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Why do people care so much about the hantavirus outbreak? The ship is still all over the news and social media. The WHO director-general went to the ship personally, which further indicates that this is a really important matter. It is constantly being compared to covid. Officials keep telling people to calm down, but the way this is covered, the warnings have the opposite effect. The public response seems frantic and only serves to create more uncertainty.
And yet, it just doesn't seem that serious. Sure it can be deadly if you are infected. But from what I understand, Hantavirus mostly spreads to humans through ingestion or inhalation of fluids from rodents. There seems to be no evidence that human to human infection is something the virus is really capable of, and even if this is a strain that mutated to do that, it also doesn't spread through the air.
The most likely scenario in my mind is that hygiene issues on the ship led to a rodent infestation which infected the passengers, and that there is basically no chance that this spreads to the rest of society. It seems about as serious as a hotel giving its residents food poisoning. Terrible for those involved, but irrelevant to the broader world.
But the constant coverage makes me wonder if I am missing something important. Or is this really just a case of the media selling news by appealing to pandemic trauma?
Scientists are pretty sure the Andes strain is capable of human to human transmission. It's not particularly transmissible though since it requires either transfer of bodily fluids or exposure to respiratory droplets. A cruise ship with lots of people in close, prolonged contact is probably the worst case for transmission which would explain the mini cluster of cases.
Last I had heard, they thought the patient zero was a Dutch birdwatcher who visited a rodent-infested landfill with his wife.
This probably won't blow up into a global pandemic, but it's novel, scary (50% fatality rate), and like you said, people still have COVID trauma. Maybe the coverage is a bit overblown but I don't think it has been too egregious. Eg. Some of the cruise ship passengers exposed hopped on airplanes immediately after disembarking, which is another great enclosed space for human to human transmission... It's possible we might see cases pop up elsewhere if any of those passengers were infectious at the time.
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