So about that hantavirus

Of course that hantavirus boat had some Texans on it.

Two Texas residents were on board a cruise ship that experienced an outbreak of the rare hantavirus, health officials confirmed.

The CDC notified the Texas Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday that the two individuals had left the MV Hondius and returned to the U.S. before the outbreak was identified, according to a release by the DSHS.

Three passengers died and one was placed in intensive care in a South African hospital as a result of the outbreak, which occurred while the ship was in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Officials said the two individuals are not experiencing symptoms at this time and did not have contact with anyone who was ill, and agreed to continue to monitor for symptoms.

I’m sure everyone is gonna be totally normal about this. But what should you, a person who is not ruled by fear and irrational hatred, think about it? Perhaps this will help.

1. Case count has remained stable. There are still three deaths and five cases. I hope it stays this way, but there is a chance (and I expect) it will increase over the next six weeks. This virus has a long incubation period, up to 45 days (median 18 days), during which it can enter the body, latch on, and wreak havoc. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of time and biology.
2. Risk to the general public remains low, per the WHO. I agree with this assessment. Risk is probabilistic: what’s possible isn’t what’s probable. The odds of this escalating are low for several reasons:
   1. This isn’t a novel virus. We’ve known about Andes hantavirus since the 1990s. We have prior data about how it spreads, where it’s located, and how it acts. That’s different from Covid-19.
   2. Past Andes hantavirus outbreaks typically involve close-contact settings, such as caring for a sick person or sleeping in the same bed. To our knowledge, this isn’t spread asymptotically. Some research shows spread through more casual contact, but all prior outbreaks have been contained successfully. In this outbreak, all cases so far are linked to close contact. This helps with containment.
   3. Like many viruses, Andes can mutate randomly or reassert, but it doesn’t have a track record of rapid mutation, making it hard to change the circumstances quickly. WHO has confirmed that this holds here—the sample in South Africa is nearly identical to the version seen in Argentina.
3. Off the boat, there is extensive contact tracing. Thirty people got off the boat after the first death (and before officials knew this was an outbreak). They are now being contact-traced by epidemiologists. This means alerting those passengers, monitoring for any symptoms, tracing their steps (such as boarding a plane), and alerting those who are near them for an extended period. None of these passengers has symptoms so far. Six are Americans and live in California, Georgia, Virginia, and Arizona.

   Note: Because there is a lot of contact tracing, you may start hearing rumors about more positive cases, like a flight attendant. These may turn out to be truly positive, but importantly, having symptoms does not mean it’s hantavirus. Epidemiologists discern correlation from causation by understanding risk (like where contacts are relative to the patient) and by sending the test to confirm. This takes time.

4. On the boat, people will get relief soon. Three sick passengers were evacuated from the ship to a hospital yesterday, which is excellent news. Hospitals have specialized airborne isolation units designed exactly for situations like this. The ship is now heading toward islands near Spain, which have agreed to allow it to dock. It should reach there by Monday. It’s still unclear what the long-term plan is, but I hope passengers will be able to safely isolate closer to home and near their families.

There’s more, so read the rest. There’s an especially helpful graphic later in the piece, which should make it clear that if you weren’t on the ship itself or have close contact with anyone on it or are exposed to wild rodent feces, urine, or saliva, you are in the clear. As for the passengers themselves, those who disembarked in the US are in some form of quarantine until the end of the incubation period. Again, I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine.

And hey, if not, there’s always this.

Should we be worried about a hantavirus outbreak here in Houston? I called Dr. Peter Hotez to ask.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Houstonians relied on Hotez for calm, high-level assessments of the outbreak, the virus and the vaccines being developed to fight it. With his team at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, Hotez develops low-cost vaccines for low-income nations. He’s also the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

[…]

So basically, this outbreak is something for epidemiologists to watch, but regular people don’t need to worry right now.

Yeah, that’s about right.

I was surprised to see that sketchy doctors are touting ivermectin to prevent hantavirus infections — the same as they promoted it to fight COVID-19.

You’ve got a very corrupt wellness and influencer industry that pushes medicines that they can buy in bulk and then jack up the price and sell it to you with an expensive telehealth visit. Ivermectin is one of those.

They’ll try to tell you that they can repurpose those medicines to treat everything. They’ll repurpose them for cancer. They’ll repurpose them for COVID. Now they’re repurposing for hantavirus. They’ll make money. But it won’t help the patient.

Is there anything ivermectin can’t do? And if you still want more, listen to yesterday’s episode of What Next and learn more about the doctor on the cruise who stepped in when the ship’s doctor got sick.

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