something well known and recurring, like Salmonella from farm animals.

The term spillover evokes images of a container of liquid overflowing, and this image is a great metaphor for how the process works.

Imagine water being poured into a cup. If the water level keeps increasing, the water will flow over the rim, and anything nearby could get splashed. In viral spillover, the cup is an animal population, the water is a zoonotic disease capable of spreading from an animal to a person, and humans are the ones standing in the splash zone.

The probability that a spillover will occur depends on many biological and social factors, including the rate and severity of animal infections, environmental pressure on the disease to evolve and the amount of close contact between infected animals and people.

A sign telling people to wear masks, stay 6 feet apart and wash hands.
Epidemiologists estimate that three-quarters of all new infectious human diseases originated in animals. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

Why spillover matters

While not all animal viruses or other pathogens are capable of spilling over into people, up to three-quarters of all new human infectious diseases have originated from animals. There’s a good chance the next big pandemic risk will arise from spillover, and the more that’s known about how spillovers occur, the better chance there is at preventing it.

Most spillover research today is focused on learning about and preventing viruses – including coronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19 and certain viral lineages of avian influenza – from jumping into humans. These viruses mutate very quickly, and random changes in their genetic code could eventually allow them to infect humans.

Spillover events can be hard to detect, flying under the radar without leading to bigger outbreaks. Sometimes a virus that transfers from animals to humans poses no risk to people if the virus is not well adapted to human biology. But the more often this jump occurs, the higher the chances a dangerous pathogen will adapt and take off.

Spillover is becoming more likely

Epidemiologists are projecting that the risk of spillover from wildlife into humans will increase in coming years, in large part because of the destruction of nature and encroachment of humans into previously wild places.

Because of habitat loss, climate change and changes in land use, humanity is collectively jostling the table that is holding up that cup of water. With less stability, spillover becomes more likely as animals are stressed, crowded and on the move.

Houses and a farm next to some woods.
As housing and farmland expand into wild places, the risk of spillover increases. Cavan/Getty Images

As development expands into new habitats, wild animals come into closer contact with people – and, importantly, the food supply. The mixing of wildlife and farm animals greatly amplifies the risk that a disease will jump species and spread like wildfire among farm animals. Poultry across the U.S. are experiencing this now, thanks to a new form of avian flu that experts think spread to chicken farms mostly through migrating ducks.

Current risk from bird flu

The new avian influenza virus is a distant descendant of the original H5N1 strain that has caused human epidemics of bird flu in the past. Health officials are detecting cases of this new flu virus jumping from birds to other mammals – like foxes, skunks and bears.

On Feb. 23, 2023, news outlets began reporting a few confirmed infections of people in Cambodia, including one infection leading to the death of an 11-year-old girl. While this new strain of bird flu can infect people in rare situations, it isn’t very good at doing so, because it is not able to bind to cells in human respiratory tracts very effectively. For now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thinks there is low risk to the general public.

Active monitoring of wild animals, farm animals and humans will allow health officials to detect the first sign of spillover and help prevent a small viral splash from turning into a large outbreak. Moving forward, researchers and policymakers can take steps to prevent spillover events by preserving nature, keeping wildlife wild and separate from livestock and improving early detection of novel infections in people and animals.

Treana Mayer receives funding from the NIH/NCATS Colorado CTSA Grant Number TL1 TR002533. Contents are the authors’ sole responsibility and do not necessarily represent official NIH views.

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Watch Yield Curve For When Stocks Begin To Price Recession Risk

Watch Yield Curve For When Stocks Begin To Price Recession Risk

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

US large-cap indices…

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May 31, 2023

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Watch Yield Curve For When Stocks Begin To Price Recession Risk

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

US large-cap indices are currently diverging from recessionary leading economic data. However, a decisive steepening in the yield curve leaves growth stocks and therefore the overall index facing lower prices.

Leading economic data has been signalling a recession for several months. Typically stocks closely follow the ratio between leading and coincident economic data.

As the chart below shows, equities have recently emphatically diverged from the ratio, indicating they are supremely indifferent to very high US recession risk.

What gives? Much of the recent outperformance of the S&P has been driven by a tiny number of tech stocks. The top five S&P stocks’ mean return this year is over 60% versus 0% for the average return of the remaining 498 stocks.

The belief that generative AI is imminently about to radically change the economy and that Nvidia especially is positioned to benefit from this has been behind much of this narrow leadership.

Regardless on your views whether this is overdone or not, it has re-established growth’s dominance over value. Energy had been spearheading the value trade up until around March, but since then tech –- the vessel for many of the largest growth stocks –- has been leading the S&P higher.

The yield curve’s behaviour will be key to watch for a reversion of this trend, and therefore a heightened risk of S&P 500 underperformance. Growth stocks tend to outperform value stocks when the curve flattens. This is because growth companies often have a relative advantage over typically smaller value firms by being able to borrow for longer terms. And vice-versa when the curve steepens, growth firms lose this relative advantage and tend to underperform.

The chart below shows the relationship, which was disrupted through the pandemic. Nonetheless, if it re-establishes itself then the curve beginning to durably re-steepen would be a sign growth stocks will start to underperform again, taking the index lower in the process.

Equivalently, a re-acceleration in US inflation (whose timing depends on China’s halting recovery) is more likely to put steepening pressure on the curve as the Fed has to balance economic growth more with inflation risks. Given the growth segment’s outperformance is an indication of the market’s intensely relaxed attitude to inflation, its resurgence would be a high risk for sending growth stocks lower.

Tyler Durden Wed, 05/31/2023 - 13:20

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COVID-19 lockdowns linked to less accurate recollection of event timing

Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing…

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May 31, 2023

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Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing new insights into how COVID-19 lockdowns impacted perception of time. Daria Pawlak and Arash Sahraie of the University of Aberdeen, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 31, 2023.

Credit: Arianna Sahraie Photography, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Participants in a survey study made a relatively high number of errors when asked to recollect the timing of major events that took place in 2021, providing new insights into how COVID-19 lockdowns impacted perception of time. Daria Pawlak and Arash Sahraie of the University of Aberdeen, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 31, 2023.

Remembering when past events occurred becomes more difficult as more time passes. In addition, people’s activities and emotions can influence their perception of the passage of time. The social isolation resulting from COVID-19 lockdowns significantly impacted people’s activities and emotions, and prior research has shown that the pandemic triggered distortions in people’s perception of time.

Inspired by that earlier research and clinical reports that patients have become less able to report accurate timelines of their medical conditions, Pawlak and Sahraie set out to deepen understanding of the pandemic’s impact on time perception.

In May 2022, the researchers conducted an online survey in which they asked 277 participants to give the year in which several notable recent events occurred, such as when Brexit was finalized or when Meghan Markle joined the British royal family. Participants also completed standard evaluations for factors related to mental health, including levels of boredom, depression, and resilience.

As expected, participants’ recollection of events that occurred further in the past was less accurate. However, their perception of the timing of events that occurred in 2021—one year prior to the survey—was just an inaccurate as for events that occurred three to four years earlier. In other words, many participants had difficulty recalling the timing of events coinciding with COVID-19 lockdowns.

Additionally, participants who made more errors in event timing were also more likely to show greater levels of depression, anxiety, and physical mental demands during the pandemic, but had less resilience. Boredom was not significantly associated with timeline accuracy.

These findings are similar to those previously reported for prison inmates. The authors suggest that accurate recollection of event timing requires “anchoring” life events, such as birthday celebrations and vacations, which were lacking during COVID-19 lockdowns.

The authors add: “Our paper reports on altered timescapes during the pandemic. In a landscape, if features are not clearly discernible, it is harder to place objects/yourself in relation to other features. Restrictions imposed during the pandemic have impoverished our timescape, affecting the perception of event timelines. We can recall that events happened, we just don’t remember when.

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278250

Citation: Pawlak DA, Sahraie A (2023) Lost time: Perception of events timeline affected by the COVID pandemic. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0278250. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278250

Author Countries: UK

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278250

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Lost time: Perception of events timeline affected by the COVID pandemic

Article Publication Date

31-May-2023

COI Statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Hyro secures $20M for its AI-powered, healthcare-focused conversational platform

Israel Krush and Rom Cohen first met in an AI course at Cornell Tech, where they bonded over a shared desire to apply AI voice technologies to the healthcare…

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May 31, 2023

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Israel Krush and Rom Cohen first met in an AI course at Cornell Tech, where they bonded over a shared desire to apply AI voice technologies to the healthcare sector. Specifically, they sought to automate the routine messages and calls that often lead to administrative burnout, like calls about scheduling, prescription refills and searching through physician directories.

Several years after graduating, Krush and Cohen productized their ideas with Hyro, which uses AI to facilitate text and voice conversations across the web, call centers and apps between healthcare organizations and their clients. Hyro today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Liberty Mutual, Macquarie Capital and Black Opal, bringing the startup’s total raised to $35 million.

Krush says that the new cash will be put toward expanding Hyro’s go-to-market teams and R&D.

“When we searched for a domain that would benefit from transforming these technologies most, we discovered and validated that healthcare, with staffing shortages and antiquated processes, had the greatest need and pain points, and have continued to focus on this particular vertical,” Krush told TechCrunch in an email interview.

To Krush’s point, the healthcare industry faces a major staffing shortfall, exacerbated by the logistical complications that arose during the pandemic. In a recent interview with Keona Health, Halee Fischer-Wright, CEO of Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), said that MGMA’s heard that 88% of medical practices have had difficulties recruiting front-of-office staff over the last year. By another estimates, the healthcare field has lost 20% of its workforce.

Hyro doesn’t attempt to replace staffers. But it does inject automation into the equation. The platform is essentially a drop-in replacement for traditional IVR systems, handling calls and texts automatically using conversational AI.

Hyro can answer common questions and handle tasks like booking or rescheduling an appointment, providing engagement and conversion metrics on the backend as it does so.

Plenty of platforms do — or at least claim to. See RedRoute, a voice-based conversational AI startup that delivers an “Alexa-like” customer service experience over the phone. Elsewhere, there’s Omilia, which provides a conversational solution that works on all platforms (e.g. phone, web chat, social networks, SMS and more) and integrates with existing customer support systems.

But Krush claims that Hyro is differentiated. For one, he says, it offers an AI-powered search feature that scrapes up-to-date information from a customer’s website — ostensibly preventing wrong answers to questions (a notorious problem with text-generating AI). Hyro also boasts “smart routing,” which enables it to “intelligently” decide whether to complete a task automatically, send a link to self-serve via SMS or route a request to the right department.

A bot created using Hyro’s development tools. Image Credits: Hyro

“Our AI assistants have been used by tens of millions of patients, automating conversations on various channels,” Krush said. “Hyro creates a feedback loop by identifying missing knowledge gaps, basically mimicking the operations of a call center agent. It also shows within a conversation exactly how the AI assistant deduced the correct response to a patient or customer query, meaning that if incorrect answers were given, an enterprise can understand exactly which piece of content or dataset is labeled incorrectly and fix accordingly.”

Of course, no technology’s perfect, and Hyro’s likely isn’t an exception to the rule. But the startup’s sales pitch was enough to win over dozens of healthcare networks, providers and hospitals as clients, including Weill Cornell Medicine. Annual recurring revenue has doubled since Hyro went to market in 2019, Krush claims.

Hyro’s future plans entail expanding to industries adjacent to healthcare, including real estate and the public sector, as well as rounding out the platform with more customization options, business optimization recommendations and “variety” in the AI skills that Hyro supports.

“The pandemic expedited digital transformation for healthcare and made the problems we’re solving very clear and obvious (e.g. the spike in calls surrounding information, access to testing, etc.),” Krush said. “We were one of the first to offer a COVID-19 virtual assistant that deployed in under 48 hours based on trusted information from the health system and trusted resources such as the CDC and World Health Organization …. Hyro is well funded, with good growth and momentum, and we’ve always managed a responsible budget, so we’re actually looking to expand and gather more market share while competitors are slowing down.”

Hyro secures $20M for its AI-powered, healthcare-focused conversational platform by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

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