Germ
00:00:09.280 – 00:00:11.120
Alii! My name is Germ.

Worm
00:00:11.120 – 00:00:12.080
I’m Worm.

Germ
00:00:12.240 – 00:00:26.320
Welcome to the Germ and Worm Travel health podcast, episode 80: Germ and Worm’s Travel Resolutions for the New Year. It’s a big planet. See it in Good Health. I’m Dr. Paul Pottinger, also called Germ. I’m a professor of Infectious diseases at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Worm
00:00:26.710 – 00:00:34.470
I’m Dr. Chris Sanford, also known as Worm, Associate professor in the Departments of Family Medicine and Global Health, also at the University of Washington.

Germ
00:00:34.790 – 00:01:25.890
Chris, this is our this is our thing, answering fun questions from fun people going to fun places. This week we have a bunch of them, including what New Year’s travel resolutions should we all embrace for the coming year? Probiotics: Will they prevent travelers? Diarrhea Vaccine approvals for pneumonia? Is that process broken? And viruses, bats and Brazil overhyped or a real these questions and many more.

Please contact us with your travel health questions, your tips for success, your stories or requests for clarifications, just send us an email germanwormmail.com or visit our website germanworm.com finally, our medical disclaimer. This podcast is designed to inform, inspire and entertain. However, you should not use this podcast as clinical care before you travel.

Please see a qualified healthcare professional, of course, for recommendations specific to you and your itinerary.

Worm
00:01:26.240 – 00:01:37.920
Paul and I have a new feature here on the podcast when we talk about a particular country or region that we love and we discuss why we think you should go. Paul, you just got back from Antarctica.

Germ
00:01:37.920 – 00:08:05.550
You know, I have direct experience with this, having just returned from a beautiful Lindblad National Geographic cruise to Falkland / Malvinas, South Georgia island and the Antarctic Peninsula. And so this is fresh on my mind and I have a lot of reasons why I think people should go. This is actually my second trip to Antarctica.

I was there also in early 2014 to climb Mount Vincent, which is the tallest peak in Antarctica. Two expeditions to Antarctica, totally different experiences, totally different geography, topography. Both amazing, each in their own different way.

One of the reasons to visit Antarctica, of course, is to experience the wilderness. This is the highest, driest, coldest place in the world, and it’s an incredibly different spot from most people’s everyday experience.

Now, if you live in Greenland, going to Antarctica may feel somewhat similar, but for the rest of us, it really is quite spectacular and stunning. At the interior, the high plateaus, the the mountain ranges. It’s a dead, frozen world. Ice, rock, snow, vivid wilderness and nothing alive.

I remember very well climbing Mount Vinson and leaving our Gear in a pile on the snow. We didn’t have to bury it to keep it away from crows. We didn’t have to defend it against grizzly bears.

There’s just nothing there except you and your own microbiome and the feces that you leave behind. And by the way, you don’t leave behind feces. We even peed in designated spots.

It’s the most pristine wilderness that I’ve ever come across, frozen and dead. On the other hand, the coast, what we experienced cruising the ocean, the Southern Ocean, the exact opposite.

Relatively, comparatively warm and of course very wet. Parts of that cruise brought us to areas of some of the greatest concentrations of marine wildlife in the world. South Georgia is one of those.

It was the volume of the animals. Oh, you want to see a black browed albatross? Welcome to Steeple Jason. Here’s a quarter million of them. You want to see an elephant seal?

Here’s a colony of 6,000 of them. You like the king penguin? Here’s half a million over here on St. Andrews Plain.

It was just these numbers that were so indescribably huge with animals that were, for better or for worse, more or less fearless of us. It wasn’t that they avoided us, it wasn’t that they were so curious about us. We just were invisible to them.

Each animal species that we saw, whether mammal or bird, they had their own thing going and they didn’t mind find that we were there within a matter of 5 or 6 meters in some cases of these animals, in some cases we had to flee from them. Very intense biosecurity. We did not want to bring anything on shore that didn’t actually belong there.

And so boy, the team was incredibly rigorous and great credit to them complying with the so called ayato conventions, making sure that every single thing we brought ashore was sterilized before we went ashore and sterilized again when we came back on board the ship. For example, there’s a huge concern with avian or bird influenza in Antarctica.

It doesn’t actually kill the birds, but it kills a lot of mammals, including seals. And so that’s an example of the very fragile, unique, delicate nature of this wilderness and the animals that call it home.

We were lucky to be visitors and to just bear witness to this incredible drama of life.

It was mating and dying and birth and fighting and just the noises, the smells, man, there’s something about the fur seal smells like a mixture of rotten onions and body sweat. And for whatever reason I almost missed that stink as we went ashore.

The penguins, the seals, the flighted birds coming overhead, it was just indescribable. So obviously going for the natural beauty and the wilderness and the wildlife, that’s the main reason to go. But another reason to go is the people.

I have found in two expeditions now that people who go to Antarctica are amazing. There are just such a variety of people who have an adventurous spirit.

They love travel and they’re hearty, interesting people who have led interesting lives and they’re happy to talk with you about that. I’ve made a lot of friends among the crew, the professional guides and naturalists, and also other guests. For example, on this most recent cruise.

Likewise, I’m still lifelong friends with my teammates from that original trip back in 2014 up Mount Vincent. So go for the wildlife in the wilderness, but go for the people and the connections you can make.

Please do not go for the cuisine, although we had great cuisine on this cruise. But the point is there are no restaurants, there are really no shops, there’s no museums, there’s no cities, there are no permanent habitations except for a handful of scientific research stations which are also amazing to see when you can. But the point is, if you’re into the food that scene, museums, restaurants, this is not the place. It is the uninhabited continent.

If you’re interested in the natural world and the people who enjoy that, then this could be an amazing opportunity for you. Antarctica is expensive. There is no cheap way to do it. There are cheaper ways.

For example, you may be able to do just a week long trip down to the Antarctic Peninsula. And if that’s the only way you can do it, then of course I would say yes. But I do recommend that you see Antarctica by ship and that you take the longest cruise that you can. Certainly I would have missed South Georgia Island. It is an incredible place. And if you can possibly get South Georgia onto your itinerary, that is a pro tip. Makes the trip longer, makes it more expensive and it makes it quite a thing.

I would like to go back and considering how long and expensive this three week trip was, that’s saying quite a bit. We were not alone I on our cruise.

Again this Lindblad National Geographic cruise, there were many other families that were there for the second time or third time or more. So that tells you how incredible this opportunity is. If you can get the time and the finances in your budget, it will be well worth your while.

With that, Chris, here’s our first question to you. What are some good travel related New Year’s resolutions And what do you and Germ plan to do for your own New Year’s resolutions?

Worm
00:08:05.550 – 00:11:04.230
Oh, thank you for asking. So I do have a couple lists. I keep going. I have my one year travel plan and my ten year travel plan. And I’ll share a little bit of those in a minute.

My first resolution is to travel. And sometimes that’s the hardest part of traveling, is deciding to travel. And you know it’s never going to be perfect.

You’ll never have a perfect time. If you look at your pro and con list, It’ll never be 100% travel now versus travel later. But my thought is take a leap, take a chance.

Because when I’ve traveled with only partial information, which is essentially always, it almost always turns out well. So my first resolution is to travel and realize there’s never a perfect time.

But don’t put it off too far because people break ankles, people get sick, the world changes, there’s pandemics. So if you can travel in the coming year, I would encourage you to do so. Another one is to get up to speed on routine immunizations.

And this of course is a benefit not only for travel, but for staying locally. So see your healthcare provider at least once a year. New year is a good time. And you say, hey, where am I?

With tetanus, measles, all the routine immunizations.

Another thing to do, and this pertains again both to your time here in the US and travel, nothing will help your immune system as much as regular aerobic exercise. Also, nothing will help your longevity as much as regular aerobic exercise.

Do something that makes you sweaty and breathless, at least 20 minutes, at least three times a week. Those are reasonable minimums and that will help your immune system. It’ll help you drop your risk of things like heart attack.

It’ll make you more perky when you travel. So if you don’t have a routine now would encourage you to start one. But pick something you like.

If you pick something you don’t like, you’re not going to do that. But if you like to swim or bicycle or go on the elliptical trainer, regular aerobic exercise makes both travel and staying here a better plan.

Another thing to do is read about other cultures. Before I go to a foreign country, I read about it. What’s their history? What’s their politics? What do they eat?

What are considered good and bad manners there? Also, if you can learn a bit of the language, I have trouble with that. I’ve been studying Spanish all my life and I’m still not fluent.

But learning even 20 or 50 words. Hello. Where’s the bathroom? Thank you. Excuse me. Speak slower is of benefit now for my one year plan.

In the coming year I’m planning on going to Mexico and Belize, Slovenia. And then later in the year I have this great opportunity to teach in Bhutan on a mountain expedition.

My 10 year plan is more aspirational and of course I chat with my wife about this. But we have never been to the caucuses. So this would be Azerbaijan and Georgia and Armenia and we’ve never been to the stands. Kazakhstan, et cetera.

Turkmenistan look fascinating. So I want to go there sometime but I don’t have a current plan to do so. So Paul, that’s my forecast and my New Year’s resolutions.

What’s on your agenda?

Germ
00:11:04.500 – 00:12:50.800
Well, first of all for the resolutions idea, it’s so good and I came up with a really similar list. Great minds think alike. So I really think all these are the way to go about it.

The only thing I would add is yeah, travel, travel often and travel with friends and family.

This has been such a challenge for me because scheduling, it’s just everybody’s life is so busy and I have so many people I love that I want to travel with and making that happen has been so difficult. I don’t travel much alone anymore except for work which is often to visit with friends too. But I’m just thinking about for relaxation to explore.

I really want to do it with my crew and that includes you. And so making that all lineup has been quite a challenge. I like the plan, put it on the calendar, think about it.

Otherwise things just get pushed off indefinitely and that’s not good for anybody’s soul.

So for me, the one year plan, let’s see, Mexico City, Pico de Orizaba, Nuevo Vallarta, Paris, Singapore, Sri Lanka, that’s all between now and February, that’s the next two months. So that’s a lot of travel. I’m on a leave of absence, I’m trying to rage vacation. I’m trying to get all my travel in as I can.

There will be a longer piece as well and for me it’s, I think it’s going to include more of these expedition cruises. We do have trips planned to up towards the North Pole on from two different sides. So I’ve got a lot of that new vibe.

But there’s plenty of mountains to climb. That’s my hobby and I want to do that as well. So thanks for that. You know, I wonder if our listeners also have their New Year’s resolutions.

Both related to travel and just to health in general. If so, you know, please consider sharing them with us online.

Just go to our website, germanworm.com or send us an email germandwormmail.com we’d love to hear from you.

Worm
00:12:56.880 – 00:13:04.560
Paul this is for you. I’m reading a lot online about probiotics. Do they really prevent traveler’s diarrhea?

Germ
00:13:05.760 – 00:15:10.870
Good question. It’s possible, but we just don’t have evidence, unfortunately, to show that that is likely to happen. So it’s plausible. It stands to reason.

And yet probably not. At least not for most of us.

A probiotic is something that is a live microorganism that we consume in order to replenish or enrich that particular organism in our GI tract.

So it makes sense if you think that traveler’s diarrhea is caused by a new organism, an invader with bad habits, Giardia andor toxogenic E. Coli, norovirus rotavirus. Sort of makes sense that you want to outcompete it with something that’s friendly and healthy. So I get it.

And yet, when this has been looked at time and again, it really has not, unfortunately been the case when it comes to traveler’s diarrhea. In fact, the promise of probiotics is numerous.

There may be a lot of things that it can do, but even that has been difficult to show in the domestic context. I do think that it’s plausible for probiotics to help reduce the chance of something called antibiotic associated diarrhea.

We all had this experience. You take an antibiotic for a good reason or a bad reason, you may have a side effect of diarrhea. Probiotics can slightly partially reduce that risk.

But when it comes to the big baddies of traveler’s diarrhea, including enterotoxigenic E. Coli E Tech, that unfortunately has not proven to be the case. I’m not telling you not to do it. I’m telling you if you do it, you still need to do the core.

Do your diarrhea core, the things we know that will make a difference. Be smart about your own hand hygiene, be thoughtful about what you eat and drink.

And for goodness sakes, if you do get sick, try not to spread it around to other people. It’s possible that we will have a vaccine against some forms of traveler’s diarrhea down the line that’s not yet available.

And so in the meantime, probiotics, you can do it if you want. I would recommend against it if it’s expensive. And if you do try this Please, for God’s sakes, don’t start it when you travel.

Do it before you go so you know there’s no side effects or issues. Unlikely to harm you, but unfortunately also unlikely to help. What’s your take, Chris?

Worm
00:15:11.110 – 00:16:09.070
Yeah, I’ve been reading about probiotics and travelers diarrhea for decades and I keep hoping that a consensus will come out that they’re of some benefit and that has not happened. So maybe a study or two will show slight benefit, then several studies come out and show no benefit.

Bottom line putting all these together is I don’t think there’s evidence that for your routine person that a probiotic brings down the risk traveler’s diarrhea. As Paul said, there’s an exception if you’re taking an antibiotic for any reason.

Probiotics do seem to somewhat reduce the risk of diarrhea as a side effect of that antibiotic.

And also I see some of my gastroenterology colleagues recommending probiotics for some of their patients who have things like Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. But back to travel, I have to give a thumbs down on this. I just don’t think there’s evidence that probiotics help.

I don’t think also that they do a lot of harm. So if you like it, go for it. But as an evidence based guy, I cannot give it a thumbs up.

Germ
00:16:14.670 – 00:16:26.990
Okay, Chris, here’s a question from one of our listeners who says tell me again a little bit more about this new Apple earbud translate thing, what Paul called the Babel fish. How does it work and will it help keep me healthy when I travel?

Worm
00:16:27.190 – 00:17:22.750
Oh, thank you for this. So first let me admit I don’t own this. I haven’t gone live with this yet.

Basically though, there’s this new technology and it’s called Live Translation and Apple offers it. You do need the updated technology for it. You need your iPhone to be 15 Pro or newer. You need it to be running iOS 26 or later.

You have to have Apple Intelligence enabled. But with that, supposedly what I’m hearing is you can put your earbuds in and someone talks in a language and you hear it in English in your ears.

Please, if you have this, share with Paul and me your experiences. We’re new to this, we’re just gathering information. We can’t recommend it, but it sounds really enticing.

This is what happened in Star Trek when I used to watch it is they had that little universal translator gizmo. It sounds beautiful. I hope it works. They say it works. It’s plausible. Paul, do you have any experience with this?

Germ
00:17:22.830 – 00:18:35.950
I haven’t tried it yet, but I do think it’s worth it. Going after the question here about whether it can help keep people safe as they travel. I mean anything that improves communication can do.

I do worry about some mistranslations coming across. You know, when we do this with visual translation through for example, the Google Translate app. I see that. I like that augmented reality thing.

It makes mistakes all the time. I know that it’s doing that. I worry that we might get similar errors coming out of this version verbally. So trust but verify.

And I think, especially if you are sitting down with a healthcare professional, you get sick or injured when you’re overseas. I think this could be a great way to go. Would I rather do that than have a professional interpreter at the bedside? I mean, that’s the gold standard.

I work at a hospital. We take care of people who do not have English as a primary language all the time. We do not use this Babelfish technology.

We still have a professional interpreter because there’s words and, and there’s communication, they’re not the same. I’m not clear that this will actually do interpretation rather than word to word translation, idioms, phrases, turns a phrase.

It may not know any of those things. So let us know your experience with it, healthcare related or otherwise. And be innovative and be skeptical.

Worm
00:18:36.510 – 00:19:00.310
And whether you have this technology or not, let me go back to my prior point that I made under resolutions, it’s still a good idea to learn some basic language because if you rely on this entirely and don’t even know how to ask where a bathroom is, that’s a problem. And you may be in a place with no wi fi or this whole system may fail.

So yeah, take this along if you want, but also learn some of the lingo just because you may need to.

Germ
00:19:00.550 – 00:19:04.470
Speak it because it’s fun and because learning a language is good for you and your brain.

Worm
00:19:14.800 – 00:19:29.200
Paul, question for you.

With all the hype about hepatitis B recommendations, I also see a change in FDA vaccine approval process where they will no longer accept antibody results for pneumonia vaccine. What does that mean? And what is this about?

Germ
00:19:29.360 – 00:23:20.210
Yeah, thanks for this. So the shitstorm continues. So here’s information coming from late November 2025 that’s just coming to light.

It’s not totally clear how this is going to go, but I have my prediction. And what we have is a memo from the Director of Food and Drug, an internal memo to other staffers at Food and Drug Administration.

Here in the United States, we do not have any details of how this is going to go, but the suggestion is that there may become a change in the way that vaccines become approved and marketed. Here’s the deal.

When it comes to respiratory infections, that we can prevent or reduce severity with vaccines, we’re really talking in large part about influenza and pneumonia. For example, the pneumonia vaccine. Think about just, let’s just take flu vaccine as an example.

We’ve had a flu vaccine technology for many, many years and it has saved tens of thousands of lives, a lot of lives saved. And in spite of this, we still lose Americans to this particular disease every single year.

But remember that the flu vaccine has to change each year because the influenza virus changes each year. It’s an RNA virus, it’s very error prone to. That’s why it’s so successful in keeping us on our toes.

So in order to make a change of the vaccine, we have to be nimble, we have to be quick, we have to rely on what we know is safe and effective and still be able to adapt to the virus the way it adapts to us and to other animals in our world.

The way we do that, of course, is to be able to put new ingredients, what we call the antigens, into that flu shot each year and prove that it’s going to have the effect that we want by giving it to volunteers and then drawing their blood. And in the blood, we look for an increase in an antibody amount, an antibody titer.

The titer is a dilution of human blood which shows us the amount of antibodies that are there. The antibody, of course, is what your body makes, the little protein that can neutralize the flu virus.

And so the way this works, of course, is we know that the immunogenicity, the way that this vaccine works is safe and effective. It’s been around for a long time. We’re now going to make one small change, one ingredient change.

Instead of giving it to everybody and then seeing whether or not they get flu and deciding based on that whether to approve it, we just do this quick blood test. It’s brilliant. It’s very, very smart because it allows us to very quickly adapt the flu vaccine.

We don’t have to have full scale efficacy, meaning effectiveness trials.

We can’t, by the time those trials would be up and running, the flu vaccine would, would no longer be needed because the flu virus would have changed. So this is a great way for us to be able to quickly adapt our flu armamentarium for the vaccines.

And supposedly that’s exactly what People at FDA are no longer going to allow among the changes proposed in this weird internal memo from someone called Dr. Prasad, there’s going to be stricter requirements for authorization of these vaccines, both for pregnant women and for vaccines in respiratory infections. Instead of showing that they produce enough antibody, they’re going to have to show that they reduce the disease itself.

This basically means that the flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine process would grind to a halt. It would be a terrible, terrible idea. The hope is that this person can be talked some sense into and that they will change their mind.

And again, I hate the idea of vaccine policy coming out as an internal memo without any science, without any background. Yet again, their brand is chaos.

Our brand here at Germ and Worm is information, safety, rationality and thinking of you, keeping you safe as you travel.

I’m not having too many ulcers burn new holes into my stomach based on this email, but it’s a real concern and I think in fact it’s so drastic and stupid that they’ll have to change their mind. Although who the heck knows? What’s your prediction, Chris?

Worm
00:23:20.850 – 00:23:47.570
Well again, this is another stupid potential policy that’s being put out by non public health and non vaccine experts.

So as you say, it just doesn’t make sense at any level to have a process that means that you can’t put a flu shot out because by the time you do the necessary research it’s the next season so you have to start over again. So this is nonsensical. I hope it was just a memo that goes to the dead letter office, but it does again worry me.

Germ
00:23:47.570 – 00:24:19.470
And even if they were thinking just of our pneumococcal or so called pneumonia, pneumonia shot again would just be a terrible idea, would take years to figure out and is totally unnecessary. What I’m seeing from this administration are these unforced errors addressing problems that are not problems. They’ve already been solved.

They’re trying to make trouble where trouble should not be there. And so let’s hope they can get their heads screwed on straight and stick to the path of righteousness and truth. Chris, here’s a question to you.

How can I avoid travel scams, health related and other travel scams?

Worm
00:24:19.790 – 00:26:13.930
Oh, thank you for the question. Of course there’s no one solution. There’s an infinite number of potential scams.

I guess my overall thought would be use your common sense but don’t be so on alert that you don’t travel and that you don’t interact with people.

And let me give three examples so I Was on foot in Antigua many years ago when a guy pushed a piece of paper in my hand that said, ooh, hike Pacaya tomorrow with me. So I said, looks good. I gave him some money. And then I thought, that night, wait a minute, I just gave some stranger money.

But in fact, the guy showed up the next day and took me and I climbed Pacaya as planned. And it was a lovely day. Another thing that could have turned out to be a scam. I recently crossed over from Mexico into Guatemala by land.

I ran into a money exchanger guy just on foot with a big old fistful of bills. I gave him some money, he gave me some Guatemalan money. And I thought later, wait, what if I was, I didn’t get enough. What if this was fake?

Turned out it was the best rate exchange rate I saw in the whole country and all the bills were fully legitimate. And lastly, my wife and I, long time ago were in Bangkok and we wanted to go see some Thai boxing.

And so we saw a guy on the sidewalk near the venue and he said, hey, do you want to buy a ticket? And we’re like, ah, could be a scam. No, we want real tickets. And he said, hey, I work for the venue, these are real tickets.

And he actually had to walk us in there and get all the people who worked there to verify it. So yeah, he was legit. We gave him money, we went to Thai boxing and had a lovely evening. So these are three examples where I wasn’t scammed.

I could have been scammed, but I actually ended up having positive interactions because I took a small chance. So I’m not even going to go into all the different ways you could be scammed. There’s a lot of different ways. But take a chance. Go abroad.

Most people are honest. Usually you’re not going to be so scammed. And I think it’s better to be occasionally scammed and to trust people than to be so paranoid.

You never interact with people to bring your risk down of being scammed.

Germ
00:26:13.930 – 00:27:05.900
What a nice perspective. I think that’s exactly right. There’s a difference between purchasing, you know, a bridge or a piece of property when you’re overseas.

This is a major investment. Don’t do that. If we’re talking about a ticket here, you know, a tour that someone offers you, it’s probably okay. Use your spidey sense.

If you’re a woman traveling alone or otherwise, you know, you want to make sure that you’re safe. But as for the financial risk, think about that in the bigger context. I love that idea, the chance that, yeah, you’re not going to get scammed.

Never take a chance. If you never talk to people, you’re going to be good. You’ll just have a miserable trip. And so it’s a balance.

And I would also say I live and work in the United States and plenty of scams going on in my life every single day. They’re email scams, it’s phishing. There’s that whole piece of things.

I like the idea of actually going and person and having a great experience away from all that digital scamming and making connections with people. It can be a safe and fun thing to do.

Worm
00:27:05.900 – 00:27:33.160
Yeah. For every scam I can think of, I can think of 20 really good interactions. So again, you want a little paranoia, but not too much. For you.

Listener writes I’m traveling to Brazil soon, but I read they found a new strain of COVID there. Is this overblown or a real risk?

Germ
00:27:33.400 – 00:30:27.890
Yeah, I hadn’t heard of this. So thanks to this anonymous questioner. Thanks for that. I think I found what you’re talking about. Quick answer is you can still go to Brazil.

There’s other issues in Brazil, but this should not be one of them. Let’s talk about it.

So, in fact, there is not a new Covid that’s been found there, but some scientists working in the rainforest have done some good work, have identified a kind of bat called Parnell’s Mustached Bat. Sounds like an adorable anything with a mustache on it. It’s got to be super cool.

So Parnell’s Mustached Bat, they have found in this particular study that has a coronavirus. It’s not the SARS CoV2 virus that causes Covid, but it’s another coronavirus which is not good. These can tend to be carried asymptomatically by bats.

And as we have learned with COVID and also actually with SARS CoV1, this can be spread from bats to people.

In this particular case, what they found was that Parnell’s mustache bat was harboring a Brazilian bat coronavirus, the BRZ bat CoV, which has probably been in bats for a long time. The authors and I would emphasize it’s not yet a peer reviewed study, but it did appear as a preprint in Bioarchive.

And what they found was that they hypothesized it’s been circulating in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America probably for some time. There’s been limited sampling of bat viruses.

This is a new and emerging area and the concept is let’s go into the forest and see what we can find so that we’re ahead of the curve. That’s the happy narrative.

The dark narrative is, for God’s sakes, don’t go into the forest and swab bats and bring it back to a lab and then it’ll get out, just like it probably did in the case of COVID That has been such a problem for all of us. So this, I think this kind of research is very important. I am pro epidemiology and I like the idea that people are looking for this.

Of course, we want to make sure that it’s being done safely and that the messaging and significance is communicated clearly. In this particular case, I think the messaging is there’s viruses out there. That’s not a surprise.

That does not, however, make mean that it’s going to be a risk to human beings. Unless you’re making it your business to get up in the bats business, that’s always a concern. But for a tourist, please enjoy your time in Brazil.

This should not make you sick. Well, everyone, thank you so much for joining us for episode 80 of the Germ and Worm Travel Health Podcast.

As always, we do welcome your questions on travel health. Just Visit our website germanworm.com that way you can submit questions but also search prior episodes and binge our podcast to your heart’s content.

If you enjoy Germ and Worm, please subscribe, rate us favorably on your device and spread the word with friends, family and follow us on the social those are free ways to support this podcast. I’m Germ.

Worm
00:30:28.130 – 00:30:31.170
I’m Worm. It’s a big planet. See you in good health and we’ll.

Germ
00:30:31.170 – 00:30:53.020
See you next time. This podcast is designed to inform, inspire and entertain.

However, this podcast does not establish a doctor patient relationship and therefore it should not replace your conversation with a qualified healthcare professional. Please see one before your next adventure. The opinions in this podcast are Dr. Sanford’s and Dr. Pottinger’s alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the University of Washington or UW Medicine.