Lilah Gaw
Welcome back to the Bruno Brief. I’m Lilah Gaw, a podcast team member here at The Herald. If you’ve been anywhere on College Hill, you’ve no doubt heard the endless sniffles and coughs that punctuate lectures and fill the hallways.
This week, we’ll be speaking with senior staff writer Jonathan Kim to learn more about the science behind Brown’s infamous “Keeney Cough.” Here’s Jonathan:
Jonathan Kim
My name is Jonathan, and I’m a senior staff writer for science and research.
Lilah Gaw
Jonathan spoke to medical professionals to uncover the secrets of the infamous Keeney cough.
Jonathan Kim
The Keeney cough, historically, has been described as something called parainfluenza. I know that sounds scarier than it seems, but parainfluenza actually has no connection to influenza or the flu. It's actually more closely described as something called the classic RSV, and that has been indicative of symptoms like progressive hacking or mostly nighttime cough or wheezing when breathing. It's not harmful or dangerous. It just has kind of annoying symptoms that maybe takes a couple of weeks to get over.
Lilah Gaw
But that doesn’t mean that every single person who coughs in class has the RSV, or “respiratory syncytial virus.” In fact…
Jonathan Kim
Keeney cough hasn't actually really arrived on campus. So the kind of sicknesses that we might be seeing on campus right now can be described through like maybe the spread of other viral strains or colds. I think a misconception is the idea that there's something called, like the common cold, but there is no such thing as the common cold. It's like, there’s tons, there's hundreds of strains and substrains of codes and viruses that are responsible for sickness, and a lot of that can kind of overlap. So it might seem like, Oh, I got the cold, and so I can't get sick again. But in reality, there's tons of strains.
Lilah Gaw
While the official Keeney Cough has yet to make its way to campus, previous trends indicate that it’s just around the corner, according to clinical director of Brown Health Services Adam Pallant. In the meantime, what can students do to prevent getting sick?
Jonathan Kim
So there's a number of things you can do. I mean, obviously, you know, wash your hands. Kind of have basic hygiene habits, like, when you cough, like, cover your mouth with your arm, don’t share food or drinks with other people. If you're sick, wear a mask so you don’t get other people sick, and decrease the chance that you can get sick.
Lilah Gaw
What about lifestyle? Can that impact someone’s chances of getting sick?
Jonathan Kim
Another misconception is factors like getting a good night's of sleep or exercising can necessarily prevent you from getting sick, like, obviously, it's important to maintain healthy habits, right as just just general kind of life, life tips, but the idea that having these healthy habits, like taking your vitamins or like, wearing a jacket when it's cold outside, it's necessarily going to prevent you from getting sick. Is a little bit of a misconception. Again, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't still do those things and maintain, like, your overall health, well being physically and mentally. But I guess in terms of, like, preventing sickness, those are not necessarily factors that are really that involved.
Lilah Gaw
In your article, in addition to medical professionals, you also interviewed some students who had been sick. How did you find people to talk to?
Jonathan Kim
I kind of just camped outside of Keeney and talked to the first couple of people that passed by. And it was funny because the first two people that I talked to said they got sick. So I think perhaps maybe there's some truth to the Keeney cough that you know, or the idea that there are sicknesses spreading among students on campus, particularly among first years, where they might be the first time, kind of getting exposed to a range of viruses or strains, just being in close proximity to other people.
Lilah Gaw
What did students who had been sick tell you about their symptoms?
Jonathan Kim
I think it's definitely, like, a little bit annoying. Of course, that's kind of the sentiment that I got from my sources. You know, maybe being bedridden or just having general, like sick sickness symptoms, like a cough, or, like sore throat, or having, like, runny sinuses. But you know, I think for them, it was also kind of an opportunity to kind of realize like, Okay, this is maybe my first time away from home, and I think it's important to then also realize like, okay, what can I do to make sure that I can recover and take care of my own health and being being on my own for the first time. In a sense, I think it was also maybe a bit of a struggle to try to, again, when you are sick, like, maintain that caution, but then also want to still, like, go out and do college-related, like, fun things.
Lilah Gaw
Is there anything you learned while working on this story that you didn’t know before?
Jonathan Kim
I think also just the idea that, yeah, there is no, like, common cold again, there's hundreds of strains and substrains that can circulate among college campuses, just the nature of thousands of students who are coming from around the world, around the country, and being in such close proximity, touching the same door handles, the same soup ladles in the dining halls, I think
you're kind of bound to have such like a exposure to those sicknesses.
Lilah Gaw
The Herald’s science and research section is tackling a series of “Behind the Science” articles explaining things students encounter in daily college life. Could you tell us a little bit about why you chose this topic in particular?
Jonathan Kim
In the past, I've written stories on the science of sleep, because college students are notorious for not maybe getting the best sleep. I wrote about the science behind like caffeine, and so this was just another kind of one of many stories that I guess I kind of written for this, like science explainer series, and I think it's especially prevalent now with the beginning of the semester, which is kind of where a lot of students are coming together from around the country, around the world, and maybe being exposed to viru ses that they otherwise want to be exposed to, just being in such close proximity.
Lilah Gaw
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.
Here’s a brief rundown of other stories recently reported by The Herald.
On Oct. 15, Brown became the second university to reject the Trump administration’s “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education” after MIT, which offered federal benefits in exchange for sweeping structural and ideological changes. The decision comes after campus-wide insistence for Brown to say no.
Amid budget cuts, Brown has paused PhD hiring in at least six humanities and social science departments. The affected departments include Egyptology and Assyriology, Classics and Anthropology, among others.
And finally, Brown Professor Peter Howitt was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work as part of a team that explained innovation-driven economic growth with a focus on new technology.
Thanks again for tuning in to the Bruno Brief. This episode was produced, edited and scripted by Talia LeVine, Anisha Kumar, Lilah Gaw and Diya Khetan. If you like what you hear, subscribe to The Bruno Brief wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
