Flight Attendant in Netherlands Tested for Hantavirus
Stewardess who was briefly on Johannesburg-Amsterdam flight admitted to Amsterdam UMC on May 7. Tests expected today.
Helpful website, but the cookie settings show hundreds of partners. Deeply unethical in general, let alone for a site that will be read by those who are worried and want information.
Symptoms section is very LLM, and that includes why it's obviously urging that critical early recognition on symptom lists that are too nonspecific to really be actionable.
Imagine the workload if people started seeking medical examinations on basis of the Week 1-2 list.
Generally the best time to deal with potential mass infections is before they become uncontrollable. If you act properly and stop a disaster before it becomes one, the situation will be indistinguishable from an overreaction.
Because absent more evidence we don't yet know if this is a different variant of the Andes virus than the one people have had experience with. A lot hinges on whether this flight attendant is hospitalized out of an abundance of caution, or something entirely unrelated. But given that they came into relatively brief contact with an infected person, it would be significant if somehow she contracted it. A lot of people disembarked and went to various parts of the world. Combined with a long incubation period, that's a lot of guessing.
So far, the flight attendant has tested negative. This of course doesn't mean she hasn't contracted it - hantavirus has a long incubation period after all - but as of right now, whatever symptoms she is experiencing are not due to hantavirus.
There are reasons why this outbreak is slightly more newsworthy than others.
It happened to rich Westerners, not a bunch of poor people from Africa.
It happened on an international flight and a cruise ship. There is a lot of exposure. There are people being monitored for hantavirus being sent back to their respective countries.
People are having flashbacks of 2019/2020 and comparing the news coming out about this outbreak.
The political season is in full swing in the US and there is lots of finger pointing, especially around the health departments.
The messaging is "please keep on living your lives despite all the psychological terror you've been subject to by the power/money that be that don't even attempt to cover its fascist face anymore".
In most cases, infected droppings are the primary source. But my understanding is that there does exist a strain that transmits between humans, and the cruise ship situation has just been confirmed to be that type.
The good news is that hantavirus has been around and known for a long time.
I do love (do I?) that as I get older the early symptoms of most diseases are usually just me on a bad day:
Fatigue, headache, abdominal pain, muscle aches - could be hantavirus, could be waking up in a weird position after slightly undercooked chicken stew for supper
I'm as concerned about this outbreak as anyone, but this number is pure FUD and can go up on a tweet of somebody's grandma sneezing at an airport. Keep the lab confirmed one.
A radio report I heard said that hantavirus is nothing like coronavirus. It is not new, endemic, and there is plenty of immunity around to slow down local spread.
I think we are safe from a pandemic. Hantavirus is primarily transmitted through inhaling virus particles from rodent urine, droppings, or saliva that become airborne.
I like that we, the humanity, have started paying attention to virus outbreaks. Compared to "real" pandemics, COVID-19 was rather mild, but it helped raise awareness. I think we're now much better prepared and equipped for the eventual real pandemic.
I don't really think so. Already in the first stages of this outbreak we're not doing any quarantine, instead we're infecting airline passengers and personnel and let them spread the virus uncontrolled. That doesn't indicate a proper prepared response.
Official knowledge is that Hanta transmission required prolonged close contact, but there are increasingly indication that Hanta can be transmitted through the air. That is going to be ignored in favor of the official but possibly outdated mode of transmission, leading to wrong or insufficient response.
Also I feel like people will be more hesitant than in 2020 to adopt behavior that avoids virus transmission.
If mutated Hanta variants turn out to be very effective at transmission, and if we don't have the luck of a quick vaccin as we did with Covid, we're cooked.
Hanta is a lot more deadly than Covid, and that can possibly be a good thing because that's the one thing that could lead to proper effective response. It has the potential to lead to rigorous measures to stop transmission instead of allowing it to spread to the whole population, leading to fewer cases and fewer deaths.
An interesting view on this. No need to panic, but we should take this outbreak, and others like it, more seriously and not leave things to chance, crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.
Millions of people died and the main takeaway for the US seems to be giving up vaccines and cutting programs that would mitigate future disasters.
Not sure how you've come to that conclusion.
KLM flight attendant tested negative for hantavirus infection, WHO says - https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...