While I have been reading news about the Gulf War, I have also been paying attention to a viral outbreak on a cruise ship. While virus outbreaks on cruise ships, like viral outbreaks in China, are fairly common, this outbreak has some interesting qualities that raised some eyebrows. As time went on, the situation continued and continues to get worse.
TLDR: Reports of passengers becoming extremely sick and dying became a story about a Hantavirus with the ability to quickly spread between humans.
The expedition vessel MV Hondius arrives in Argentina in late March, during peak hantavirus season. The ship leaves at the beginning of April with all passengers in good health.
Case 1) A 70 year old (old) passenger gets sick on April 6 and dies from rapid respiratory failure on April 11.
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Case 2) On April 24 his wife feels sick and leaves the ship. She then travels by air to Johannesburg and becomes extremely ill during the flight. She throws up and collapses at Tambo international and later dies in a hospital on April 26.
Case 3) Also on April 24 another passenger on the ship starts to have pneumonia symptoms that worsen and is evacuated.
Case 4) On April 28 a female passenger becomes ill with pneumonia symptoms and passes away on May 2.
On May 4 viral testing of the third passenger and the body of the wife confirm it to be Hantavirus.
Cases 5, 6, 7) On May 5, three crewmembers of the ship, including the ships doctor, fall ill with similar symptoms.
Currently the ship is heading toward the Canary Islands where it is to be quarantined/decontaminated. Well they were, they don't want the plague ship anymore.
Case 8 ) On May 6 another man who was on the cruise, but left earlier, tested positive for Hantavirus and is being treated in Switzerland.
Now about the Hantavirus itself
Hantavirus is a rodent borne virus that humans can get from messing with infected ratshit and normally cannot spread human to human. Well except for the Andes strain from south america, especially found in rural Argentina.... This outbreak is likely that strain or a new variant of it. Of course other possibilities are not off the table, but I'll let people like Drain Todger handle that...
The Hantavirus has a very long incubation period, between 2-8 weeks, and causes symptoms that look like common influenza-like illnesses. However, these illnesses can rapidly worsen as the virus causes the immune system to overreact with a cytokine storm. It especially goes for the kidneys, lungs, and the digestive system.
A recent example is Gene Hackman's wife who had Hantavirus. She was sick-but-not-super-sick and then a few hours later had lungs full of fluid.
The big question is how contagious and containable is this new Hantavirus? How does it spread human to human? Fluids? Aerosol? Droplets? Feces? Did they get it from contaminated food? All of the above? Does it spread asymptotically and/or symptomatically? Can it infect rodents who can spread it back to humans? We don't know yet. Historically, Andes takes a long time to transfer enough of a viral load to infect another person, this strain seems to take a shorter amount of time.
Potential Super Spreader Event(s):
The biggest concern, is that the wife (case 2) traveled by air while she was sick. She possibly infected a lot of people, both on the plane and in the airports she went to. Complete and total containment failure but, to be fair, they didn't know. That is the danger of this thing, it takes forever to appear and seems like nothing until its something.
Ok while I'm typing this up, we have another infected individual who was on the cruise but at some point left the ship and is now in Switzerland. So another potential super spreader.
Oh and apparently a Frenchman who was not on the ship, but on the flight with the wife, tested positive for Hantavirus. Hopefully it is a false positive.
Alright that is enough. The situation is changing too fast.
This will either be the real deal or this will be another nothingburger with nothing in between. We will know in few weeks. Worst case scenario, few people are going to get sick and a few weeks after that, massive spread. Best case scenario, it peters out like Ebola or Monkeypox.
Dont see this going as far as Covid did. This is a known virus and think its just going to a big nothing burger. Also I read somewhere this strain of the virus does not spread between people easily.
Edit:
I feel the need to elaborate on this more. Covid 19 was a literal bio weapon from a lab in Wuhan China, this is a known strain of a virus that does not pose an imminent threat on the world and is less transmissable between person to person. Another big thing with covid looking back on it was that we didnt know how the fuck Covid spread and you had retards saying it was spreading from animal to human.
Even the COVID faithful might not own up to it, but they can see with their own eyes everything went to shit because of it.
And even the most staunch of "we have to lock DOWN" acolytes know that enough time has passed that everyone who's sick of their shit isn't putting up with it anymore. We've gotten the arguments in line, we have evidence and enough gumption to say: "it didn't fucking work, we knew it wasn't going to fucking work, and you fucktards want to do more of the shit that caused supply chains to collapse, for our kids to suffer developmentally and miss out on being young, for enough of our relatives to die in isolation, and for everyone around us to become emotional retards and for fucking what? We didn't recover from what happened the last time. You're going to whinge that people didn't care enough? Well, what about caring enough about the aftermath? How much more societal collapse will satisfy you, you weak little troglodyte?"
Rats spread the virus.
Rats like to hang out near trash covered shitholes.
Indians are migrating everywhere and turning other parts of the world into trash covered shitholes.
Society didn't collapse, but I haven't had to go to a single fucking dinner party since 2019. Nobody ever contacts me anymore unless for business.
And I like money. Sadly, traffic has returned to pre-covid levels and people are back into handshakes. Yuck.
I made a shitpot of money since 2020 because I hadn't forgotten the lessons of 9/11. When people start saying shit like "we stand together," figure out how to profit off of it, that's all I can say.
Cruise ships are an incomprehensible nightmare. Used to be when you wanted to crowd way too many people on a boat, you needed whips. Mouse-laden buffets would have been more effective, apparently.
Dont see this going as far as Covid did. This is a known virus and think its just going to a big nothing burger. Also I read somewhere this strain of the virus does not spread between people easily.
Edit:
I feel the need to elaborate on this more. Covid 19 was a literal bio weapon from a lab in Wuhan China, this is a known strain of a virus that does not pose an imminent threat on the world and is less transmissable between person to person. Another big thing with covid looking back on it was that we didnt know how the fuck Covid spread and you had retards saying it was spreading from animal to human.
TPTB will find a way. Most people have already resigned themselves to the fact that the world is getting locked down again. Anyone who opposes lockdowns and mask/vax mandates will be made an enemy of the world once again.
TPTB will find a way. Most people have already resigned themselves to the fact that the world is getting locked down again. Anyone who opposes lockdowns and mask/vax mandates will be made an enemy of the world once again.
New World hantaviruses are scary stuff. This could either burn out like MERS/SARS or be really fucking bad depending on how transmissible it is. It has a long incubation period so we won't know how infectious it really is until the end of the month really.
What is really concerning is that one French guy that caught it during a flight, it is now confirmed that the Andes strain can infect human-to-human which had iffy evidence before, but if you can transmit it without showing symptoms, that's an apocalyptic scenario, but unlikely.
TPTB will find a way. Most people have already resigned themselves to the fact that the world is getting locked down again. Anyone who opposes lockdowns and mask/vax mandates will be made an enemy of the world once again.
