Title. Apparently there is a cruise ship quarantined right now because of this. And a guy at work was telling me some of the staff escaped? Not sure what exactly is going on but is it cause for concern?
Title. Apparently there is a cruise ship quarantined right now because of this. And a guy at work was telling me some of the staff escaped? Not sure what exactly is going on but is it cause for concern?
I have read a lot about it because I have stressed a lot about it, I’m also naturally very skeptical so I dig down a lot.
This particular variant is the Andes strain of the virus which have been show to transmit human.
It’s a virus that had existed for long time. And has already caused local epidemics. The most famous the Chilean Argentinian epidemic of 2019 where something like a dozen people died out of thirty infected.
Mortality is high (around 30% of infected, once you develop lung symptoms around 50%) but R0 number is low. Usually the studied R0 number has been below 1. This mean that each person rarely spread it to more than one other person. For comparison covid R0 was something between 2 and 4. This is the main reason to think it won’t spread a lot.
This virus has been around a lot, but it’s true that it has maybe never been in a situation like now with worries about quick international spread via airlines.
Currently most worries are about how easy is to actually spread human to human. There was a case of a flight attendant who was tested after a short contact with an infected but apparently has tested negative (her symptoms were apparently unrelated to the virus). So for now we must watch out if the people who were in flights with some of the infected have also been infected. If there are none or very few infected of those airplane passengers we could, most likely, breath safe, as the danger would be low. If we start to see infections after short contact then we should worry. As of this morning I start to believe that we are on the former scenario, as there has currently not been any positive test after a short contact.
My overall worry is that with globalization on the rise and international fast travel growing each year we will start seeing more and more of these epidemics. It’s just a question of time. From my point of view is not if there will be a pandemic virus that would wipe out a high chunk of the population. I think that’s guaranteed if we don’t change our traveling habits. It’s just a matter of when.
This is the most in depth response yet, thank you
Yes I agree with you actually. The reasoning behind this conclusion is airtight, yet no one wants to go there because it’s such a disturbing thought.
And even though the COVID lab leak theory is controversial, there have been many well documented lab leaks of other biohazards, viral or otherwise. If we keep poking around with these things it increases the odds of another pandemic increase even further, whether that be by a malicious actor doing it intentionally or someone letting it slip by mistake