I have listened to the WHO and the Andes Strain of the Hantavirus and it is a human to human transmission virus that is known in Argentina and Peru and has caused severe respiratory problems and death in the people who have had it and it can take about six weeks for incubation in the people who are exposed to it. There is no cure for it and it has no Treatment and is only given by Ventilation and some people are needed to be in ICU to survive and they can be treated with dialysis for their kidney issues. The countries that have had the patients transferred from the cruise ship are all doing very strict protocols compared to the USA.
I am delighted and relieved to see that you and YLE are teaming. I look to you both as my trusted sources for all things public health now that my government has been stolen by con artists and can no longer be trusted. I feel good about supporting you both materially. I will continue to do so and encourage anyone I might influence to do the same. Public health is deadly serious and has become negatively politicized by grifters. I am grateful for your work to counter that criminal activity.
Everything is fucked up!!! Painting the reflecting pool blue, POTUS driving in the middle of said pool.. I listened to Tim and Bill Kristol, the Strait is still screwed up. I listened to PBS and they interviewed Dr. Shah formerly with CDC. The hanta virus is there a vaccine for that? We don't know... there was a division at the CDC that dealt with outbreaks on cruise lines.... Guess what! DOGE cut that !!! WTF! And then what, is there gonna be just one political party ? the republicans???? All these white people in the south, redistricting black folks, so why would black folks go out to vote?
Dr. Michael Osterholm has a podcast about infectious disease called “The Osterholm Update.” He started it during Covid and it still provides useful info about public health threats like measles and whooping cough. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand it, and he is always a kind and thoughtful voice. I recommend it for scientifically accurate, data-based public health news.
I think the whole thing boils down to resentment/anger over Covid restrictions. People felt their "freedom" threatened by them and have been mad ever since. So they get revenge on health authorities for advocating for vaccines, masking etc. There was a psychological blow which for them outweighed fear of the virus. I do believe that public health authorities underestimated the strength of these emotions and were at times condescending to the opposition. They did not understand that people felt they were being deprived of a valuable good. You may disagree with the sentiment but should not underestimate its power. "Freedom" for Americans often overrides other values.
"TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS have said that these and other changes will not interfere with their ability to monitor global health threats or protect American lives."
The same people who have been lying, or at least playing dumb, about the 2020 election for more than 5 years. The only one they want to protect is their cult leader.
"They know that Donald Trump has spent much of his second presidency waging an all-out assault on America’s global health infrastructure..."
My usual broken record: Not to take a molecule of guilt and responsibility from TACO, but it's not just him, but 1000s of other accomplices who do all the work and take all the risk. By now he doesn't even need the ability to seek and find the most evil anti-science, anti-Republic people (e.g. RFK, Jr.) to surround and protect him, they're the only ones who come to him. Patriots who would slap him down - and he always backs down when truly confronted - no longer even bother to apply, as they'd be greatly outnumbered by the traitors. Those of us paying attention knew that long before the '24 election.
An important cutback by this administration is grants from the federal government to local and state health departments. These are often the agencies responsible for detection, tracing, and screening. Los Angeles County has one of the best local health departments. It publishes updated disease statistics and conducts wastewater testing. All of those activities are threatened by the federal cutbacks, although LA County has more money than most other counties and even than most states. To compensate for this (and other losses of federal funding) Proposition ER on the June ballot would impose a 0.5% sales tax in the County. That's a large increase that would bring sales tax in LAC to around 11% in most areas.
As with everything in the Trump era, critical issues are handled dismissively and incompetently, with global consequences. Is there anyone or group who can pick up the mantle of leadership and funding that this country has abandoned? It's so much easier and faster to destroy than to rebuild. In every aspect of American policy Trump is erasing decades of progress and replacing with outdated thinking and retrograde actions. The threat level is high.
I agree people should be better tuned with their own districts.
But if Democrats start accepting Republican/ Conservative/ maga points of view what's the point.
Of having two parties, if on big issues that will take a majority vote they will vote Republican.
I guess a Democrat in name only is better than no Democrat.
What really bothers me is that the supreme Court says that they want the legislators to pass laws, BUT when laws are passed like The Voting Act Law, they dismantle it because they don't agree.
The supreme Court is THE major reason the president does what he wants and Congress does nothing, because it's easier that way.
What a crappy people in the supreme Court and Congress.
As I've posted before, hire a clown and the funny little car full of them: Expect a circus.
When you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know that you don't know, and you wouldn't give a tinker's dam if you did know...well, there you go.
I live in Houston and in today’s Houston Chronicle, Dr Peter Hotez was interviewed. according to him, we are no longer a member of the WHO. And the CDC is seriously understaffed for pandemics. Before Trump won his second term, there was a dedicated CDC cruise ship staff just for traveling to cruise ships where a percentage of the passengers had contracted viruses. There is no more dedicated staff. In reference to this specific Hanta virus, we shouldn’t be that concerned nevertheless because of Trump‘s actions, indirectly or directly, the CDC is woefully, unprepared to respond. In thelong-term, we are in trouble unless. The Democratic Party does win enough of the midterms and indirectly will lead to the CDC being properly staffed eventually. I would have posted a Web link to the houston Chronicle and the specific article yet unfortunately you have to have a subscription to read it
These kinds of statements are utterly inane. Odds can be assessed and expressed in numbers. While I realize that's somewhat complicated, statistical analysis allows public servants to be transparent about their uncertainty without having to use semantics that are often misinterpreted or intentionally spun by motivated actors.
Also, giant cruise ships seem like drifting incubators. Maybe they're nice to some people, but that doesn't offset the public health demand. Seems like they're constantly popping up as focal points for breakouts and its time for a new regulatory approach.
This wasn’t a giant cruise ship. It only held about 150 people, passengers and crew combined. The reason this Andes virus got onto the ship is the Dutch couple went birding for about a week before they got on the cruise, and they had gone into some remote areas of Argentina, Brazil and Chile to do their birding, including one jaunt near a landfill (one could also call it a garbage dump). Instead of getting on the small cruise ship, they could just as easily have decided to fly back to the Netherlands direct from Argentina, and have spent 8-10 hours enclosed in an airplane with 150 people breathing recirculating air and spreading the virus to everyone who was sitting next to them on the plane. Stop blaming everything on cruise ships. In the case of expedition cruises like this one, those ships are cleaner than most hotels.
I didn't blame "everything" on cruise ships. I suggested new regulatory approaches.
For example, replacing the full-time team at the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program (who was terminated at the start of this administration) along with restoring the role of an epidemiologist tasked with leading the agency's outbreak response.
Cruise ships are not “always popping up” as focal points for disease breakouts. You only think that because when it does happen, the media make a big deal out of it. It becomes clickbait for the people who claim they’re “floating Petri dishes”, which they are not. What they are is floating hotels. A cruise ship is no more an incubator for disease than a land based hotel is. Even during Covid, there were hundreds of cruise ships at sea on any given day, but the only one anybody talked about was the Princess ship in the Pacific where Covid broke out because a passenger from Wuhan got on it. One ship out of many hundreds. I’ve taken 30 cruises in the last ten years and have never gotten sick, ditto my husband. The crew are CONSTANTLY cleaning the ship, every square inch of it. There are handwashing stations everywhere and a crew member policing the entrance to all restaurants and the buffet ordering you to wash your hands or they won’t let you in.
Like another commenter said, there was a hantavirus outbreak in Yosemite and no one talked about it. It happens on a cruise ship and the whole world talks about it. The CDC doesn’t control anything except the ports in the US. Cruise ships are all over the world and the WHO and the local government health agencies deal with them. The CDC doesn’t control anything outside of US territorial waters.
I read that article you cited and they point out the Diamond Princess Covid outbreak. 619 of 3700 passengers and crew (17%) were tested positive. Now remember that Covid is highly transmissible, which the Andes virus is not. Only 17% of the passengers tested positive. Covid statistics showed that something like 80-90% of people who tested positive had no symptoms and basically never got sick.
The rest of that article cites conditions that exist in regular hotels and resorts. Most cabins have balconies, which most hotel rooms don't. There are lots of opportunities to get fresh air, open decks, pool areas, promenade decks where you walk outside the entire perimeter of the ship. The doors are everywhere so the outside air is constantly coming in. You get lots of fresh air from your balcony. There are open air places to eat. Most cruises see multiple ports, some in the Caribbean see a new port every day. Like staying in a hotel and going sightseeing every day. You can go to the theater and see a Broadway musical, and that theater exposes you to the same conditions in a real Broadway theater, which probably isn't as clean or well ventilated as the ship theater.
The article you cited says people share utensils in the buffet. What?? If they mean serving spoons or such, that happens in any buffet you go to on land! Have these people done the same research for land based hotels, restaurants and theaters? My guess is they haven't, and if they did the statistics would be far worse than anything found on a cruise ship.
Thanks for hoping I enjoy my travels. I do and I will! We did the exact same expedition 3 week cruise in March except on a Silversea ship. It was wonderful. We ended in Cape Town South Africa and got to see the African penguins that live there. We've now seen all 18 species of penguins. Next up will be a two week Alaska cruise in September. Can't wait!
If Trump had only followed standard pandemic protocols during COVID, as Canada did, 500,000 Americans would still be alive. His need for self importance killed more Americans than any other single person in history.
If someone wanted to know how badly Trump bungled the pandemic, they only need to look at Taiwan as an example. They have 24 million people and they had fewer than 1,000 deaths during the first two years. It only became worse when the Delta variant hit which brought the total to a little more than 19,000 deaths. The state of Florida has fewer people who live in the state and they've had over 80,000 reported dead, but that's a lowball since DeSantis has faked the numbers.
Taiwan's economy expanded during the COVID years with a GDP rate higher than China's, and it was averaging over 4% during the pandemic with a high of 9.2% in the first quarter of 2021. Their unemployment never got above 5% during the pandemic.
Why?
Because they have a strong woman leader who took charge to do what was needed since they believe in science and modern medical practices and they took the critical steps to stop the pandemic from raging through their country. After doing all these things it allowed them to quickly open their economy back up. They did things like masks, contract tracing, social distancing, decontamination, and vaccines when available.
They took it seriously from the start. They never called it a Chinese Hoax, they never said it was going to zero when the heat comes in. They never told people to drink bleach or shove a UV light up their asses.
I have listened to the WHO and the Andes Strain of the Hantavirus and it is a human to human transmission virus that is known in Argentina and Peru and has caused severe respiratory problems and death in the people who have had it and it can take about six weeks for incubation in the people who are exposed to it. There is no cure for it and it has no Treatment and is only given by Ventilation and some people are needed to be in ICU to survive and they can be treated with dialysis for their kidney issues. The countries that have had the patients transferred from the cruise ship are all doing very strict protocols compared to the USA.
I am delighted and relieved to see that you and YLE are teaming. I look to you both as my trusted sources for all things public health now that my government has been stolen by con artists and can no longer be trusted. I feel good about supporting you both materially. I will continue to do so and encourage anyone I might influence to do the same. Public health is deadly serious and has become negatively politicized by grifters. I am grateful for your work to counter that criminal activity.
Everything is fucked up!!! Painting the reflecting pool blue, POTUS driving in the middle of said pool.. I listened to Tim and Bill Kristol, the Strait is still screwed up. I listened to PBS and they interviewed Dr. Shah formerly with CDC. The hanta virus is there a vaccine for that? We don't know... there was a division at the CDC that dealt with outbreaks on cruise lines.... Guess what! DOGE cut that !!! WTF! And then what, is there gonna be just one political party ? the republicans???? All these white people in the south, redistricting black folks, so why would black folks go out to vote?
Dr. Michael Osterholm has a podcast about infectious disease called “The Osterholm Update.” He started it during Covid and it still provides useful info about public health threats like measles and whooping cough. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand it, and he is always a kind and thoughtful voice. I recommend it for scientifically accurate, data-based public health news.
I think the whole thing boils down to resentment/anger over Covid restrictions. People felt their "freedom" threatened by them and have been mad ever since. So they get revenge on health authorities for advocating for vaccines, masking etc. There was a psychological blow which for them outweighed fear of the virus. I do believe that public health authorities underestimated the strength of these emotions and were at times condescending to the opposition. They did not understand that people felt they were being deprived of a valuable good. You may disagree with the sentiment but should not underestimate its power. "Freedom" for Americans often overrides other values.
Thanks for the great information! I was a little worried about mutations, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
"TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS have said that these and other changes will not interfere with their ability to monitor global health threats or protect American lives."
The same people who have been lying, or at least playing dumb, about the 2020 election for more than 5 years. The only one they want to protect is their cult leader.
"They know that Donald Trump has spent much of his second presidency waging an all-out assault on America’s global health infrastructure..."
My usual broken record: Not to take a molecule of guilt and responsibility from TACO, but it's not just him, but 1000s of other accomplices who do all the work and take all the risk. By now he doesn't even need the ability to seek and find the most evil anti-science, anti-Republic people (e.g. RFK, Jr.) to surround and protect him, they're the only ones who come to him. Patriots who would slap him down - and he always backs down when truly confronted - no longer even bother to apply, as they'd be greatly outnumbered by the traitors. Those of us paying attention knew that long before the '24 election.
An important cutback by this administration is grants from the federal government to local and state health departments. These are often the agencies responsible for detection, tracing, and screening. Los Angeles County has one of the best local health departments. It publishes updated disease statistics and conducts wastewater testing. All of those activities are threatened by the federal cutbacks, although LA County has more money than most other counties and even than most states. To compensate for this (and other losses of federal funding) Proposition ER on the June ballot would impose a 0.5% sales tax in the County. That's a large increase that would bring sales tax in LAC to around 11% in most areas.
As with everything in the Trump era, critical issues are handled dismissively and incompetently, with global consequences. Is there anyone or group who can pick up the mantle of leadership and funding that this country has abandoned? It's so much easier and faster to destroy than to rebuild. In every aspect of American policy Trump is erasing decades of progress and replacing with outdated thinking and retrograde actions. The threat level is high.
But there's plenty of money available for ICE and the Department of Defense (oh excuse me, I War Department). I so fucking hate these assholes.
I agree people should be better tuned with their own districts.
But if Democrats start accepting Republican/ Conservative/ maga points of view what's the point.
Of having two parties, if on big issues that will take a majority vote they will vote Republican.
I guess a Democrat in name only is better than no Democrat.
What really bothers me is that the supreme Court says that they want the legislators to pass laws, BUT when laws are passed like The Voting Act Law, they dismantle it because they don't agree.
The supreme Court is THE major reason the president does what he wants and Congress does nothing, because it's easier that way.
What a crappy people in the supreme Court and Congress.
I think you’re commenting on the wrong article. This one’s about hantavirus.
As I've posted before, hire a clown and the funny little car full of them: Expect a circus.
When you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know that you don't know, and you wouldn't give a tinker's dam if you did know...well, there you go.
I live in Houston and in today’s Houston Chronicle, Dr Peter Hotez was interviewed. according to him, we are no longer a member of the WHO. And the CDC is seriously understaffed for pandemics. Before Trump won his second term, there was a dedicated CDC cruise ship staff just for traveling to cruise ships where a percentage of the passengers had contracted viruses. There is no more dedicated staff. In reference to this specific Hanta virus, we shouldn’t be that concerned nevertheless because of Trump‘s actions, indirectly or directly, the CDC is woefully, unprepared to respond. In thelong-term, we are in trouble unless. The Democratic Party does win enough of the midterms and indirectly will lead to the CDC being properly staffed eventually. I would have posted a Web link to the houston Chronicle and the specific article yet unfortunately you have to have a subscription to read it
Trump had to divert billions to deporting people. Very helpful /s.
"It’s probably going to..."
These kinds of statements are utterly inane. Odds can be assessed and expressed in numbers. While I realize that's somewhat complicated, statistical analysis allows public servants to be transparent about their uncertainty without having to use semantics that are often misinterpreted or intentionally spun by motivated actors.
Also, giant cruise ships seem like drifting incubators. Maybe they're nice to some people, but that doesn't offset the public health demand. Seems like they're constantly popping up as focal points for breakouts and its time for a new regulatory approach.
This wasn’t a giant cruise ship. It only held about 150 people, passengers and crew combined. The reason this Andes virus got onto the ship is the Dutch couple went birding for about a week before they got on the cruise, and they had gone into some remote areas of Argentina, Brazil and Chile to do their birding, including one jaunt near a landfill (one could also call it a garbage dump). Instead of getting on the small cruise ship, they could just as easily have decided to fly back to the Netherlands direct from Argentina, and have spent 8-10 hours enclosed in an airplane with 150 people breathing recirculating air and spreading the virus to everyone who was sitting next to them on the plane. Stop blaming everything on cruise ships. In the case of expedition cruises like this one, those ships are cleaner than most hotels.
I didn't blame "everything" on cruise ships. I suggested new regulatory approaches.
For example, replacing the full-time team at the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program (who was terminated at the start of this administration) along with restoring the role of an epidemiologist tasked with leading the agency's outbreak response.
Cruise ships are not “always popping up” as focal points for disease breakouts. You only think that because when it does happen, the media make a big deal out of it. It becomes clickbait for the people who claim they’re “floating Petri dishes”, which they are not. What they are is floating hotels. A cruise ship is no more an incubator for disease than a land based hotel is. Even during Covid, there were hundreds of cruise ships at sea on any given day, but the only one anybody talked about was the Princess ship in the Pacific where Covid broke out because a passenger from Wuhan got on it. One ship out of many hundreds. I’ve taken 30 cruises in the last ten years and have never gotten sick, ditto my husband. The crew are CONSTANTLY cleaning the ship, every square inch of it. There are handwashing stations everywhere and a crew member policing the entrance to all restaurants and the buffet ordering you to wash your hands or they won’t let you in.
Like another commenter said, there was a hantavirus outbreak in Yosemite and no one talked about it. It happens on a cruise ship and the whole world talks about it. The CDC doesn’t control anything except the ports in the US. Cruise ships are all over the world and the WHO and the local government health agencies deal with them. The CDC doesn’t control anything outside of US territorial waters.
I think we're talking past each other.
The barrage of protocols you listed exist for a reason.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy your vacations.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/hantavirus-covid-norovirus-legionnaires-why-are-cruise-ships-so-prone-disease
I read that article you cited and they point out the Diamond Princess Covid outbreak. 619 of 3700 passengers and crew (17%) were tested positive. Now remember that Covid is highly transmissible, which the Andes virus is not. Only 17% of the passengers tested positive. Covid statistics showed that something like 80-90% of people who tested positive had no symptoms and basically never got sick.
The rest of that article cites conditions that exist in regular hotels and resorts. Most cabins have balconies, which most hotel rooms don't. There are lots of opportunities to get fresh air, open decks, pool areas, promenade decks where you walk outside the entire perimeter of the ship. The doors are everywhere so the outside air is constantly coming in. You get lots of fresh air from your balcony. There are open air places to eat. Most cruises see multiple ports, some in the Caribbean see a new port every day. Like staying in a hotel and going sightseeing every day. You can go to the theater and see a Broadway musical, and that theater exposes you to the same conditions in a real Broadway theater, which probably isn't as clean or well ventilated as the ship theater.
The article you cited says people share utensils in the buffet. What?? If they mean serving spoons or such, that happens in any buffet you go to on land! Have these people done the same research for land based hotels, restaurants and theaters? My guess is they haven't, and if they did the statistics would be far worse than anything found on a cruise ship.
Thanks for hoping I enjoy my travels. I do and I will! We did the exact same expedition 3 week cruise in March except on a Silversea ship. It was wonderful. We ended in Cape Town South Africa and got to see the African penguins that live there. We've now seen all 18 species of penguins. Next up will be a two week Alaska cruise in September. Can't wait!
If Trump had only followed standard pandemic protocols during COVID, as Canada did, 500,000 Americans would still be alive. His need for self importance killed more Americans than any other single person in history.
If someone wanted to know how badly Trump bungled the pandemic, they only need to look at Taiwan as an example. They have 24 million people and they had fewer than 1,000 deaths during the first two years. It only became worse when the Delta variant hit which brought the total to a little more than 19,000 deaths. The state of Florida has fewer people who live in the state and they've had over 80,000 reported dead, but that's a lowball since DeSantis has faked the numbers.
Taiwan's economy expanded during the COVID years with a GDP rate higher than China's, and it was averaging over 4% during the pandemic with a high of 9.2% in the first quarter of 2021. Their unemployment never got above 5% during the pandemic.
Why?
Because they have a strong woman leader who took charge to do what was needed since they believe in science and modern medical practices and they took the critical steps to stop the pandemic from raging through their country. After doing all these things it allowed them to quickly open their economy back up. They did things like masks, contract tracing, social distancing, decontamination, and vaccines when available.
They took it seriously from the start. They never called it a Chinese Hoax, they never said it was going to zero when the heat comes in. They never told people to drink bleach or shove a UV light up their asses.
Trump is a one man death cult that has metastasize.