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PaperclipPerfector  21hr ago (text post)   252 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 7, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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What are the odds the ongoing Andes hantavirus outbreak turns into another global pandemic just six years after Covid?

A KLM flight attendant has been hospitalized with suspected hantavirus infection. That's one of the best jobs for spreading a virus with a very long asymptomatic incubation period.

All this hantavirus stuff is strange. When I first heard of it 20+ years ago (I think a death on the Navajo Nation in NM or something), it was clear that it took close inhalation from an immense amount of mouse fecal material (like being in a filthy crawl space without a ventilator mask for hours). Now between Hackman's wife and the cruise ship outbreak, that no longer seems to be the case.

edit--I was off by 10ish years, it was the 1993 outbreak I remembered.

Their initial recommendation was to name the pathogen Muerto Canyon virus, after an involved area on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo people reacted strongly against any further association with the disease that had led to so much initial prejudice, and tribal elders appealed to officials to reconsider. Ultimately, the new agent was officially named Sin Nombre virus (virus with no name).

A deadly new virus came out of a place called Cañon del Muerto. C'mon man.

It's been around since forever in western North America -- endemic in deer mice IIRC? This new one is a different strain I guess, but now that I think about it the mouse droppings thing was a very early nudge towards me being radicalized by public health morons.

"You need to be Extremely Concerned about cleaning up mouse poop in your cabin" -- which you and everyone else has been doing on a yearly basis since Time Immemorial, riiiight...

•extremely rare version that can pass from person to person

•pops up 800 miles from its closest recorded habitat

•in a cruise ship, the perfect floating incubator for massive global transmission

This sounds like a bio-weapon deployment.

Weaponized hantavirus? It's probably a short list of countries that could even do it, and the blowback would be extreme if a western country ever authorized it and it was leaked. I think China already got hurt by the Coronovirus shutdowns, I doubt they would want to roll the dice on something like that again. China is already winning economically in the status quo, no need to kick the table over.

Targeting a cruise ship is a little too slapdash for countries with the means to do it.

pops up 800 miles from its closest recorded habitat in a cruise ship

Come on, is this where we're at? Most people on cruise ships live elsewhere. They're only on the cruise ship as tourists.

It's a different one. Still an American type, but from what I've read it looks like this specific hantavirus can be transmitted from person to person. Not as easily as common cold or flu, but still.

I'm also reading that close prolonged contact is typical, not just droplets across a conversation.

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