Are you sick and tired of worrying about Covid-19? You may feel better if you take a step back and realize it is just one of many horrible and exotic (not to mention horrible and common) diseases you can be terrified of.
A couple of hantavirus cases have popped up, spread by rats in Washington D.C. The article mentions Baltimore as another rat capital. Luckily it doesn’t mention Philadelphia so there is nothing to worry about, although I see them frequently around my neighborhood due to the completely inept trash pickup practices in our city. I also see them frequently around construction sites and occasionally in parks. I have never seen one indoors but we see plenty of their less terrifying cousins the mice, which also can spread hantavirus. The article describes one person who contracted hantavirus, is a plumber’s assistant, and does not believe he could have been exposed through his work. Well, have a look behind the walls in an old house in any of the cities mentioned above and you will see plenty of evidence of rodent activity. Apparently he is okay and I wish him well.
This is also concerning:
According to DLD Director-General Sorawit Thanito, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recorded outbreaks of avian influenza at 5,213 locations in 61 countries for 2021. A recent OIE article published on February 25, 2022, reported outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 H5N6 H5N2 H5N5, and H5N8 viruses in more than 30 countries across Africa, America, Europe and Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) has meanwhile reported human infection cases and fatalities of H5N6 avian influenza in China.
Pattaya Mail
Nothing to worry about. The infected birds may be all over the world, and the 1918 flu may have been a bird flu, but only some unknown number of human beings has been infected and killed so far. These people were far away, not U.S. citizens, and I can’t think of any recent cases of exotic fatal diseases that started in China and spread to the rest of the world, can you? At least we have had a bit of a dress rehearsal for a really bad flu outbreak.