Title. Apparently there is a cruise ship quarantined right now because of this. And a guy at work was telling me some of the staff escaped? Not sure what exactly is going on but is it cause for concern?
To add on to the points here, hantavirus is lethal in a way that doesn’t translate to widespread pandemics easily. Coronavirus is unique in that while it was 5:1 more lethal than similarly transmissible airborn viruses, that was the “Goldilocks zone” for a virus with its lethality and transmissibility to do maximum damage. Lots of excess death, but the average person generally only had a slightly rough go of it. Hantavirus has >30% lethality in many forms, and is extremely likely to burn itself out before any sort of epidemic status.
So ultimately, very unfortunate for those that contract it, but its characteristics put it way below pretty much every other airborn illness in terms of what keeps me up at night.
Covid plays the long game, though. People who only had a rough time of it can die as a result of it years later.
Sure, but that’s the point, it’s not lethal enough to kill you faster than you can spread it, yet lethal enough that you can’t discount the aftereffects.
That’s true of all flu strains.
COVID is just the one we’ve studied the most, because of the pandemic and the number of cases.
There’s a lot of studies showing that “regular” flu strains can cause lasting damage to cardiovascular systems years/decades down the road.
COVID is just the most prominent flu strain, and the one we have collected the most data on. But all flues are really, really bad for you long term if you get them.
Does the flu cause heart attacks and strokes due to vein and arterial damage?
Covid is a systemic disease, flu is a respiratory disease.
Influenza is not limited to the lungs. Thousands got encephalitis from the 1918 pandemic.
Anyway, if they were smart, they would’ve started in Madagascar. I’m not worried, no way this is the one.
From what I understand, you fan still have a really deadly virus thats super contagious, as long as there is a window of time where a host can spread the virus asymptomatically (then, once its spread, they started getting hit hard with the symptoms). I’m guessing hantavirus doesn’t have this characteristic?
Exactly this.
It’s macabre, but its high mortality rate and small window of transmissibility before symptoms appear, pretty much keeps this from becoming a pandemic. It’s too effective at killing the host.
Something like COVID survives because it has a mortality rate a hundredth of this, but has a huge window of transmissibility before symptoms start appearing, or the symptoms are very mild.
The larger that window, the scarier a virus gets.
Hentavirus is terrifying if you do contract it, because you’ve got roughly a 1 in 3 chance of dying, but that mortality rate is also the reason why it’s not going to spread to every corner of the world.
Not very, it spreads human to human but much less aggressively than flu or covid.
“We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that’s happening among the really close contacts, the husband and wife, people who’ve shared cabins,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the director of epidemic and pandemic management at the World Health Organization, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday.
…
However, Debbink says, if this is indeed human-to-human transmission, the virus does not seem to be highly transmissible because then “you would have a lot more cases on the cruise ship, just from people being around each other in pretty close proximity.”
Wait, theres a hentai virus?
Worried? No. Earmark it though. Every few years there’s a new potential bug it’s just part of being a species, this one looks gnarly but too soon to tell. That being said, wear masks courteously and wash your hands. If things get bad again we’ll all find out together
Buy the toilet paper now before the shelves are empty.
This gives me flashbacks. I close my eyes and I see empty toilet paper shelves. The horror
Whats weird is, unrelated to the pandemic, I always buy the massive pack of toilet paper. I think it’s like 28 rolls. And I had bought that JUST before all the panic. It’s just how I naturally do this. Buy the big one, and like a year later it runs out.
Then the panic starts, and my mom calls, and says “I was out shopping and picked you up some toilet paper, in case you need it!”
“Oh, I’m good. I just bought some.”
“Just take the damn toilet paper! These shelfs are empty! You don’t know when you’ll get some!”
Gives me ANOTHER of the same size I just bought.
Then my dad calls.
“Hey, I know you sometimes have trouble finding time to go grocery shopping, so I got you some toilet paper. These stores are going crazy!”
“Oh, no no. I have more then enough.”
“I already bought it, and I don’t think you can return toilet paper.”
Gives me a 16 roll pack.
Then my sister calls.
“Heeeeeey, I was out at Costco earlier, and these stores are running out of toilet paper. Luckily I got each of us a 60 roll pack.”
“Nooooooo…I have so much as it is! Mom AND dad gave me a bunch.”
“Well I don’t have room in my house for all this! I got one for you, and one for (other sister), and one for mom!”
gives me 60 more rolls
Then my other sister calls.
“Heeeeey, so (first sister) got me 60 rolls of toilet paper. I don’t like the costco brand. So I’m giving it to you.”
"You know she already got me one, rigUS #+ “Well I don’t like it. So now its yours.”
gives me ANOTHER 60 rolls
Then my aunt called.
“Hey do you need toilet paper?”
“NO!”
“Geez, don’t get mad at me! I’m just helping you out. Take this, and only use it for emergancies.”
gives me a 4 roll pack
I still have a decent amount of toilet paper. Both 60 packs remain unopened. I haven’t looked in that closet to see exactly where I am, but I think I’m at like 60% unused.
Bruh, your family is the reason it got emptied 😂
Damn. I wonder how many other people still have toilet paper from the pandemic. Maybe if toilet paper companies are still seeing a slight dip in demand from people using up their backup reserves
Not at all. Not even a little bit.
Human-to-human transmission is extremely rare.You get it from mouse shit. It’s significantly more likely that the people who got it were all exposed to the same mouse shit than it is that they gave it to each other.You should be way more worried about the mice on that ship coming off and shitting.Edit: This strain is a little contagious. Still shouldn’t be concerned.
Starting this off with: I am not an epidemiologist and most of the epidemiologist I’m seeing online aren’t yet too concerned
That being said, they have not found any rodents on the ship, though that does not mean they didn’t just miss them in their search. The version on the ship has been confirmed to be the Andes Virus (ANDV) which is human-to-human transmissible in a way that most hantavirus are not
It’s hard to say exactly how the virus will behave outside of a cruise ship (which are known for spreading diseases more than other locations), but we can potentially look at a past outbreak in 2018 in a small town for an idea
In this work, we described the isolation of the strain responsible for the largest ANDV PTP transmission outbreak, which occurred in the small town of Epuyén and began on November 2, 2018. This strain, ARG-Epuyén, exhibited a high capacity for PTP transmission, necessitating the implementation of quarantine measures to curtail further spread [8]. The median reproductive number (the mean number of secondary cases caused by an infected person) was 2.12 before control measures were implemented and subsequently dropped to below 1.0 by late January
This all sounds like the very beginning of a Planet of the Apes movie.
I’m on the apes side
Get yer hands off me…
I have read a lot about it because I have stressed a lot about it, I’m also naturally very skeptical so I dig down a lot.
This particular variant is the Andes strain of the virus which have been show to transmit human.
It’s a virus that had existed for long time. And has already caused local epidemics. The most famous the Chilean Argentinian epidemic of 2019 where something like a dozen people died out of thirty infected.
Mortality is high (around 30% of infected, once you develop lung symptoms around 50%) but R0 number is low. Usually the studied R0 number has been below 1. This mean that each person rarely spread it to more than one other person. For comparison covid R0 was something between 2 and 4. This is the main reason to think it won’t spread a lot.
This virus has been around a lot, but it’s true that it has maybe never been in a situation like now with worries about quick international spread via airlines.
Currently most worries are about how easy is to actually spread human to human. There was a case of a flight attendant who was tested after a short contact with an infected but apparently has tested negative (her symptoms were apparently unrelated to the virus). So for now we must watch out if the people who were in flights with some of the infected have also been infected. If there are none or very few infected of those airplane passengers we could, most likely, breath safe, as the danger would be low. If we start to see infections after short contact then we should worry. As of this morning I start to believe that we are on the former scenario, as there has currently not been any positive test after a short contact.
My overall worry is that with globalization on the rise and international fast travel growing each year we will start seeing more and more of these epidemics. It’s just a question of time. From my point of view is not if there will be a pandemic virus that would wipe out a high chunk of the population. I think that’s guaranteed if we don’t change our traveling habits. It’s just a matter of when.
This is the most in depth response yet, thank you
From my point of view is not if there will be a pandemic virus that would wipe out a high chunk of the population. I think that’s guaranteed if we don’t change our traveling habits. It’s just a matter of when.
Yes I agree with you actually. The reasoning behind this conclusion is airtight, yet no one wants to go there because it’s such a disturbing thought.
And even though the COVID lab leak theory is controversial, there have been many well documented lab leaks of other biohazards, viral or otherwise. If we keep poking around with these things it increases the odds of another pandemic increase even further, whether that be by a malicious actor doing it intentionally or someone letting it slip by mistake
I hope you are correct, though I 'm not confident that doing any actual testing is a priority in the USA presently.
I sat next to an army medic of the German-French brigade at a concert yesterday. When I scooted closer to her because other people wanted to sit down I said “Don’t worry, I don’t have the hanta virus” and she said “How do you know? You could catch it on the Schwäbische Alb, it’s not a tropical virus.”
So I’m not particularly worried, especially because journalists are notoriously bad at interpreting WHO communications.
Just don’t lock yourself up on a seafaring vessel full of gluttonous assholes.
Apparently spread by rodents. WHO has said transmissibility is low, not another COVID situation.
This particular strain apparently is the Andes variant which is know to be able to spread among humans. But the R0 number studied on previous epidemics of that strain is indeed low.
When I ask it I get down voted to oblivion. When YOU ask it its fine???
It doesn’t spread person to person so it won’t have the explosive growth and spread to all corners of the globe like covid.
Edit: this one might, though it isn’t clear yet and if it does, it seems to require close contact or at least isn’t as explosive as covid.
Apparently this strain does
Well then you have two options beyond the standard practices such as basic hygiene, food safety, etc.
Panic, freak out and lock your self in a hole.
Or trust that the people who’s actual job to handle this problem will do what they need to.
Or trust that the people who’s actual job to handle this problem will do what they need to.
Hahahahahahaha
Haaaaaahahahahahahaha
Trump sacked them all in America woohoo!
Or trust that the people who’s actual job to handle this problem will do what they need to.
How well did that work out for us during COVID
With a 35% mortality rate, the virus by definition can’t be too contagious, because it kills the host too quickly.
That’s not to say it’s not going to be an issue, just that it’s not going to be at the pandemic/endemic levels of something like COVID, which is a hundred times less deadly, so there’s more chances for it to be transmitted.
Deadly viruses can be very contagious as long as there is a period of time where the host can spread it asymptomatically before symptom onset. As far as I’m aware hantavirus doesn’t have that though? Sounds like shit just hits the fan right away
HPS is a severe and potentially deadly disease that affects the lungs. Symptoms of HPS usually start to show 1 to 8 weeks after contact with an infected rodent.
Early symptoms can include:
fatigue fever muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups like the thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders About half of all HPS patients also experience:
headaches dizziness chills abdominal problems, like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain Four to 10 days after the initial phase of illness, the late symptoms of HPS appear. These symptoms include coughing and shortness of breath. Patients might experience tightness in the chest, as the lungs fill with fluid.
HPS can be deadly. Thirty-eight percent of people who develop respiratory symptoms may die from the disease.
Hantavirus can be spread once mild symptoms appear, which unfortunately are so mild that most people wouldn’t even think about it being hantavirus. And it can take up to 8 weeks for symptoms to start to appear.
Edit: In addition, the fact that a flight attendant managed to catch it does speak towards it being more contagious than previously thought.
Okay so this is concerning. I do think there is some wishful thinking in this thread. I wound bet on it reaching covid levels but it seems some concern is warranted
Yeah I last read that hantavirus has an RTO of .05 whereas Covid was like .3. I could be totally wrong on these numbers because I’m relying on memory, but hantavirus is much harder to catch than Covid.
There are virus highly contagious with also high mortality. In this case death could happen after two months, enough time to spread if it had higher R0. What saves us here is that human to human spread is not that easy. If it were as contagious as covid we would have a problem.
It’s a relationship between how quickly it kills you and how quickly it spread.
For instance VIH had almost 100% death rate (before current treatments) but it’s pandemic because it takes years to kill you.
I’m more afraid of the World Health Organization than the Hantavirus. Whenever they want to confine people to their homes, they release a virus.Then the World Health Organization makes a statement.An excuse is immediately fabricated for the released virus.Men in white clothes appear, followed by masks.
While all this is happening, they are inevitably subjecting people to certain systems.The first pandemic brought with it structures like remote work, masks, wireless payment systems, and online grocery stores.
This time it’s universal citizen salaries, A global passport, an identity where all information is collected in a single source, the disappearance of cash, and digital payments are some of the structures of the future.I still don’t understand the point of killing people to convince them of this new global world order.
Yeah you need to go outside and touch some grass, man…
And buy some weed. Or buy less weed.
I’ll see you when you start eating those herbs soon. The previous virus started like this too, but idiots like you wouldn’t accept it.Even if you pulled out all the weeds now, it wouldn’t do any good.
Upvoted for fictional originality.
