Cruise ship hantavirus strain can spread among humans, says South Africa | Hantavirus

I don't think this is a case of not learning from past pandemics. The incubation time of this hantavirus is so long (I think they said up to 8 weeks) that people with it can be moving around for quite a while before even realising they have it. In this case, as I understand it, one person died on the ship and his body was offloaded at St Helena. His wife, understandably, also got off at St Helena. She then tried to return home to Europe but fell ill on the way and was hospitalised in Joburg. At the time she travelled to Joburg I don't think anyone even knew or suspected hantavirus.

The way this virus works may actually cause people to pay attention.  COVID was a respiratory virus (mostly non-visible symptoms) with (let's be honest) a low mortality rate compared to how bad viruses can be. Hanta is a hemorrhagic virus which presents biblically frightening symptoms and a mortality rate an order of magnitude greater.

A nuke could go off downtown and my boss would be like “you’re still coming in, right?”

Not with that 40% mortality rate we'll probably never make it to work hah

Pandas We’re a close second though

Can you provide a source for that? I couldn't find one

We need a source for this, please.

That's the Fantavirus - it is spread by an orange painted idiot and results in a drop of 40 points of general IQ.

Lol but that happens AFTER the infection...

Has a 1-8 week incubation period with a 40% death rate. COVID has a 2 - 14 day incubation period with a ~1% death rate. 😳

"Man, not feeling good... Maybe a partying in a large group will make me feel better"

What caused it to taper out and not become a bigger issue like COVID?

Good thing it’s happening at a time of great intelligence where people trust medical experts and not podcasters. *F****

Yeah, but the good thing here is - it’s extremely easy to isolate on a cruise ships. Not fun for the poor people on the cruise ships and they’ll be stuck there for a while, but nobody is gonna let anybody off that ship for the next six weeks. Hopefully somebody is gonna airdrop them some food, but by and large they are fucked in a place where they won’t get to share with the rest of us.

No, no, no, not at all!  But essentially, yes!

I feel like part of the reason unfortunately is also that it is an "over there" problem not deemed a threat. Not saying that's right. Would have made sense to start working on a vaccine in 1995 when it was discovered. Were we not thinking about the possibilities? What if it mutated in a way that facilitated transmission?

"Today on the Generic Contrarian Show Podcast, we're going to be enjoying wildlife on a whole new level, and talking about the health benefits to mind body and soul. Here's what the global elites and the left and probably several other buzzword groups want you to miss out on."

It's the same reason those "nigerian prince" scams are really dumb. The dumbest people self-select. Ultra religious people already believe insane, delusional things. They're gullible.

I’m not religious, but I don’t understand how they haven’t tossed that idea around. Based on what I know about them and their beliefs about the devil using someone to spread harm.

Because their values align closer to the Pharisees that crucified Jesus and the Apostles

A shocking number of religious people know little to nothing about their religion. They cherry-pick and only care about the parts or stuff of a religion that validates their opinions or viewpoints or objectives and ignore everything else.

My thoughts exactly. Covid, as deadly as it was, wasn’t the scariest in terms of mortality rate. Hantavirus absolutely is

At first maybe, but I actually think this would end up being much different and ironically might undo a lot of the anti-vaccine sentiment that came out of COVID. Covid was in an awkward position where it was genuinely deadly, but the mortality rate was still low enough that many people only knew folks who got it and basically just had a gnarly cold. The many who actually died were easily dismissed as the “unlucky” who exist with any kind of virus. Didn’t help that most of those chronically disabled by it ended up with cognitive issues rather than physical ones; we all know how unseriously our culture treats mental health and cognition problems. So for a lot of people who are poorly educated, exposed to an echo chamber, or otherwise simply unwilling to believe it was a real problem because of a bad case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, there was a very real (albeit false) sense of security they could fall back upon. If a Hantavirus pandemic occurred and got to the same scale, we’re talking about a mortality rate that is more comparable to the Black Death than the Spanish Flu. Medieval, Biblical plague shit that sifts through entire neighborhoods and empties nearly half of the homes. Anti-vaxxers and trutherism in general would die out pretty quickly in the general population under those conditions, imo. At least regarding hantavirus.

A French national who was not on board the MV Hondius has contracted hantavirus after taking a flight with a passenger from the cruise ship, French media reports, citing a health ministry source. This would be the first person to have contracted the disease who was not on the ship. They were identified as part of contact tracing investigations taking place for confirmed cases. Tests are ongoing to confirm whether it is the Andes strain - the only type of hantavirus that can be transmitted between humans. We have approached the French health ministry for more information.

That's why all those bloody people need to be tested on presence of the virus. If so mandatory quarantine. And contact tracing, rinse and repeat.

Good news is, we don't think the transmission rate is very high. It doesn't spread as easily as COVID. It really only spreads if you're in sustained close contact with someone after they already display symptoms. It's fortunately not very likely to spread too much. This isn't a COVID or a SARS.

And to think when they do that we can't \[ removed by Listnook \]

As a teacher, no thank you from us too! I never want to do that again. PS: Happy Nurse Appreciation Week!

Apparently you can show symptoms 1-6 weeks after exposure. Definitely a terrible idea Edit: 3 days-8 weeks 

*"I'm tired of these monkey fighting rats on this monday to friday ship!" Just someone think of the kids!

You don’t have to trust the company, you can trust the timeline of the illness and how long hantavirus incubates, people were falling sick way too soon after getting on board, it came from on land somewhere

No of course they’d be like, “oh we have tons of rats, we find them all the time”

And passengers have been let off at ports, been on at least one plane, etc. An unrelated person caught it. It's already beyond "quarantine the ship and wait". :(

They PAID to be there. They didn't pay to stay in their rooms; they paid to sneeze on whoever they want.

It’s really no different than any densely populated area, like say a skyscraper. Cruises make the news quite a bit for illness because they have strict reporting requirements but in reality millions of people cruise every year without incident.

There's a rat in the kitchen 🎶🎶🎶🎶

It's mainly spread via inhaling particles and the virus can live on surfaces for days, so even it's not airborne, ventilation (or lack of) is a problem.