Army parachutes onto remote island to help man with suspected hantavirus (www.bbc.com)
from Valuy@lemmy.zip to world@lemmy.world on 10 May 12:39
https://lemmy.zip/post/64061606

#world

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givesomefucks@lemmy.world on 10 May 13:20 collapse

Article does elaborate that it’s the Andes variant (the only one that does human to human) but I don’t think it mentioned the 40% mortality rate when it’s a respiratory infection, paywall kicked in before I skimmed it all.

But anyways, journalist really need to specify “Andes variant” in headlines. People are just googling “hantavirus” and no one is freaking out enough.

All it takes is one infected person going home and spreading it and we’re fucked. Especially since it’s coming from a cruise ship, so it’s already people that don’t take hygiene seriously, or they wouldn’t be going on cruise ships.

A modern typhoid Mary traveler would be a huge deal especially with long incubation periods and how long of a range infection can spread.

Like, there’s already someone that caught it walking within four feet of a table that had an infected person eating at it. If one of these fucks gets on an airplane while infectious, they’re gonna infect everyone on the plane, and 4-6 weeks later they’ll infect everyone they interact with

We’re insanely lucky we caught it on that ship, but we should have quarantined the whole fucking thing immediately.

This could make COVID look like nothing.

40% mortality, when dealing with isolated cases.

For isolated cases COVID mortality was well under 1%, deaths didn’t rack up until hospitals were overwhelmed…

If we start at 40% mortality with adequate hospital care, it’s gonna essentially be 100% mortality if hospitals are already full.

frongt@lemmy.zip on 10 May 14:20 next collapse

A bunch of them already got on a plane. We would already be seeing it if it was that bad.

obviouspornalt@fedinsfw.app on 10 May 14:25 next collapse

let’s see how things look in 6 weeks.

givesomefucks@lemmy.world on 10 May 15:24 collapse

Longer than that.

Evacuations are just starting today, and most (I think all) countries are just doing two week quarantine.

Symptoms show up at latest at 6 weeks, but can be as soon as four days. And right before symptoms you become infectious.

The real danger is these people get infected during evac, don’t display infections till after quarantine, and then upon release become infectious and spread it. Especially since they’ll think they’re safe and are likely to immediately go out in public.

Even with expontial spread, 6 weeks from now we’ll still be “fine” in the present tense, but that doesn’t mean we’re not already fucked.

That’s why controlling the begining is so important and everyone on that ship needs a two month quarantine to be sure.

givesomefucks@lemmy.world on 10 May 15:08 collapse

Signs and symptoms of HPS due to Andes virus appear 4 to 42 days after exposure.

www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/about/andesvirus.html

Almost a month and a half time hivit symptoms post infection…

The issue is they’re putting everyone on planes, then quarantining them. But only for two weeks…

It’s been worse than usual lately, but I’m really struggling how people can’t see this is clearly not being handled correctly. Like, clearly if one person is infectious, they infect everyone on the flight, and then they may not even show symptoms until a month later…

apnews.com/…/hantavirus-cruise-ship-hondius-tener…

The Spanish flight was today (yesterday?) saying:

We would already be seeing it if it was that bad.

Is just wild bro, and what’s fucked is that’s the prevailing attitude, as a species we just don’t understand anything but immediate consequences anymore

frongt@lemmy.zip on 10 May 16:09 collapse

One of my friends is an epidemiologist. She does infectious disease stuff. She’s not too concerned about it, and I trust her expertise over media sensationalism.

givesomefucks@lemmy.world on 10 May 17:27 collapse

and I trust her expertise over media sensationalism.

What media sensitationalism?

There is none, that’s what my comment was about

Even just look at that link about how kitted out the WHO workers were during the evacuation.

The issue is individual countries not treating it seriously, obviously that would include some epidemiologists.

Like, not saying she’s not competent, but don’t forget what happened to the first surgeon that started washing his hands. It doesn’t matter if she has a degree and decades of experience if she doesn’t have a questioning attitude and just goes with the flow.

Because, again, the problem is that attitude being pervasive in the first place…

There are just so many different ways you’re missing the point here buddy…

Edit:

I mean, even if she’s “competent” in her day to day work…

If she isn’t concerned about andes variant as an epidemiologist, she isn’t paying attention and hasn’t been for years at least

In 2024, the NIH identified several families of viruses — including hantaviruses — that were extremely dangerous and had no effective vaccines or treatments, making them of special concern for their potential to cause a pandemic. To better prepare for future pandemics, the NIH awarded a series of grants through the ReVAMPP program to study these viruses and develop new tools to combat them, including the grant that established the Provident consortium and enabled this latest study. McLellan and other Provident researchers have simultaneously been working to find ways to address other viruses that health officials have identified as especially dangerous in an outbreak, such as measles and Nipah virus.

news.utexas.edu/…/scientists-map-deadly-hantaviru…

And that article was written before the cruise ship outbreak, it literally can’t be “media sensationalism” about the cruise out real, that’s not how linear time works.

Takapapatapaka@tarte.nuage-libre.fr on 10 May 15:55 collapse

Was curious about those numbers and ended up reading this article, which was quite interesting : https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid

In short, i think the difference in death rate between covid and hantaviruses’ respiratory infections is probably smaller than 40 to 1 (though still presumably high). This is because (i suppose) both number are a ratio of confirmed death to confirmed cases. As the article points out, the number of confirmed cases can fluctuate depending on how much you test people : for covid, this kind of mortality rate (CFR) was higher at first because few people were tested. Once a lot of tests were made, it diminished. I guess (and from now on it is 100% my uneducated take) that the respiratory infections due to the Andes variant are not well tested, and the high mortality rate is partly due to the fact that it’s more likely to test people dying or nearing death because of it, than people who had less or no problems but got silently infected.

Still, had no idea death rates were that high, thanks for sharing this ! I’ll be more careful about this issue now.

givesomefucks@lemmy.world on 10 May 17:31 collapse

I mean, it killed Gene Hackman’s wife…

It’s called “andes variant” but it’s been in America for a while.

Weirdly enough, it’s such a big concern that we mapped it like a month before this cruise outbreak:

news.utexas.edu/…/scientists-map-deadly-hantaviru…

Because we knew we were gonna be fucked if a more transmissible variant showed up…

In 2024, the NIH identified several families of viruses — including hantaviruses — that were extremely dangerous and had no effective vaccines or treatments, making them of special concern for their potential to cause a pandemic. To better prepare for future pandemics, the NIH awarded a series of grants through the ReVAMPP program to study these viruses and develop new tools to combat them, including the grant that established the Provident consortium and enabled this latest study. McLellan and other Provident researchers have simultaneously been working to find ways to address other viruses that health officials have identified as especially dangerous in an outbreak, such as measles and Nipah virus.

And it may just have…

Takapapatapaka@tarte.nuage-libre.fr on 10 May 18:02 collapse

Yeah, it’s still something very dangerous, and i’m grateful for the info you shared, otherwuse i’d have no idea. I just wanted to share the “fun” maths behind those statistics.