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?
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.
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.
Anyway, if they were smart, they would’ve started in Madagascar. I’m not worried, no way this is the one.
Covid plays the long game, though. People who only had a rough time of it can die as a result of it years later.
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.
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.