Content warning: Hantavirus, good article inc appreciation for the science Martin McKee writes about lessons from the current Hantavirus...

C3 Mastodon #hantavirus (mastodon.social) — real-time social commentary · 2026-05-16 · South Africa

Content warning: Hantavirus, good article inc appreciation for the science Martin McKee writes about lessons from the current Hantavirus outbreak. "We were lucky with Hantavirus—next time we might not be" Couple of points I found interesting: 1. We got lucky that someone thought to test for it. Respect to Lucille Blumberg: "By great good fortune, both infected individuals who had reached South Africa came to the attention of Lucille Blumberg at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Initial tests for other causes were negative, but, displaying the curiosity that is a core public health attribute, and knowing the ship’s path, she and her team tested the pair for Hantavirus. The positive results triggered an extensive international programme to trace all those who had been in contact with people on the ship." 2. And for our present understanding of its (airborne) transmission, one particular piece of research stands out, from 2018: "... what really made a difference to our understanding was a very detailed paper on another outbreak in Argentina in 2018. We owe an enormous debt to the researchers involved. Their meticulous detective work documented chains of transmission with unusual precision. "The findings were unambiguous. Human-to-human spread of Hantavirus did not require prolonged or intimate contact, and transmission could occur in settings that many would have dismissed as low risk." 3. And a bonus point about media narratives: "Unfortunately, some of the early commentators on this latest outbreak seemed not to have read their paper. This was a reminder of a recurring problem in health crises, most recently with Covid: inconvenient findings are overlooked in favour of comforting assumptions." https://www. prospectmagazine.co.uk/politic s/policy/health/73572/we-were-lucky-with-hantavirusnext-time-we-might-not-be # science # SciComm # PublicHealth # media # Hantavirus

Read at source (Mastodon #hantavirus (mastodon.social) — real-time social commentary) →

HORIZON metadata

Open the live outbreak map →