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?
Stressing out about it right now won’t do you or anyone else any good. Just keep an ear to the ground for news updates. If they still have hantavirus under control and quarantined on the ship, it’s a good sign that it will stay contained there.
I don’t think we have another global pandemic on our hands, but you should take precautions now just in case - especially if it makes you feel less anxious about it. Wearing a mask in public costs you very little in terms of effort and is far more socially acceptable post-Covid.
I bought all the toilet paper that was in store. Just in case.
It’s fucked up but you’re seeing so much about it online and hearing so much about it because sensationalized fear translates to money and attention for those seeking such things.
That’s not to say that this virus isn’t dangerous and devastating to those affected, infected, and exposed to it. We definitely shouldn’t be down playing that. It’s just that this virus has no chance of causing a major disruption of our lives on a wide-spread global scale.
It’s fucked up but you’re seeing so much about it online and hearing so much about it because sensationalized fear translates to money and attention for those seeking such things.
This is exactly the sort of reasoning I used to downplay COVID though
Just don’t lock yourself up on a seafaring vessel full of gluttonous assholes.
Wait, theres a hentai virus?
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…
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
Since there are comments saying that the hantavirus rarely spreads from human-to-human, it seems like the news hasn’t spread fast enough…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/hondius-ship-hantavirus-andes-strain-9.7189281
Hantavirus is spread by rodents and, more rarely, people. To date, the Andes strain is the only type of hantavirus in which human-to-human transmission has been confirmed, usually through close contact, such as by sharing a bed or food, experts say.
Article title: WHO confirms Andes strain hantavirus on cruise ship passengers, with 3 transferring from ship for treatment
…
And just 13 minutes ago, this news came out: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hantavirus-outbreak-cruise-ship-9.7190707; Contract tracing is underway.
This is mouse shit to human.
Enjoy the buffet! all U can eat!
Still rare.
It’s only newsworthy and scary for the people on that cruise ship since it can be passed pretty easily in such tight, close quarters.
Having worked on a cruiseship, it is insane how fast a single person with a cold becomes 80% of the crew having a cold even if that original person didn’t leave their quarters the whole time they were ill.
Do things spread so fast on a cruise ship die to the ventilation?
It’s because you’re all confined to a relatively small area. You see the same kind of contagion spreadage at conventions, too, but if you’re really sick you can leave and quaratine yourself. You can’t so easily get off a boat.
it’s because people are all eating the same food contaminated with rodent shit.
I’ve heard horror stories of working on cruise ships. How was it?
There are several hundred cases of Hantavirus in the USA and various parts of South America every year. Doesn’t make the news, doesn’t turn into a pandemic.
You’ll be fine unless you’ve been in close proximity to someone who’s been infected.
I thought it couldn’t transfer between humans? Only from rodent saliva/pee/poop
Just like any something-virus. It isn’t just one strain, it is usually a family of several diverse virus with slightly different features. Hanta virus has several varieties, this one is transmisible among humans.
Oh really. That’s… A bummer
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.
journalists are notoriously bad at interpreting WHO communications
Or particularly good at making a sensational mountain that’ll get clicks out of a molehill. Gotta sell your stories, after all.
A former colleague got it in the area of Heidenheim. They were sweeping out the attic of a very old, mouse infested house and didn’t wear any masks though they swept up a lot of dust.
As long as you don’t act careless while in a more risky environment you’re usually fine when it comes to hanta virus.
Is it the “mouse infested” part that made it risky?
Yes, mouse excrements were the culprit. Because they weren’t wearing masks or other protection they swirled particles up in the air and breathed them in. So us actually pretty easy to avoid :)
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.
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.
Upvoted for fictional originality.
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.
No need to panic. The virus is rarely transmitted from human to human or via air.
Cruise ships are a hot bed for diseases though: Many people in a confined space going to places with diseases that their body has no resistance against. So your best protection is simply not going near the ship.
On the topic of staff escaping: Given that the ship hasn’t been able to dock so far I highly doubt that’s true.
The virus is rarely transmitted from human to human or via air.
If this is the case, then why was quarantine necessary to stop the spread in previous outbreaks? Referring to this:
The strain demonstrated a high capacity for sustained transmission among the human population requiring the implementation of quarantine measures, rigorous contact tracing, isolation of close contacts, and active clinical monitoring to prevent further spread.
One of the women who got infected (she knew, her husband had already died and she was very ill) got onto a plane to Johannesburg and died in Johannesburg.
Did she get on a commercial plane by herself or was this a planned airlift to a hospital, though?
It was a commercial flight with 80 passengers. WHO is searching for them.
Also, another patient from the ship is in a hospital in Switzerland. I have no idea how they got there, but I think it’s safe to say that the ship has not been isolated to begin with.
And a German is being airlifted to Düsseldorf, a Dutch person to somewhere in the Netherlands and a Brit to Britain.
This entire thing would not have been a problem whatsoever if the ship had been quarantined and stayed quarantined. Something similar happened in 2018 and thanks to the measures taken only 30 people got infected.
Updoot for calm approach, but it does appear that, at least in one case on the cruise ship herself, one passenger transmitted it to another.
NO claim it was airborne though. Could have been clothing, shared food, a zillion different vectors.
Yes, there has been human to human transmission, however as I wrote it rarely happens. Of course, close contact like in a cruise ship full of people is going to increase the risk.
I agree but to give some context to the staff escaping, this probably was started because one of the people airvaced to a hospital was a staff member. They didn’t “escape” they got sick and needed emergency medical treatment. I can believe someone heard a staff member was no longer on board and warped that into staff “escaping”.
this source claims
Authorities in Switzerland also said a former passenger who tested positive was being treated at a Zurich hospital. The passenger had left the ship at St Helena and it was unclear how he had travelled to Switzerland or which countries he might have passed through. Swiss authorities insisted there was “no risk” to the public
It also claims
But a limited spread among close contacts has been observed in some previous outbreaks with the Andes strain, which has spread in South America, including Argentina, where the cruise trip started in March.
I thought I read there was also a british man who was a member of the staff, I will look and try to get a source to back that up.
Allegedly this one is confirmed to transmit humans to human (South Africa found it to be the case I believe?) and there’s cases in like Switzerland, it’s not like the disease spontaneously formed and then they quarantined they’ve been getting on and off the boats for weeks before they stopped
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
