Infectious disease doctor and researcher Dr. Lawrence Purpura discusses herd immunity and the coronavirus pandemic. Then, learn about how psilocybin therapy might be able to treat depression, and why credit card chips are safer than magnetic strips.
Infectious disease doctor and researcher Dr. Lawrence Purpura discusses herd immunity and the coronavirus pandemic. Then, learn about how psilocybin therapy may be able to treat depression, and why credit card chips are safer than magnetic strips.
Additional resources from Dr. Lawrence Purpura:
What's the deal with psilocybin therapy by Kelsey Donk
Why Are Credit Card Chips Safer Than Magnetic Strips? by author Reuben Westmaas
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-psilocybin-therapy-can-ease-depression
CODY GOUGH: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn about how psilocybin therapy might be able to treat depression and why credit card chips are safer than magnetic strips. But first, infectious disease doctor and researcher Dr. Lawrence Purpura is back to talk about herd immunity.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: In the midst of a global pandemic, people are looking for any way possible to get the coronavirus under control. One idea that's come in and out of the spotlight throughout the year is herd immunity. Proponents argue that, basically, if we just let people become infected, enough of the population will become immune to make the virus die out on its own. But according to our guest today, that's a very dangerous idea.
Dr. Lawrence Purpura is a physician and researcher at Columbia University's Division of Infectious Diseases, where he's currently a co-investigator on a number of studies and clinical trials on SARS-CoV-2 infection and treatment. Here's his explanation of herd immunity.
LAWRENCE PURPURA: So "herd immunity" is a term we learned in Public Health 101. So I can think back to my public health training and first learning about what that means. And I'm actually just very confused on how it's being used in the current setting. So "herd immunity" refers to a situation where there is enough people in a designated community that are immune to an infection that, essentially, whatever pathogen you're referring to can't circulate and actually can't continue to cause problems. This is usually said in the context of vaccination programs, because it's really vaccines that can drive this process, and it can expedite it.
Now, can you reach a state of herd immunity naturally? Yes. It's happened many times throughout history, sometimes with deleterious outcomes. The 1918 flu would be one way to look at what happens if you just let a virus rip through the world. But another less terrifying example, which I think is important to look at, too, is a virus like Zika virus. So Zika virus, if you recall a few years ago, really ripped through this hemisphere of the world and caused many, many, many cases.
And I was at the CDC at the time, and I know my colleagues were actively working on all these strange presentations of Guillain-Barre syndrome. And there was just lot we were worried about, and the cases were just astronomical. And the thing is now we don't really see that many cases of Zika, and it's another example of herd immunity, where so many people were infected that there's a natural immune state.
The difference, though, is you have to look at mortality. So I think when you're talking about herd immunity, you really need to look at two major things-- how infectious is a pathogen and, also, how much morbidity and mortality can it cause? And an infection like Zika, it causes a terrible viral syndrome. The birth defects that result from it are absolutely devastating. But in terms of community-wide and even nationwide morbidity and mortality, the numbers are nowhere near.
So if you're trying to apply herd immunity to a virus like SARS-CoV-2, ask anyone who's worked in the hospital or in the public health sector or even just anyone who's known anyone who's been impacted by this virus, it can be very, very deadly. And it's just dangerous to apply a concept like herd immunity to a deadly pandemic virus.
ASHLEY HAMER: That was Dr. Lawrence Purpura, a physician and researcher at Columbia University's Division of Infectious Diseases. You can find links to Dr. Purpura's publications and more in the show notes.
CODY GOUGH: So what's the deal with psilocybin therapy? Yes, I said "psilocybin," but no, you're not listening to The Joe Rogan Experience. I'm bringing this up because Oregon and Washington, DC, recently voted to become the first places in the United States to decriminalize the use of magic mushrooms. And in Oregon, voters have gone one step further and made psilocybin legal for mental health treatments-- psilocybin being that hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms.
A new research is saying that magic mushrooms can actually be an effective therapy for conditions like depression. So the day after Oregon voted, a new study came out from Johns Hopkins Medicine where 24 adults with major depression were given two doses of psilocybin. The study found that when used with supportive therapy, the psychedelics helped the participants reduce depressive symptoms quickly and dramatically.
The study suggests that psilocybin could be about four times more effective than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants. That could be great news for the estimated 17 million Americans who suffer from depression, since most treatments take weeks or months to start working, and normal depression medications can come with nasty side effects. People respond in lots of different ways to traditional depression treatments, but researchers said they were surprised to find that most of the participants on the psilocybin trial found the drug to be effective.
But it's not just as simple as giving people psychedelic mushrooms and sending them on their way. That would not be smart. For the trial, participants each received two doses of psilocybin two weeks apart. Each session lasted five hours, and the participants relaxed on a couch with eyeshades, headphones playing music, and two clinicians there for observation and reassurance. One to four weeks after treatments, almost half of the participants were considered to be in remission. In other words, they no longer qualified as being depressed.
But why would magic mushrooms work where antidepressants have failed? Well, scientists aren't sure, but they have a few hunches. Psychedelics have been shown to activate serotonin receptors in the brain, and it's believed that depression is at least partially caused by a serotonin imbalance. But it also goes further by reducing activity in the self-reflective part of the brain and making people feel more connected to the world beyond themselves, and maybe as simple as changing the brain's usual thought patterns and getting people out of unhealthy modes of thinking.
Researchers said they'll keep following the participants for a year to see how long the effects last, but for now, researchers say this is a great sign for psilocybin and for the future of mental health treatment.
ASHLEY HAMER: Remember a few years ago when the United States made the transition from credit cards with magnetic strips to ones with chips? We did it years after many other countries had already done it, but still, we Americans had some growing pains. You'd step up to the cashier, slide your card, and the machine would beep angrily at you for forgetting that, oh, yeah, you have a chip card. If that's you, you'll be happy to know that the frustration is worth it because credit card chips are much safer at protecting your personal data.
While the magnetic strip was brilliant for its day, it has one big shortcoming. Each magnetic strip uses a single code linked to a single bank account. So once a hacker has that code, they have complete access to that account. Oops. As you might expect, hackers took advantage of that in a massive way. That forced banks to find a solution.
Chip cards to the rescue. See, instead of using a single code that links back to your bank account, each transaction creates a unique code that will never be used again. Basically, instead of making retailers less likely to be hacked, it makes the information that hackers would get out of them way less valuable.
But chips aren't a foolproof solution either. Even if thieves cant just download your data and print out a card of their own, a person who has your credit card number and security code can still make transactions online. And it just so happens that that exact type of fraud skyrocketed in the United States around the time that chip readers began making card-hacking more difficult.
But hold on. You don't have to resort to stuffing your mattress with dollar bills just yet. To make sure you don't get your credit card hijacked, you just need to take some precautions. Don't use your card online when you're connected to public Wi-Fi, for one thing. Change your passwords for online retailers regularly and always check your credit card statement for anything suspicious. Credit card chips are secure, but they're not magic. In the end, it's up to us to protect ourselves.
CODY GOUGH: Let's recap the main things we learned today, starting with the fact that "herd immunity" refers to widespread immunity within a population to a particular disease that virtually lead to eradication of that illness. And we can speed this up with vaccine programs that increase a population's immunity to a deadly virus, like COVID-19. And although herd immunity can happen naturally, it's important to look at how contagious the disease is and its death rates, and from what we know about COVID-19, that's why herd immunity is probably not the best way to go.
I know some people are still proponents, but it's like you're literally sentencing a small percentage of the population to dying. And that's really bad.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. And it's worth repeating that herd immunity is usually used in reference to vaccination, not in just letting a deadly virus spread throughout a population. That's not a good way to protect people because you're just letting people die, and then whoever survives is left with the aftermath. That's not good.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, not good things.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we also learned that it's now legal to use psilocybin to treat depression in Oregon. Researchers are still figuring out how it works to do that, but they think it helps with depression because psilocybin activates serotonin receptors and reduces activity in the self-reflective part of the brain, so people can feel more connected to the world around them and get out of those harmful thought patterns.
CODY GOUGH: And hopefully, people won't see the same side effects that they do with traditional antidepressants, because those can be very bad.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. It's interesting. It's interesting to compare side effects from traditional antidepressants to the primary effects of hallucinogen. Right? That's the elephant in the room. People are going to see things and hear things that aren't there. But if it's all in a supervised doctor visit, what's the harm there, I guess?
CODY GOUGH: Or, as they would call it in the more colloquial sense, a "trip sitter."
ASHLEY HAMER: A trip sitter?
CODY GOUGH: Have you ever heard that term?
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: You're straight edge?
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm so straight edge.
CODY GOUGH: I didn't say I'm not, but among people who use drugs, if they're using a particular one with psychoactive effects for the first time, they'll designate what is referred to as a "trip sitter" either physically or just a phone call away.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, like a babysitter. Like a drug babysitter.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, exactly. To prevent somebody from having a, quote unquote, "bad trip" and panicking or freaking out or doing harm to themselves or someone else. So, yeah, that's a smart idea. Not that we're advocating any use like that on this show, but for those in places that are trying new things like that where it's legal and sanctioned and whatever, it is always smart when you're trying something new like that to have somebody responsible standing by.
And we also learned that while it might have been a pain getting used to credit card chips, they are more effective at keeping your banking and personal info out of the hands of hackers since each transaction at a retailer creates a unique code that's never duplicated again. But we have to reiterate, your information still can be stolen. So take precautions, like changing your password frequently, and don't use your card online when you're using public Wi-Fi. Although let's be real, Ashley. What is public Wi-Fi?
ASHLEY HAMER: You mean these days?
CODY GOUGH: It's a joke, because no one goes anywhere.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, that's right. We're all a lot more secure because we're not entering the world.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I wonder if that's true. We should look into that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, man, I bet hackers are moving on to whatever they can do when we're in our homes. They're smart.
CODY GOUGH: Sure. Well, let me do a quick search to make sure your credit card data hasn't been compromised. What are the first 16 digits of your credit card number?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, sure. So it starts with 5. Wait a minute.
CODY GOUGH: Ha-ha. Almost gotcha. That's the other trick. Don't do that on a podcast. Don't give out your digits on a podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Don't do that.
CODY GOUGH: Today's story is written by Kelsey Donk and Reuben Westmaas, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan, Sonja Hodgen, and Cody Gough. Today's episode is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY GOUGH: Kids, don't do drugs. But you can join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.