That doesn’t help the people in the waiting room.
But we are digressing. My opinion is…if you are coughing, it’s considerate to remove yourself from the waiting room. Every doctors office I know will call you on your cell phone when your turn comes up…so…you can wait in your car, or outside.
It does sound like the U.S. folks from this cruise are being responsible.
Another good piece, detailing problematic aspects of the response.
From the author:
More than that: they seemed more interested in reassuring the public about the low risk than about actually containing the disease. This seems pretty backward to me! And tells us something bleak, I think, about the priorities of public health officials six years now since Covid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/hantavirus-us-passenger-quarantine-negative.html. The doctor who was in the bio containment unit based on a test done earlier this month k( which was” faintly positive “ has now had a negative test and is now in regular quarantine.
Great news! He really put himself out there to take care of the other passengers.
This supports the point I made a few days ago (gift link)
I was always impressed by my Chinese grad students who would wear masks whenever they or anyone around them was feeling unwell. I recall someone asking a student why, and she simply replied that it was respectful.
Haven’t listened to this yet. Eric Topol interview on hanta virus
Today I was cleaning out an old file cabinet which had old tax returns. I’m planning on having them shredded, I don’t need tax returns from the last century!
A mouse had gotten into that paperwork at one point. I opened one file to find some mouse dropping. I haven’t seen any mice in a while but we would get some in the fall. We live in the country.
I told my husband maybe I’m going to get the hantavirus! I did wash up afterwards. This is where you start thinking!
I live in Michigan btw!
I travelled to Japan with my husband (on business trip) in 2014. Saw quite a few people with paper masks on the commuter trains. My husband said that was a common practice if somebody was ill (but not so ill they needed to stay home) - thought it was considerate.
Why the landfill was a good place for bird watching and a very unlikely source of the virus:
I started following Jake from the boat on Instagram. He seems like a great guy!
ETA: this is another confirmation that this virus has a long incubation period (if the test results are confirmed).
What the heck is a ‘presumptive positive? Seems like the people in question have symptoms that could be indicative of flu, cold, RSV etc. So labeling it a presumptive positive comes across as more of a scare tactic. Yes, keep up the quarantine…but it’s not positive until it’s positive.
“Presumptive positive” is a technical term meaning a patient has tested positive by a state or local public health lab but the test has yet to be confirmed by the CDC (or its Canadian equivalent since we are talking about Canada).
News sites reported that test results have been officially confirmed. Fingers crossed for the Canadian and spouse.
Meanwhile in Africa…
This demonstrates how little we know about hantaviruses. Turns out, 10% of rodents in some areas caught by the researchers from WSU (go Cougs!) in a recent study were infected with the Sin Nombre hantavirus.
Yikes!
They never came up with a real name for that particular virus, so they just called it an unnamed virus?
Yup. It is officially Sin Nombre virus (SNV; Orthohantavirus sinnombreense ) per the original article.