But it’s not only the simpleton man with dementia, one who cannot distinguish between fact and fiction, who is unconcerned. “My personal worry is essentially zero” regarding hantavirus said Bill Hanage, professor of epidemiology at Harvard. “the vast majority of the world has absolutely no worry at all.” Vaithi Arumugaswami, a molecular virologist at the University of California, Los Angeles is not so complacent, though. He said “It is kind of a real time experiment happening in front of us.” If he’s right, this is a pretty risky experiment since that one strain of the virus has a 40% mortality rate (vs. about a 1% mortality rate for covid). That’s why I decided to find out what I could about Hantavirus.
Here’s what I was able to find out from various sources:
According to Wikipedia (and other sources, but not the CDC, where information is very thin), there are basically two strains of the virus and they affect the body differently. One strain attacks the capillaries and the kidneys (renal system). This form of the disease is called “hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome” or HFRS. It is mainly present in Africa and Eurasia because the main carrier (called a “reservoir”) of the this form of the virus is the striped field is endemic to Eurasia. HFRS has about a 1% to 15% mortality rate. My suspicion is that this wide variation in mortality rate is due to the huge variation in health care in the regions where HFRS exists – from Western Europe to extremely impoverished regions.
Here’s what I was able to find out from various sources:
According to Wikipedia and other sources (except for the CDC where information is thin), there are basically two strains of the virus, and they affect the body differently. One strain attacks the capillaries and the kidneys (the renal system). This form of the disease is called Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome, or HFRS. It is mainly present in Africa and Eurasia because the main carrier of this form of the virus, the striped field mouse, is endemic there. HFRS has about a 1% to 15% mortality rate. (My suspicion is that this wide variation in mortality rate is due to the huge variation in health care in the regions where HFRS exists.)
HFRS is spread through the urine and feces of the infected host, but not through aerosols (the droplets contained in the air exhaled by a person). My suspicion is that this is because it does not infect the lungs, and also this is why HFRS does not spread from one person to another – because a person is very unlikely to come into direct and long term contact with the urine or feces of another person than is somebody who’s around rats a lot.
The Andes strain of the hantavirus
The other form of the virus causes hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), also known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). This is the deadly “Andes strain”, which has about a 40% mortality rate. First discovered in 1995, HPS lodges deep in the lungs (vs. the kidneys), which is why it is more easily communicable from one person to another. However, it is far less transmissable than is SARS-CoV, the virus that causes covid. According to an an AI search, the reason SARS-CoV is much more transmissible is that there is a far higher viral load, meaning there is much more of the virus in people with covid. That does not mean that it is not transmitted by respiration at all, though. According to Jenifer Angulo, a molecular virologist specializing in the Andes strain of the Hantavirus, past findings “support the yhpothesis that close-contact exposure to respiratory or oral secretions could contribute to person-to-person transmission.” Supposedly, a person with HPS is not actively shedding the virus when they are asymptomatic. Why is that?
I could not find an explanation for that, but here’s what makes sense to this complete non expert: The Andes strain of hantavirus is lodged deep in the lungs, not throughout the entire pulmonary system. Therefore, simply exhaling doesn’t shed very much or any of the virus. One has to violently exhale, in other words cough (as in when one has the symptoms), in order to shed the virus. Even then, the infected person – the carrier – isn’t shedding very much of the virus. That’s why casual, short term contact – for example just standing on line behind somebody at the gorcery store – is unlikely to cause infection. At least that is the theory of this total non-expert.
It is in the interest of all life forms to evolve (through mutation) in such a way that it can spread more easily. That is Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. That’s what happens with SARS-CoV, which mutates easily. It seems that hantavirus does not evolve quickly. The form that causes HPS was only discovered in 1995 – some 40 years after the HCRS form of the virus was discovered. Not only that, but it does not seem to have mutated since then. Here’s one kicker, though:
One means of mutation is through “gene reassortment”. This is the mixing of genetic material of two different viruses. It can happen when two different viruses of the same family infect the same cell. Gene reassortment only happens in RNA viruses. There are other viruses of the same family as Hantavirus (known as the Bunyavirales family). There are other viruses in that family that are more easily transmissable, so theoretically it seems to me that the hantavirus could mutate into a more transmissable form, either through gene reassortment or just on its own.
However, the main threat from hantavirus is not from evolution or any other natural process; it’s political. One of the reactions from the covid pandemic was the childish and selfish mood that sprang up aginst social distancing. It’s inconvenient, so therefore it’s unnecessary was the attitude. This merged with the simple-minded tendency towards conspiracy thinking. Just like an opportunistic invasive species, always looking for some advantage, Trump seized on and encouraged these views. They are still prevalent today and have taken over the Trump administration. They have done so through two main means:
The first was DOGE. One agency of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was its Vessel Sanitation Program. This was the program responsible for ensuring sanitation on cruise ships, which are basically floating Petri dishes. Despite the fact that this program is funded entirely by the cruise ship industry rather than by taxes, last April DOGE fired every single full time employee of it. According to a report, “three of the program’s Port Health Stations have no staff at all, half have no officer in charge, and the remainder rely on temporary workers… the agency also lacks a permanent director.”
Furthermore, “The Trump administration has proposed eliminating $750 million in preparedness grants for state and local health departments, firing Epidemic Intelligence Service fellows who serve as the country’s frontline disease detectives, and gutting infectious disease research, vaccine platform research, and viral-threat surveillance programs across HHS and the CDC. The administration also withdrew the United States from the W.H.O., cutting off American access to the global data sharing and coordination network leading the international response to the hantavirus outbreak.”
It wasn’t just proposals. “The Trump administration on Saturday terminated hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including fellows responsible for key public health roles, according to two sources at the agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern over retaliation,” the US Senate Democrats reported. So much for the claim that there is no difference between the two parties today!
The Center for Law and Social Policy published this “DOGE tracker” graphic to explain what happened:
Compare this to what was accomplished during covid. In probably the only successful initiative taken under the Trump administration, “Operation Warp Speed” developed a vaccination for covid in record time. An AI overview explains “COVID-19 vaccines were developed in under a year due to decades of prior MRNA research, massive global funding, simultaneous trial phases, and the “plug-and-play” nature of mRNA technology. Rather than skipping safety steps, developers overlapped phases (I, II, and III), manufactured doses before final approval, and utilized pre-existing knowledge of coronaviruses.”
The other means of preventing a repeat of the success of Operation Warp Speed has been the seizure of control over the federal government by the anti-vax conspiracists, RFK jr. first and foremost. The Trump administration has removed the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result, US scientists no longer automatically share their findings with their colleagues around the world, and vice versa.
What is the pressent state of affairs with the passengers on the infected cruise ship?
According to the NY Times (as well as other sources), there were 150 passengers on the infected ship in addition to the crew. “Most of the roughly 150 passengers and crew members of the cruise ship that experienced a hantavirus outbreak returned to their home countries by Tuesday, May 12, or were in the process of doing so.
Eighteen Americans who were aboard the ship — the Dutch-registered MV Hondius, which docked off Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday —returned to the United States on Monday, health officials said. One of them is a dual U.S.-British citizen.
Sixteen were in isolation at the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, U.S. officials said, including one who tested “mildly” positive for the Andes strain of the hantavirus. Two others, a couple including a person with mild symptoms, were sent to a medical facility in Atlanta.”
Several of the US passengers were allowed to return home and told to self-isolate. Knowing the general consciousness in the United States, it seems unlikely they will do s. Far more likely will be that they stay home for a few days, then realize they need something from the store, or their next door neighbor calls and wants to see them to hear about what happened, or whatever. “And anyway, they told me I can’t spread the disease if I’m not feeling sick,” they will think. “What’s just a little cough? It’s just part of my morning cough that I have every day until I have my first cigarette.”
Typically, little information is available on the crew, who evidently are remaining onboard as the ship heads to Spain. What happens with them from there is anybody’s guess.
Perspectives
Bill Hanage, the Harvard epidemiologist, may not be worried at all about this “real-time experiment”, but we should consider the consequences if the “experiment” goes awry: The Andes strain of hantavirus doesn’t spread anywhere nearly as easily as does SARS-CoV, but if it spreads at all, then what? Official estimates are that about 81% of the US population – 270.2 million people – got covid and about 1.2. million died as a result. If 1/100th of that number get Hantavirus, that means 2.7 million, resulting in 1 million deaths (at 40% mortality rate) – practically the same number as the number of deaths from covid.
So far, despite the fact that the Andes form of hantavirus has existed at least since 1995, it has not spread widely. It seems that it would have to mutate into some form that is more easily transmited for that to thappen, but if such a mutation happens, the results would be disastrous. In fact, if it spread even more widely, the result could be to demolish human civilization. That sounds wildly catastrophic, but a little bit of imagination shows how that could happen.
There is not even any public discussion of initiating a new “warp speed” to develop a vaccine for the hantavirus. Trump and MAGA don’t have the sole responsibility for that. All capitalist politics tends to respond to immediate crises, including health crises. So far, HPS caused by the Andes strain of Hantavirus is not a crisis for the system and it may not become one. If it does, though, it will be huge, possibly dwarfing the covid crisis. But a vaccine is just dealing with the symptom of the crisis that capitalism is causing in the natural world. During the covid crisis, Fauci and others were the expressed that view, which of course was a lot better than the mysticism of the covid deniers. Oaklandsocialist published a series of articles and interviews explaining that the spread of zoonotic diseases was caused by human intrusion into wilderness areas plus the domination of capitalist agriculture. At that time, that fact was barely recognized. Today, even Wikipedia writes “Human built environments are important in hantavirus transmission. Deforestation and excess agriculture may destroy rodents’ natural habitat.The expansion of agricultural land is associated with a decline in predator populations, which enables hantavirus host species to use farm monocultures as nesting and foraging sites. Agricultural sites built in close proximity to rodents’ natural habitats can facilitate the proliferation of rodents as they may be attracted to animal feed.”
Ignoring these factors is an expression of eco modernism. That is the view that human society exists seperate and apart from the natural world, and that there is no harm that human society imposes on the natural world than cannot be repaired by a technological fix. During the covid crisis, the development of the covid vaccine was an example of that. It was a lot better than the hysteria of the covid deniers or the anti-vax mystecists, both of which are in power in the Trump administration. But it doesn’t deal with the cause of the problem.
As a result, the spread of zoonotic diseases will continue, meaning that this “real-time experiment “will continue until, sooner or later, some fr more threatening zoonotic disease will develop. Either that, or socialism.
