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Notes -
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?
Media looking for something to sell is absolutely part of it, the bigger part is a poor information environment -
On Meddit everyone seems aware of all the pieces and therefore concern is low, however elsewhere (including here) people seem to be missing or misunderstanding one or more of these pieces.
That can easily breed fear. For instance some people in gen pop think this is a possible pandemic. No not really. Some people here think this could plausibly be a bioweapon no not really.
But if you are concerned about either of those things panic and discussion seem reasonable enough.
FWIW, that has been the approach of the Finnish media. "This is very unusual and a deadly outbreak but there is no reason for concern as human to human transmission is very inefficient and thus risk of any sort of pandemic is very low".
Basically the same as if there was an Ebola outbreak on a cruise ship. That'd be newsworthy and reason for cautioning travelers who may have interacted with people from that ship but otherwise just "stuff happens abroad, evening news as usual".
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