The individual was apparently diagnosed with the rodent-borne virus after taking a flight alongside someone with the disease, marking the first confirmed infection in someone with no direct connection to the MV Hondius. Three further patients have been evacuated for treatment elsewhere, including a British medic from the ship, a sailor of Dutch nationality, and one German guest. World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus has said the trio is currently “on their way to receive medical care in the Netherlands.” Another person has been hospitalized in Zurich, where authorities insist there is “no risk to the Swiss public.” The pathogen behind the outbreak, dubbed the Andes virus, stands alone among hantaviruses for its ability to spread between humans, with a mortality rate that may reach 40 percent. A Dutch woman aged 69 left the vessel at Saint Helena, flew onward to Johannesburg, and died there—potentially exposing as many as 114 fellow travelers.
This is an exciting time to just having gotten a job in tourism with a lot of global north patrons.
Can’t even mask because that “makes the guests nervous”
if this shit spreads. can’t wait to hear again “it’s just a virus bro, i make viral videos for a living”
(start selling tours of country side, embrace rustic loneliness and safety, go on camping trip for low price of 6k)
start selling tours of country side, embrace rustic loneliness and safety, go on camping trip for low price of 6k
U know what, might not be a bad grift to get into. Lots of people with more money than sense want to larp country living. Already am friends with a bunch of farmers.
Let’s do the decameron but irl
I’m not personally concerned about hantavirus becoming another pandemic. With a narrow vector and low R number, it’s something that surprised me when Gene Hackman’s wife died of it. Avian influenza is still my big candidate for a disruptive outbreak. Seeing what it has done to local bird and mammalian populations is horrifying, and disruption at those trophic levels is a breeding ground for every zoonotic disease.
disruption at those trophic levels is a breeding ground for every zoonotic disease
why is that?
Everything eats something else. Lose the birds and you lose pollinators and insect control, lose the mesopredators and you lose small animal control, lose the large predators and that’s usually a species with a low population density and a long aging process. With any of those you create overpopulation in the species they’d otherwise control.
so you’re referring to if both the predator and the prey can host the disease right? like mammal predators get wiped out, leading to bird overpopulation, leading to lots of new strains
sorry if it’s obvious I just didn’t get the connection lol
There’s the mutation risk when it crosses between species, especially now that it’s firmly established in mammals. What concerns me is the spread of other diseases. Hantavirus doesn’t normally pop up on my radar because rodent populations are suppressed by the predators now dying after eating infected birds. Birds are helping to control the local mosquito populations that are bringing new tropical diseases northward with climate change, along with agricultural pests and the crop diseases they spread. Our scavengers keep corpses from rotting into waterways, our mountain lions attack the weak elk and deer that carry chronic wasting disease, the warmest year in history is bringing a plague of ticks that can disable you for life, and other weakened wildlife carry parasites that would normally open them up to predation. When the ecosystems are thrown out of relative balance, there’s no telling how that failure will cascade. Avian flu here is killing mountain lions that have a population density of 2-4 lions per 100km^2 and it can take upwards of 2-3 years for them to reach sexual maturity. Each one kills around 50 large animals per year and each of those species is the host for something bad.
interesting times huh…
thanks for explaining!
plague ships. you know, if someone re-imagined and reconfigured that right wing crank novel Camp of Saints, but made it about these cruise ships full of elderly affluent types as the most notorious innoculum and vectors of disease for global pandemics due to their ability to travel great distances, rapidly over biophysical barriers and through political boundaries… it could be a true horror story as they spread novel diseases through the core and periphery, where the only “winners” are the hostile, uncontacted peoples who maybe descend from a lineage that survived this all before. boom, twist, story takes place 80,000 years ago - OR - 80,000 years in the future. time is a flat circle. directed by Hiro Murai.
They’ll find a way to blame China for this.
It’s already being called the Andes virus. American imperialism will find a way to invade Colombia over this.
that’s whatever, but eurofriendos might want to restart masking near airports and cities near them for couple of weeks, until this is contained
never should’ve stopped
if you’re not masking then you’re fucking up
Oh fuck it’s human to human
Scariest call I ever got was when I got home from a week long Yosemite trip. The CDC called and said people were getting sick because of mice droppings at my camp site!
Their plan? They told me to self isolate for a week and if I wasn’t dead, cool. I just had to report if I was feeling sick but there wasn’t much that could be done. Longest week ever.
The mother of my daughters was so pissed at me for taking them camping, like I knew there was an invisible disease spreading.
apparently the basic reproduction number (R₀) for this virus is about 1.2 (0.8-1.6). but with a mortality rate so high…
Bozos should’ve upgraded the transmission and abilities before moving on to the symptoms tab smh rookies
depends how long its incubation period is tbh (especially veracity of those numbers), i see contradicting info (2-8 weeks), but there is not a lot of ill people on the ship for now, so it might be kinda too rare to spread (and also for now its on planes/ships, with closed and shit air circulation systems), so well ventilated airports might have dodged its spread everywhere
the Ebola outbreaks in Africa ca. 2014 had rated between 1.4 and 2.3
