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by tasuki 46 days ago
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.
3 comments
neals 46 days ago
Are we? I feel like we're cruising and flying a boat full of potentially infected people to 23 counties.
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roelschroeven 46 days ago
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 That is going to be ignored in favor of the official but possibly outdated mode of transmission, leading to wrong or insufficient response.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.

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roelschroeven 42 days ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/hantavirus-compla...

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.

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113 46 days ago
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.
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jrmg 46 days ago
There’d’ve been be no cases if we just hadn’t done testing.
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