Last passengers leave virus-hit cruise ship as three more test positive

So, uh, if more people keep testing positive, WHY are we sending them everywhere?

So we had all these people neatly quarantined on a isolated vessel and we just let them disembark before all passengers were tested and returned a negative result?

> Before the American case was confirmed, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the decision by the US not to follow the organisation's guidelines over the hantavirus outbreak "may have risks". > The WHO has recommended 42 days of isolation for those leaving the MV Hondius. > But Dr Jay Bhattacharya, acting head of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said he did not want to cause public panic How about you prioritize public health, not public perception? Thats how covid kicked the US in the nutsack.

The year is 1347. Plague is carried by rats and spread around the world by people travelling on ships. The year is 2026. Plague is carried by rats and spread around the world by people travelling on ships.

We need legal protection for quarantined individuals so they don't risk losing their jobs and their paychecks. Its a lot cheaper to cover a dozen people for eight weeks than it is to risk another covid. The main reason people try to get out of quarantine is because they need their job and paycheck.

Whyyyyyyy are we letting them all go home and then immediately finding out some are symptomatic??? This is literally the kind of stupid we used to laugh about in zombie movies/apocalypse movies because how would we ever be that dumb? And now we’re just sending infected patients all around the world. How can we blame people for panicking about another pandemic that’s supposedly unlikely when this is how we’re handling it?

By my count, this brings the total confirmed cases up to 10, after the first person got sick in early to mid-April. So after a month on a cruise ship, considered the ideal place for a virus like this to spread, out of around 150 people, 10 caught it.

Three more test positive. I now it's close quarters, but the low transmissibility we were told about this disease seems suspect.

I am never going on a cruise ship. 100% not worth it.

Now I know this virus “isn’t COVID” but can we all at least agree this is being managed as poorly as COVID and speaks volumes about how politicized health strategies are?

Good thing they can be out of sight and mind with all those non existent cruise inspectors that RFK fired.

Cruise ships suck lol I feel bad for these people. I just don’t really understand the logic to send them home. Couldn’t we have setup like a field hospital somewhere for them?

Well, it has a statistical 35 to 50 percent mortality rate. Somewhere between one in three and one in two statistically die, if infected. I don't think the situation is being handled properly for this kind of risk factor. The trouble is that the situation is being responded to by multiple high level organizations, nationally and internationally. And then I wonder why that is. Is it not as bad as they say, and it's just hype? Are the statistics wrong? Or are they releasing it for public review and intentionally trying to fan this? If, on the low end, it gets into the public and it has a one in three mortality rate, were talking about a third of a billion people dying *at least*. Something's definitely not right, here.

Although keeping elders with complex needs on a ship would be “difficult”, it would be way cheaper to bring a medical ship to support them at sea than risk popping the bubble of spread, and risking millions of people who ALSO will have complex needs but won’t either be able to access medical care or we won’t have the resources to support them (as there’s nothing much to do for severe ARDS from hanta beyond ICU care -which is the most expensive treatment). Who made the decision to breech the containment?

They should have docked this ship and quarantined everyone in place.

The biggest question here isn't how many people are going to be infected. It's whether the virus evolved into a different/more transmissible strain. There was an outbreak in Argentina in a birthday party in 2018/2019 and I recall there were more than 34-35 people infected at the end. They were able to contain it. And it didn't make the news that much because it wasn't post-pandemic level of histeria related to outbreaks, but the strain was the Andes itself. IF this is the same strain, containment is possible.

For a virus that doesn't spread very well it sure does seem to be spreading pretty well. I'm keeping an eye on those 12 Dutch doctors, curious if any of them test positive

of course the rich can do whatever they want

I don't understand how a virus can break out on a cruise ship, be detected, and then ~~but~~ not* be contained. Why are people being let off?

Here's a statement from the International Hantavirus Society: https://zenodo.org/records/20075274 Tldr: it's not going to be a pandemic, but it should be taken seriously.

Good news! Even if it's far more infective than we think, no one will be able to travel anywhere to spread it, because we're getting fuel shortages soon!

I guess containment doesn’t exist anymore.

WHY ARE THEY LEAVING THE SHIP

So we are just.. opting to seed this all over then huh

So 4 more weeks and this will either still be a conversation or it’ll have died down. So far, at least stuff like contact tracing started right away. That’s half the battle.

I feel like they should have kept them docked until everyone tested negative.

If this actually becomes a big deal I will without any doubt in my mind know it was intentionally done so

For a virus that supposedly doesnt transfer easily, it's transferring pretty easily.

They need waivers on these monumental wastes of money and harbingers of pollution that in the event of a contagion you are bound to remain in the ship until everyone is beyond the stage of incubation.

Not infecting others...welp that ship sailed...

Ah yes, we have learned absolutely nothing from COVID.

We really speed running the end of humanity hmm? Yeah we deserve it. Selfish fggn monkeys. 

It seems like it should be the perfect place to contain it, on a cruise ship with everything you need right there..

Wow! That was a whole lot of people making out and swapping spit. /S I'm sure all the hazmat and respiratory systems the healthcare workers are wearing is just to keep from getting droplets on them while they spend prolonged time in close quarters with the victims - and not because they have reason to believe that it is has potential to be airborne.

I don’t understand why people are acting like this has been happening forever when hantavirus has existed for a long time and was never considered especially alarming before like it is now.

Masks up, everybody! This Andes variant of the Hanta virus is transmitted human to human and has an 8 week incubation period with a 30-40% fatality rate.

This cements my opinion that going on a cruise will be at the bottom of my list of travel plans. They just sound like giant incubators.

Keep them on the goddamn boat

Forget human rights. Should have kept them all on that ship until it was over.

If you pay attention to the epidemiologists, this has a very low risk of becoming a pandemic. But damn, I feel bad for the passengers that tested positive. They've likely been agonizing about their risk for weeks but unable to leave the ship, and now they've got an almost 50% chance of death staring them in the face. Hopefully they luck out and more survive than usual.

**TL;DR:** We need to be careful, maybe more careful than some countries are being, but while the stakes are high because of the case fatality rate, the odds are low for a bad outcome because of the way ANDV works. I think part of the concern is that the quarantines seem not very consistent or rigorous, especially at first glance. In some cases they are described as entirely voluntary, thus arguably not really quarantines. One thing worrying people is that some countries (I think we know which ones...) don't have a good history of compliance with voluntary self-isolation. In practice though, the processes are actually more careful than it seems (see below). I'm not extremely worried, but I do think that a more consistent, rigorous home quarantine procedure would be a valid response. That was ultimately employed in the Epuyén outbreak and it worked well. Total infections stayed low, the R0 was brought down, and the outbreak burned out fairly quickly after. Scattering cases with minimal isolation followed by phone monitoring after isn't as common as many news reports are implying, but it is somewhat like that in a few places. That places a lot of emphasis on good faith, which I think COVID taught us is not always a great idea. That said, we can take a cautious view while still being reassured by the facts. Most of the quarantines that are technically "voluntary" are not really "optional". Generally, the returnees don't have to be forced to accept hosted isolation because they have already agreed to it. Even in the US, most of the returning passengers aren't being sent directly home, they have agreed to stay at quarantine/healthcare centers. Of the seven who are at home, they are being actively monitored and don't really have the option to refuse that. Then there are some positive things to note about the virus itself and our knowledge of it. It's not COVID, it's not novel, and it doesn't spread as readily. It's a known disease with a 30 year history of well-studied, documented patterns. With 181 people on board the ship originally and 11 confirmed or probable infections so far, that's 6% in a month (since the first death) in an exceptional, highly favorable environment for spread. The ships RO = 2.76 under nearly "ideal" conditions to spread around a group. Epuyén's outbreak was similar, with an RO = 2.12 mostly from two events, a birthday party and a wake. Both were situations where the people were hugging, kissing, wiping their eyes, etc. a lot in a crowded, enclosed space for quite a while. It's worth noting that 21 of the 34 total cases came from direct contact with just three actively sick people, two of whom were married. Contact with either of that couple alone was 16 cases, almost half of the entire outbreak. The guy with a very active social life only transmitted 6 cases, including to his wife, all while actively sick. His wife transmitted the other 10 at a wake, also while actively sick. There is a chain of transmission with ANDV, but it's a short chain and not super hard to break. (For comparison, the RO for COVID (Omicron) is/was around 8-10+. It's more like a cloud than a chain.) Will there be more cases? Yes. Will some people who were not on the ship get infected? It's very possible, mostly among those who share close spaces with people from the ship. Will that translate into much community infection? Very unlikely. We almost certainly won't be looking around wondering where those infections came from, because "the call is coming from inside the house".

STOP SENDING THEM ALL ON WORLD TOUR