Dr. Susan Weiss works in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. She is also the co-director of Penn's newly-founded Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens. Penn's lab, which is considered a Biosafety Level 3 lab, obtained actual samples of the coronavirus that is sweeping across the world. Dr. Weiss is working from her home in Montgomery County to protect herself from getting infected; she is part of the known high-risk population. From her kitchen, she helps lead her special Penn research team to learn more about what this coronavirus is, what it can do and how it can be destroyed. Dr. Weiss may very well be one of the people who will lead us out of this pandemic.
She has been conducting research on the group of viruses known as coronaviruses for 40 years. Her research has taken her to Wuhan, the city in China where the pandemic began. Dr. Weiss explains what she has learned so far during her career and what she hopes to know very soon.
Recorded on March 27, 2020 in Merion Station, PA.
In this podcast:
Dr. Weiss talks about what it has been like working from home (1:45), how her lab obtained coronavirus samples and what a BSL-3 lab is all about (2:14), how she is a scientist and not a clinician and what that means (3:45), explains her background in coronavirus research (5:00), why the field was wide open when she selected it in the beginning of her career (6:45), why she has been studying the coronavirus in mice (7:45), why there could be many more coronaviruses that we don't know about (8:55), she explains why viruses need a host and why they are not considered living organisms (10:30), why the SARS outbreak in 2002, now known as "SARS 1," featured a virus that was far more deadly than this one (11:30), how this latest coronavirus, which is referred to as "SARS 2," kind of got lucky (13:08), her visit to Wuhan, China (13:45), the mystery of why SARS 1 seemed to suddenly disappear (14:15), how a virus jumps from animals to humans and why bats carry coronaviruses (15:40), whether the pangolin may have been the animal that allowed SARS 2 to jump to humans (18:10), how she took part in a study that was published this year that disproved the conspiracy theory that SARS 2 was created in a lab (19:50), what the coronavirus does to humans who get infected (21:20), what happens when the body experiences a "cytokine storm," when the immune system goes haywire (22:30), upper respiratory infections versus lower ones (22:55), what she hopes to learn from the coronavirus during this crucial stage of her research (24:10), the coincidence that the recent virus outbreaks have generally been about 10 years apart (27:20), the pressure of quickening the pace of her research (27:45), what she thinks about the world's response to the pandemic (28:40), how the pandemic will change our lives (29:30), the possibility of the coronavirus jumping seasons and "herd immunity" (30:05).