Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Hantavirus

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

In what may be our most requested episode of all time, Dr. Sydnee addresses the hantavirus outbreak in the headlines, looks at its history and evaluates just how badly the U.S. is handling the situation. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ First Nations Development Institute: https://www.firstnations.org/ Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's MaxFunDrive! Still want to get in on the action? Follow this link to support this show (and get in on our limited-time keychain sale to benefit the Center for Constitutional Rights): https://maximumfun.org/joinsawbones

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of Misguided Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sydney McElroy. Justin, we need to jump right into it this week. Well, yes. We've got more requests this week, you think, maybe, than any other topic. In a concentrated period of time, I'd have to search through all of our recommendations for topics ever to really, like, give you a definitive statement. So I do not have data to back this up. But I believe this feels like I have never gotten this number of requests for a single topic

in such, like, a quick secession. Yeah. In such a concentrated amount. In fact, this is a first for us. You have live tabs available from the Sawbones Newsdesk. Live tabs open as coverage is coming in here. I do. Of course, we're talking about Hanta virus.

I cannot thank everyone who suggested this topic because there were a lot of you. In addition to a lot of people I know personally in my life who have come up to me frantically over the last few days saying... In case you didn't hear. Please tell me about Hanta virus. All right. So, Sidney. Yes. I, in sort of a tribute, a loving sort of sacrifice, have stayed largely ignorant of this topic because I knew that we would be discussing it this week.

Normally, you know me. I'd be reading all the headlines on everything that's going on. So, wait, there is an outbreak of a virus happening somewhere on planet Earth, and you have intentionally been avoiding knowing anything about it. Yeah, because we're going to talk about it on the show. So I want to come in fresh. Oh, okay. That's all. I wouldn't recommend that.

Like intentionally staying ignorant about things. Yeah, you will definitely, in my case, like, again, not medical advice or opinion is for fun. Like, I'm just saying for me, for hoops, if it's serious enough, you will definitely tell me like, but wash your hands or like, don't like to wash your hands. Always wash your hands. Stuff like that. Brush your teeth. Yeah, brush your teeth sometimes. So we've talked about hantavirus.

I looked back because I thought we did an episode on it, but what I found was. what I found was that we talked about English sweating sickness at one point, which historians think may have been hantavirus, actually. So we talked about it in that context. I don't know that we've done a whole episode on it, at least my quick search. I didn't see the transcript if we did. But I am going to talk a little bit about what hantavirus is. And then I want to focus on what's happening right now because I think the reality is since we have all now experienced COVID. And I don't necessarily mean that you've had COVID. I just mean now that COVID is part of our life. Statistically, most of us have. But whether or not you have, we've all, it has shaped us.

It continues to shape us. Right. And so I think that as a result, our response to this news about hantavirus is very heavily being influenced by that experience. Sure. Right. We have some trauma that we are. I mean, I use a word of trauma in the literal sense of like, you know, you know, you know, baggage, I guess what we're bringing to it.

And a hantavirus is a very serious virus. We're going to talk about that. And I think that to take anything lightly after what we experience with COVID, especially on this podcast where initially we were not terribly concerned about COVID and we were wrong. I'm not going to sit here and say, ah, don't worry about it. Because I think that's an ignorant response. We'll loss once.

I will say, and we'll talk about all the reasons why, I do not, this is not COVID. This virus is not COVID. It's anti-virus. literally, and our expectation that we would have a global pandemic on the scale of COVID from Hanta virus is that we would not, that it would not be that threat. And there are many, many infectious disease specialists who are speaking on the news, who are being interviewed, who are talking privately in the various groups that I'm in, that we probably should not be panicking like we are. It's understandable because of COVID. And we should always take

things seriously, but this is not COVID. There is no expectation by experts that we are looking at COVID too. Okay. So hantavirus is actually a family of viruses. And the one that we are concerned about is in a genus called the orthohantavirus. And there are several different species within lots of different species within that genus. And they can cause different clinical syndromes. Their natural reservoirs are rodents.

Oh, okay. Each species of rodent can carry its own species of hantavirus. I'm always super happy to have my natural distrust of rodents reinforced by science. It's not fear if it's science backed. Do you know what I'm saying? That's true. That's not a phobia if they're nasty little disease balloons. It's just common sense.

They do carry this disease. And for rodents, they tend to cause just like long asymptomatic infections. But then if they get passed to a human, obviously we can get sick. Great. Thanks, rats. Always. So good to have you in the mix. There are two, primarily two different clinical syndromes that we tie to hantavirus when a human becomes infected. And it depends where and what species of hantavirus you've been infected with as to which of the clinical syndromes you're going to experience. So like you'll see them referred to kind of as either like Western or Eastern strains or Old World New World.

That's often, that feels weird to me that we still say that, Old World and New World. there were many articles I read where they're like, well, this is a new world strain of It's a very non-specific. Yeah, what does that mean? Western. Like, the Western world. Yeah, the Western world. Anyway, in the Western world, and including the U.S., there's a species of

hantavirus that we have seen in the U.S., people tend to develop what's called what's called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Handivirus pulmonary syndrome is a disease, as you may affect, as you may imagine, affects the lungs, primarily. It's very severe and it is potentially fatal. And that is what we're going to talk about a lot. Your symptoms start up anywhere from one to eight weeks after contact typically with an infected rodent. That's part of why I think people are kind of freaking out a little bit about this. Grats are gross. Well, antivirus most of the time, the vast majority of the time, is caught directly from the rodent.

It's rare that it's human to human. So that is the cause for concern here. It's the transmission from person, person. We knew this could happen. I think we just took for granted that it could happen. There are some researchers arguing that we should have been looking into this more that we had found a strain that could be passed human to human, and we weren't researching it enough, basically.

Okay. Anyway, so the symptoms of... Classicus. HPS, that's the pulmonary syndrome. the thing that we're worried about. It starts off with like kind of flu-like stuff, fevers, you're tired, you might be achy, and it can progress into something pretty severe where you become short of breath, you're coughing, and you can go into respiratory failure. Basically, your lungs can fill with fluid. And that progression from symptom onset to the severe,

you know, respiratory failure can actually happen pretty quickly for some patients. So it can be, not only is it scary because it can be fatal, but I think that dramatic presentation where you can go from, I kind of feel like I have the flu to being in an ICU on a ventilator, maybe needing, you know, extra support past that. That can be very scary, right? Something that dramatic, you know? So I think that's part of it. And like I said, people who do develop the severe symptoms, 38% is our estimate, will die from the disease. So it's a high number. It's a high fatality rate. Yeah. Right. That's a very. It's serious, obviously. And in the U.S., typically the deer mouse is responsible for transmitting this. Like I said, different rodents, different species. There is just to mention, because many people when this first, like, kind of popped up in the news, started talking about, like, oh, great, now we have a hemorrhagic fever. What we're talking about is the kind of hantavirus that causes this lung problem. There is in the east, when we talk about the eastern strains or the, I guess, old world, if you're a lot. if you will, strains of hantavirus.

There is a hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome that can develop. So it's like a different clinical picture that can also be tied to hantavirus. Again, it takes a week or two after exposure. It could take up to eight weeks. Similar symptoms at first, except instead of progressing to a lung problem, it progresses to internal bleeding and kidney failure. So again, you can imagine this would be a very dramatic presentation. This is why, like, I first learned about hantavirus when I read the hot zone.

Oh, it's very dramatic. They talk about it in there. Yeah. It's not, it's not Ebola and stuff. Yes. And so that's, you know, I think that people pay attention to it because it is dramatic. But that is not what is happening in the news right now. If you're interested, I think this is always on a historical note in the U.S.

The hanta virus that we see most commonly, like I said, is from the deer mouse. we first isolated it, the U.S. is our own personal hantavirus. In 1993, there was an outbreak in Canyon de la Muerre on Navajo reservation. And they, you know, it was the pulmonary syndrome, just like I described. People were progressing from flu-like illness to this lung problem very quickly and people were dying. And they initially called it the Mwerto Canyon hantavirus. That was what the first name. of this.

Hanta or Hanta? What are we going with? Hanta virus. Okay, Hanta virus. I don't know. Hanta sounds. In my head, I can't not think about Fanta. Fanta virus.

Yeah, and I know that's not right, but in my head, it's the first time I heard Hanta virus, those Fanta ladies were in there. Like, that's what popped up. And now that's like the association is like, if you say Hanta virus, I see those ladies dancing. They say, Fanta, want to, want to, don't you want to, fenta, fanta. And so it's Fanta virus and I'm, that's not appropriate, ladies, you know what I mean? Like, that's not a good visual, that doesn't help.

And I don't think, I don't think Fanta would want that. I am in much of the, you think maybe there's already been a call from the CEO of Corona to the CEO of Fanta? Like, listen. You're going to go through some stuff. This jerk over and saw this is trying to connect you, the dots for you. For us, it was just the thing. Like the thing was, yeah, no kidding. Okay, bye.

See at the golf course. Okay, this is a great lead-in to this. So just like Fanta, just like Fanta would definitely not want us to call us the Fanta virus because then you're associating a potentially lethal virus with their product. The Navajo Nation did not want Mwanto Canyon linked to this new virus. This is a thing on Saba. We've decided this before. You also have regions who are like, no, it's actually a German flu.

Have you traced the little red dock from the Indiana Jones movie? You see it started over here. Remember the Spanish flu is not the Spanish flu. Not the Spanish flu. It was not the Spaniards fault. But so then they started, the virologists were like, well, we'll call it the Four Corners virus. Because in that part of the United States where if you're not from the U.S., if you're from the U.S., this is one of the few geographies you probably know. You're like, there are those four states that are kind of square and they have an area.

where all four of them touch because they're square. And if you stand there, you're in four states at once. So four corners. So if you don't live in the U.S., now, I've just described to you what the four corners are. That's where four corners of four states meet. Okay. Anyway, because it has that sort of tourist draw, I mean, there's other stuff there, right? But like, I guess the novelty of being in four states at once is also a tourist draw.

There were a lot of people from all those states who were like, oh, we don't really want you to call. a virus this like please don't name a virus after that because we want people to come do this for tourism money and so eventually how long do you think it took those four states to figure out who got like who gets the gift shop who gets the toilets do they all they can't no but like you could have one in each i don't know do they have it like come to come to the i've never been there and i was trying to pull one of the four i mean you could probably pull up like a google earth picture of the four corners.

I'm too embarrassed that I don't know, so I'm just going to pretend like I do know and I just didn't come up. Okay. Eventually, they named it the Cine Nombre virus. Probably Colorado. Dang it. No, I have to look. You can look, but eventually they named it the Cine Nambre. It's a good one.

The no-name virus. I like the Cine Nombre. That's cool. The virus without a name because nobody could agree on what it should be named. nobody wanted it associated with anything associated with them, which is fair. I think, although if I could name a virus after me, I would. I have no doubt. Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

So, hey, I knew where we were. Yeah, that was in the right area. That's the four corners. But there is not a virus named that. Don't worry. Don't worry. Anyway, so that's the history of hantavirus in the U.S. And in those cases, by the way, everybody caught hantavirus.

everybody developed the pulmonary syndrome after exposure to rodents, specifically the deer mouse. And it's usually through like aerosolized droppings or saliva from the animal. So the classic example is you can imagine somebody trying to sweep out a room where a mouse has been. And as they're sweeping, you're kind of getting those clouds of dust that probably have a little bit of, you know, rodent poop or whatever in them. And you're inhaling that. That is usually what we think the vector of transmission. That's what's happening in those cases. Okay.

So, hantavirus, so you know, is diagnosed with either an antibody test. We look for the antibody and Eliza or we look for a PCR or we look for the virus itself in your body. But in the first 72 hours, it can be hard to detect. People can test negative for a while. And even moving forward, sometimes you miss it. So it is important to continue to monitor people and test them. you might not get a positive, even in a positive case immediately. Now, if they're very symptomatic, you'd expect they would.

Treatment is supportive care. We do not have, like, an antiviral medication or something that is specific to hantavirus. Just ramen and gatoray, huh? Is that it? Just, like, supportive? No, like ECMO. ECMO, is that? Like, we have to put you on a heart-lung machine.

Oh, so, like, circulate your blood and oxygenated form. you can do. I mean, extra corporeal membrane oxygenation, it is a, like, life support in the truest sense. We say life support, I think sometimes in medical jargon, and we mean lots of different things, like, quote unquote, they are on life support. What exactly do you mean by life support? We usually mean a ventilator. ECMO is like, this machine is going to do everything your heart and lungs need to do for

you for a little bit until they can start doing it again. So it's a big intervention. It's a big deal. When like, when those traditional rum and waffle method and gatorade methods like cutting it, you got to get serious. ECMO is far beyond. Echoes, it sounds like leaves beyond those. And it's tough because especially with the pulmonary syndrome, usually if you can't breathe on your own, we do put you on a ventilator, right? sometimes the act of the ventilation just because of what is happening in your body can trigger the arrhythmias and the cardiac arrest that might kill you.

It's a really difficult syndrome. The machines are always a risk, right? I mean, like, from what I understand, tell me if this is off base, but like once you're on a machine, there's always a challenge to getting it off or a risk to getting off the machine. Yes. Like the dependence upon it becomes a real issue. And that is more specific to depending on why you're on it. So there are some conditions that we know if we intubate you it's going to be way harder. Whereas there are other conditions where we would expect we will be able to extubate you pretty easily with this, right?

But definitely in this case because of, I mean, it's just like your lungs are filling with all this fluid. You've got all this. It's like an inflammatory reaction in your whole body that's making all of your vessels very leaky. And there's fluid everywhere. It's a really hard condition to manage. And that's why it is fatal, not most of the time, but a lot. you know, a lot of the time. So anyway, there is one strain of hantavirus that we have known prior to now could be past human to human. It had not very often. The vast majority of cases of

hantavirus all over the world were past rodent to human, but we had seen one strain, the Andes strain of hantavirus, which is found in Argentina. This type causes the lung syndrome. It's in the Western world. So it's that kind of antivirus. And you can get symptoms anywhere from four to 42 days after you have been exposed. And those initial symptoms again might just look

like the flu. So that's what's happening on this cruise ship and that's what people are freaking out about this Andy strain of this virus. And I'm going to tell, now I want to walk you through a timeline of what's happening. All right, here we go. But first we're going to the billing department. Are you serious?

Yeah. Let's go. the medicines that ask you make macabre for the mouth. And it's about to set sail. That's like the beginning. There's a cruise ship. Or like you can do this. I'm like smashing the champagne bottle. I will say as we're reading about this, the researcher who has, who initially like sort of

illustrated that there was a hanta virus that could be passed human to human has been interviewed a ton in the news and has been talking about we should have known this could happen because there was a case back in November of 2018 that lasted until February of 2019 where there were 34 cases of this Andy strain in Argentina that started at like a birthday party. And that outbreak resulted in 11 deaths and they proved from this

that there was human to human spread. Right. And there are a lot of people who are like, we probably should have been researching this more after that. What happened on this ship, though? Let me take you through what happened. So the ship is the M.V. Hondias. And it set sail. It was like a luxury cruise and it seems like there are a lot of bird watchers. There are a lot of bird watchers. That seem birding seems to be a big feature of this. You're going to, uh, remote and unique locations, I would say. Catch the birds. This isn't the kind of cruise. Catch and eat. No, no, I don't think they're going to eat the birds. This isn't the kind of cruise where you're

you go to one of those islands that are owned by the cruise ship, and the only time there's people on it is when the cruise ship empties out on it. It's not like that kind of cruise. Okay. No, this is going to be you're out in more remote locations and it's a much longer cruise. It's a long cruise. So it sets sail on April 1st from the south of Argentina. And there are scheduled stops in multiple islands and Antarctica. On April 6th, a 70-year-old Dutch man becomes sick.

He's got flu-like symptoms. Okay? The man and his wife, who were both on board, had been sightseeing around Argentina and Chile, but around this area of Argentina, for a while prior to boarding the ship. Okay. This is important because what we think right now is that's probably where they caught it. They were in these places in Argentina where we know the Indy strain can exist, and they probably were exposed to rodents dropping saliva whatever somewhere while they were sightseeing. Yeah. Okay.

I think they were looking at birds. By April 11th, the Dutch man is very sick. So like I said, it can be a very rapid course. So April 6th, he's sick. By April 11th, he goes into respiratory distress and unfortunately passes away, which, as you can imagine, is already. causing a lot of alarm on the ship. Someone has died on the ship. Yes, this is patratic.

Yes. There were a hundred and I believe like 60ish passengers on the boat, by the way. Not a huge cruise, you know. Well, I mean, if you compare to other cruises, like, cruise ships are big. I assume there are usually a lot more people. Okay. April 15th, six more people join the cruise when they stop on a remote island,

a British territory in the same. South Atlantic, Tristan Dukunha. And this is also important because somebody also got off there. Okay. On April 24th. What about the body? It's still on board. Oh, no.

I mean, I don't know that that is. Does it matter? Not from an epidemiological standpoint at this moment. That's my only context here. Now, April 24th is an important point in this timeline because on April 24th, the ship arrives on St. Helena. And on St. Helena, the man's body is taken off of the vessel. His wife also leaves. Makes sense.

But at this point, some number of other passengers also leave the boat. Okay. I have seen most AP reporting is saying more than two dozen. Okay. Which is not a number. Right. That's, I mean, that's a lot of numbers. I have the, I guess the official number.

The official number that was given was 30. Which is more than two dozen. There were some officials saying it could be up to 40. Way more than two dozen. Yeah. And so it's hard to say exactly. And I want to focus on this for a second. So at least 30 disembarked the ship in St. Helena and then went from there somewhere.

Okay. Okay. And these are people who've been on the ship, so potential exposures. We know that they went to at least 12 different countries because we know they're nationalities. And so we have a list of like, I mean, the UK, the U.S., Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, St. Kitts and Nevis, New Zealand, Singapore, and Sweden. So all these places people were from, disembarked in St. Helena and ostensibly returned to. There are two that are from listed as unknown, which is hard for me to understand. That could be so many countries, for sure. I don't know how they could be unknown. How do you get on a boat? Well, yeah, don't you have to have your passport? Where are you from?

None of your business. Step aside. I'd like to board. So anyway, the 24th is important because all these people got off the ship. And then so did the man's wife. And at this point, she is sick. And I don't know that anybody was taking notice of that because they didn't know what the man died from.

What is wrong with people? So. So, can I just, why, why, why is no one taking any actions at this point? Well, we don't know what he died of yet. And so. Yeah, but like, why not assume the worst, you know? And I don't know if she told people she felt bad. I don't know. I mean, if your symptoms are not visible. If your symptoms are body aches and a fever, you could take some ibuprofen and look fine. And if you didn't tell anybody. So anyway, she, she, she. she was sick, she took a flight from St. Helena to South Africa. There were 88 people on board,

including crew members. So she was symptomatic and on a plane to Johannesburg. Yeah. We don't know if other people also flew on this plane who were on the ship. We don't know. But we do know that she gets to Johannesburg, and her intention was to get on a second flight, I assume, to go home. She actually did board that plane, but then before the plane took off, she was so sick. She left the plane. And then she actually, I think she collapsed in the airport, was transported to a hospital and died. So she was quite sick at this point.

So this is on April 26th. We have our second person has passed away. Now, on the ship, by April 27th, which is now back out at sea, a third person has become sick. This man is evacuated to Ascension Island. He's then moved to South Africa. And he, as far as I know, is still in the ICU or is at least still in the hospital there. Okay. He has things that look like antivirus.

He has pneumonia. He's got a fever. He looks like he has antivirus. The next day, still at sea, a German woman falls sick on board off Africa's West Coast and then dies by April 2nd or May 2nd. So we have our third fatality. which at this point is still the number. The man who is in intensive care, meanwhile, we finally have somebody who has thought of hantavirus.

I don't know. These stories, I assume, will come out later, like who was the brilliant person who said, wait a second, they were in Argentina. This could be hantavirus. Somebody did. And they checked the man in the ICU, and they said, yes, this is hantavirus.

And so then it all clicks. Right. The three people who died almost certainly also. Oh, no, it's that one kind of antivirus. This guy has hands of virus. Yeah. And from that moment, there was this, and you can go back and watch. I actually was watching this as it unfolded.

At that moment, here's your question. Either all of these people were somewhere in Argentina where they got exposed to the same mouse droppings, right? They were either altogether somewhere and became exposed simultaneously. Or there are mice on the ship. That was a question for a while. Are they catching it on the ship? I mean, it's possible, right? I don't know why you couldn't accidentally get rodents on the ship.

And the idea there being that, like, why has this happened to multiple humans? It's not human to human. It's catching it from different animals at different vector points. Or is this the one strain of hantavirus that can be passed from human to human? No, so that you could test for. You can, but at that moment, you have to do more genetic, like, it's more specialized testing than you would have available. Like, you couldn't do that locally. We would have to send off samples to the CDC.

to do it. Yeah, and so at the moment, they knew we had hantavirus. That doesn't necessarily, because of the symptoms, you would assume it was one of the hantoviruses you get in the West, because there was a pulmonary syndrome. You would look at where they came from, and you know that in Argentina there is an Ande strain that can be past human to human, so then that's why it would be on your mind. But you would have to do more specialized testing to then figure that out. And again, you'd have to send it off to one of the labs worldwide that can do that. So that time. That's why. time. Okay. So at that point, the World Health Organization, May 3rd says, okay, we have a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. This is, I think, probably when people started hearing about it. I bet if you go back through the news, this was May 3rd is when stories really started coming out because we knew for sure that it was a hantavirus outbreak and because the who is

responding, the World Health Organization. Not the who. The who's the band. Pete Townsend should not weigh into this. They did not declare an outbreak until May 4th. It was a suspected outbreak on May 3rd. May 4th, they were able to officially declared an outbreak because they went back and tested the woman who collapsed and died in the airport. And she was positive.

And so then they knew for sure. The problem starting May 5th, which should be resolved by the time you hear this, is now we've, we've. got a cruise ship where people potentially have this deadly virus and none of the places where it's supposed to land want it. Right? So they're kind of in a standoff with these ports who are saying we don't, don't, don't, right? Yeah. We don't want them calling it the us strain of antivirus. Exactly. And we don't want all of these people coming into our country and spreading hantavirus. So, So Cape Verde sends some health workers to help on board. The ship's doctor is sick at this point, by the way.

And two crew members are sick. There is, and this is a whole side story that maybe would be its own episode. There is another doctor, by the way, who just happened to be on board, who's helping manage this. He's just like he was there. And so he is becoming the ship's doctor because the ship's doctor is sick. So three people, the ship's doctor and the two crew members who are sick, are evacuated from the ship. flown to hospitals in Europe, including, you know, the ship's doctor. Two of them do test positive

for hand to virus. So this, at this point, this brings us to our confirmed five cases as of May 6th. So help me, real quick sidebar here. When we're talking about bringing these people in, I have a lot of images in my head from early days of COVID that was people in like hazmat suits with bubbles of tense like pushing people around what level of precautions are needing to happen at this point for and how is that different for hantavirus there are images you can find um from news outlets of people in hazmat suits evacuating people you know the full on space suit looking things that you definitely will see that um that probably is not necessary for hand to well definitely if you know it's hantavirus that level is not necessary a standard mask

and distancing, it should be plenty. Because what we do know is that historically, the Andy strain, while it can be passed human to human, unlike COVID, it requires prolonged close contact. Yeah. It is most likely spread between couples. So we definitely think like sexual transmission is part of that. But also just like kissing and exchanging saliva and sharing food and beverage, being in close contact where airosized droplets, would be exchanged readily is necessary for you to transmit the virus. We know with COVID that in those early days when we were trying the six-foot thing,

that that probably wasn't very helpful. Right. We know that now. With antivirus, that would be a helpful measure. Six feet, hand-washing and a standard issue, surgical mask should protect you because that protects you from air-slice droplets. You don't need an N95 for that. Now, if I was having to go on that cruise ship, I would wear the whole deal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you don't know yet, right? Like, we're still, this was unfolding. So you'll see those images. So at the point we're at now, and we were recording this on May 8th, at this moment, we know that five people have it. We know that we have four more. Five living people? No.

Three people have died. Two. Yes. And there are four more people being monitored for infection that we think might have it. All from the cruise ship still? So far off from the cruise ship, what is complicating things are two things. One, I mentioned that April 24th date is important because people got off in St. Helena somewhere between 30 and 40 individuals. We're not sure.

And they went to at least 12 different countries. We need to find them all and monitor them, right? Agreed. Okay. So that is part of what they have officials in all of these countries doing right now, are trying to figure out where are all these individuals. and are they sick? You will have seen in the news probably that we have individuals in the U.S.

who did return, who were on that ship, who are being monitored, and currently they do not have any symptoms. They're in Georgia, California, and Arizona. They're individuals being monitored by their state health departments there. Sorry, did you say Arizona? Yes.

That's one of the four corners. I just wanted to remind everybody if you get no other takeaway from this episode, you are going to learn those four corners. So, and there are similar measures are being taken in other countries where we know individuals are. They have people in quarantine. They're being monitored. We know that people who stayed in St. Helena have been taken into quarantine.

So the measures are being taken all over the world. The World Health Organization is coordinating this response that if you were on the ship and have left, we have to monitor you for, you know, like 45 days because you could become sick up to 45 days later. So that's being done right now. that's one focus. The other focus is that April 25th flight that we know one of the sick individuals who then passed away was on. So the concern is close quarters. Is that close quarters and long enough contact for somebody to become sick? There was a flight attendant who became ill after that, who I believe has tested negative at this point.

So at this moment, we do not believe that the flight attendant has antivirus at this moment. Now, obviously, she'll continue to be monitored, or he, I think it's a woman. Anyway, the flight attendant will continue to be monitored. There is another passenger who has become sick. Again, we do not have test results back to say one way or the other, but this was somebody who was close to the infected passenger. And so that person is also being monitored. So everybody who was on that flight, they are trying to find and put into quarantine

because we don't know. We don't think that if you're sitting many rows away, you would be infected. But until we know for sure, we would rather everybody be quarantined. So those are kind of the two areas to watch are where are all those people that got off the ship on the 24th and are they all in quarantine? Where are all the 88 people who were on that plane and are they on quarantine? And I think we'll be hearing reports from the World Health Organization regularly as they're tracing all these individuals. The ship itself, if you're curious, will arrive on Sunday. So again, by the time you listen to this, the ship has already arrived.

on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife. They already have Spain's head of emergency services has already said they will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned off area. They will board vehicles that are isolated and under guard, and they will proceed to a section of the airport that will be completely cordoned off, and they will board an aircraft to their country of origin and go back there. They're repatriating everybody to where they live. Go there, and basically your country's health officials can deal with what to do next. Right. Right.

So that's the plan. Yes. So they do have a way to protect people who are on, who live on that island. Yes. And then transfer all of those individuals back home. And then they can be monitored by their local health authorities. Obviously, they will have to remain in quarantine. So this isn't COVID by any stretch.

Because as we've talked about, it is much harder to catch. And we would not expect it to be something where flying on a plane, like in those early days, we knew if somebody with active COVID flew on a plane with 88 people, there was a high likelihood that people from that plane walked off with COVID and then went on to spread COVID to everybody else. Yes, but the good news is because we so recently dealt with COVID and are in so ways still dealing with the repercussions of that, we are much smarter, more capable and faster about how we react to this stuff. No.

Thank you so much for listening. I will say there's two pieces to this. the World Health Organization has been all over it and has been responding, I would say pretty quickly. It does make me nervous that we don't know exactly how many people got off the boat in St. Helena, because I feel like there should just be a log of that. But whatever, I don't know. I'm not a cruise ship expert. But the World Health Organization is doing what it should be doing, and it sounds like a lot of countries are doing what they should be doing.

So the U.S., while the individuals that we know are here are being monitored appropriately and we have no reason to believe that anything is being done wrong, our response has been slow. Why? Well, because if you remember, we withdrew from the World Health Organization officially as of, I believe it was like January 22nd of this year. So we are no longer a member of the World Health Organization because our president is an idiot. And what that means is that our CDC is not going to get alerts from the World Health Organization as quickly as the health organizations in all of these other countries. You know, because we're not in the the meetings. We're not on the Zoom. We're not at the table anymore. And as a result, we're not in the group chat. As a result, and I don't know if we were in the World Health Organization, those individuals who we have identified in this country and who are being monitored, would that have happened faster, first of all, you know, because we, I mean, I think just as of yesterday, there were more who were located. So would that have happened faster if we had been at the table the whole time, probably?

and what if any of those individuals did have symptoms? That delay could mean they spread it to somebody else, right? Somebody probably, again, in their household. I'm not talking about COVID where people in the room and the classroom with them wherever. I'm talking about their family and friends. We also know that there were 10 research centers in the Centers for Research and Emerging Infectious Diseases that were terminated last year by the National National Center. Institute of Health because their work was unsafe and not a good use of taxpayer funding.

One of those centers was studying the Andes virus, specifically because we knew it could be spread from person to person, but we didn't know exactly how or how easily or what to do about that. So we were going to be studying this in Argentina, but we didn't. Yeah. I'm not suggesting that if we had been, we would have prevented this, probably not. Yeah. Statistically not. However, we might understand what's happening a little better and how to move forward better.

More information can only make us better at responding to emerging threats. For our part, the president has said his, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the situation as a level three. That's its lowest level of emergency response. that's for like a disease cluster. And probably at this point, that's fair. So I'm not criticizing that. And I will say, too, that the World Health Organization and the CDC have confirmed that they are now working together. So even though we are not a member of the World Health Organization, we are working and cooperating with the World Health Organization at this time.

And the president says, I think we're going to make a full report about it tomorrow. We have a lot of people. A lot of great people are studying it. It should be fine. We hope. Cool. Is this the same guy who said, I want to see the churches, the churches will be full by Easter, if I remember correctly? Yeah. I think that when they asked the World Health Organization Director General for comment, his comment was viruses don't care about our politics, they don't care about our borders, and they don't care about all the excuses that we may have, which is like a, I think, a scarier and more realistic response than it will be fine, we hope. the truth is this should not terrify you you should not be panicking in part because that's never a really

helpful response right but in part because this isn't COVID we have no reason and there are many infectious disease specialists who very level-headed you know evidence based are saying don't panic this is not COVID don't you don't need to isolate in your house right now you don't need to freak out unless you were on the ship and we've told you to then please please do as you're told obviously a lot more contact tracing needs to be done. We might find that someone on the plane did contract the virus on the plane, which would tell us that it is maybe spread a little more easily than we thought. Right. But it is still not COVID level of pandemic that would stem from something like this.

That is not our expectation at this time. That being said, action you can take, assuming you weren't on that ship, is to vote for people in our country. country who will ensure that when things like this happen, we have the proper tools, the researchers, the evidence, the science, the information, and the cooperation on a global level to respond effectively, efficiently, and as quickly as possible to save human lives. We do not have that in place right now. This is not something to panic about. But if something was more serious and was COVID-2, was pandemic level,

Are we prepared to be a part of that effort right now? It does not appear that we are. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast, Salbones. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to you for listening. I really appreciate it. That is going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sidney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Maximum Fun. A Worker Own Network of Our artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.