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Yosemite Expands Scope of Hantavirus Warning: More than 20,000 At Risk
redletterdave writes "In response to a recent outbreak of a deadly pulmonary disease commonly carried by mice and other rodents, Yosemite National Park has doubled the scope of those likely infected by hantavirus. Given the rising number of confirmed cases (currently eight) and deaths (three), U.S. officials have effectively sounded a worldwide alert for more than 22,000 local and international visitors that may have been exposed to the deadly virus. Health officials initially believed as many as 10,000 people were at risk to contracting the hantavirus after staying in Yosemite's popular Curry Village lodging area between the months of June and August.; unfortunately, that 10,000 'at risk' estimate was low. Officials expanded the warning this week to an additional 12,000 visitors to Yosemite's High Sierra camps, now that the eighth case of hantavirus was confirmed in a man who stayed in those camp areas. Furthermore, more than 2,500 of those individuals currently live outside the United States."
Don't sniff the mouse poop!
I'm glad I picked Yellowstone instead.
This is the beginning...
Fortunately, this isn't a virus easy to pass between humans. Unfortunately, it is one of the contagions in our biological weapon program.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Great. First the supervolcano under Yellowstone, now deadly virus from Yosemite.
You nature lovers and conservationists feel good about yourselves for preserving it? Huh?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is bad because the hantavirus pulmonary disorder has a 60% mortality rate and it takes several weeks to incubate. People who might have been exposed recently need to know now.
Why? So they can write their last will?
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/outbreaks/yosemite-national-park-2012.html
National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/hantafaq.htm
WHO (via TFA): http://www.who.int/csr/don/2012_09_04/en/index.html
Am I the only one who does not see the quoted number of 20,000 on either website?
TFA, on the other hand, links to Fox News.
Time to go long on cats? *buy* *buy* *buy*
It sounds so much smarter when you describe injecting vitamin C with such fancy words.
The mortality rate is only true for HPS, which doesn't develop for all cases. In most cases a lesser disorder occurs which can damage the kidneys and the heart. But the virus present in the US is the most lethal type (the Sin Nombre virus), which does have an extremely high mortality rate (it was considered for use as a biological weapon).
Managed treatment for the heart and kidneys would likely decrease the mortality rate. Since HPS is a rare disorder, very few people get a managed treatment. Early detection could very well be a lifesaving action.
But yes, if you are elderly with a weak immune system and are infected by a hantavirus like the Sin Nombre strain, it would help to have time to write a will and set your affairs in order.
Vitamin C may be good against the common cold and such viruses, but it does nothing to prevent e.g. the hantavirus, no matter how much you inject it.
The moderation sorts itself out. Enough moderation occurs so there isn't a heavy bias and the general consensus on the best moderation for comments gets sorted. It's awesome. Of course if you cruise all comments like god intended you don't lose any comments due to your threshold being set too high.
Don't take the moderation too seriously. The meta-moderation has a karma all its own...*smile*
Not really, if you inject enough, you remove the pathway for the host to disseminate the virii, with the cessation of respiration.
Why after all these years are people still using Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum Like Substance?
Monstar L
I (with my family) hiked round the High Sierra camps last year, with a small group guided by one of the park rangers. He said he'd never met anyone else from outside the US on one of those trips. Kind of surprising that they mention such a high number of non-US visitors in the press release.
Citation or credentials please.
Congratulations my good sir. You win this days tinfoil award.
Government of Madagascar shuts down shipyards due to safety concerns.
President Nixon terminated the United States offensive biological weapons program by executive order.
Note the word offensive.
Official policies
War on drugs: Defensive
Iraq war #1: Defensive
War on terror: Defensive
Iraq war #2: Defensive
Afghanistan: Defensive
I live too close to one of the largest biodefence research companies for the US Military. It is frightening when someone moves in next door and they tell you their job is in infectious disease propagation improvement. Sure it is to find better ways to stop the spread and kill the next pandemic, but when you have a drawer full of hammers.....
This seems like a typical situation that we see in the West arising from: (1) the legacy of heedless 19th-century attitudes toward the environment and (2) unrealistic expectations about human interaction with the environment.
A hundred years ago, people did all kinds of things to cherished natural resources that they'd never do today. San Francisco dammed Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite's twin that was reputed to be even more beautiful than Yosemite. Until ca. 1950, people intentionally fed bears in Yosemite Valley for entertainment, and sent burning logs over Yosemite Falls at night for people down in the valley to watch. They put permanent steps and cables on the back of Half Dome, which is something that just isn't a normal thing to do on a peak in the Sierra. And they developed the hell out of Yosemite Valley, turning it from a natural cathedral into an asphalt parking lot with big-city-style smog problems in the summer high season. All of these things have had negative consequences. A bunch of people have died on Half Dome, so they've had to start rationing access. Bear-human interactions, which are very, very seldom an issue in the undeveloped backcountry, are a huge problem in specific places, especially Yosemite Valley. And now we have hantavirus, which doesn't seem to be a big problem either in the city or in the backcountry.
People also have unrealistic expectations about how they can live alongside the environment. People build houses in beautiful forests, refuse to clear defensible space around their houses because they like the trees, and then yelp to the government to put out forest fires so their houses don't burn down. The result is that we build up tinder for decades, and then get huge, catastrophic fires that, unlike the many smaller fires that would naturally occur, have negative environmental effects. An example was the huge Station Fire in the San Gabriels a few years back. Various opportunistic species have taken over in the disturbed habitat. One of the worst of these is purple poodle bush, which is sort of like poison oak except ten times worse -- it gets microscopic needles under your skin like little syringes injecting you with the irritating chemical. The stuff is ordinarily pretty rare (thank God), but in the burned areas it's taking over like crazy.
It's not realistic to imagine that you can have a natural environment in Yosemite Valley with the population density they're trying to support. Why is it a surprise if they get disease-carrying rodents? If it was undeveloped backcountry, you wouldn't have a big enough supply of garbage to feed such a high density of mice. If it was a city, you could exterminate the mice. You can't do any of that in an environment that's basically a high-density suburb that you're pretending is a wilderness.
The guvmint-based solution is to scale back the density of development in Yosemite Valley radically, and also to stop allowing people to drive private cars into the valley.
As an individual, there are a couple of positive things you can do: (1) Instead of driving your car into Yosemite Valley, take the YARTS bus from a nearby town like Mariposa. (2) If you live in the Bay Area, please show a little originality by not doing the same stuff that everybody else does. The two things that people want to do are (a) climbing Half Dome as a day hike and (b) overnight backpacking in Little Yosemite. These areas are heavily overimpacted. Try something else. The Sierra is a big place.
Find free books.
All these viruses (virii??), like Hanta Virus, Ebola Virus, Nipah Virus, and so on ... are they new?
If they are not new - that is, they already existed for a long time, it's just that they have been accurately been identified recently - then I'll imagine that hundreds of years ago, or even thousands of years ago human populations must had had "contacts" with them and were infected as well ...
My question is: If humans did suffered past epidemics of those viruses, how come there wasn't any record on it?
Or is it a case of human evolution - or recent changes to human environments (much more hygienic) - that resulted in a decline of human immunological response to many types of viruses?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You've got it backwards.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Sorry, the moderation on /. is pathetically bad. Some of the most informative comments never get bumped... or get downgraded by people who can't handle the truth. Make an uninformative wisecrack, though, and you rise to the top, like a "baby ruth" in a pool.
Are you mentally ill?
Not smallpox or some other European disease, but rather hantavirus, that mutated to become person-to-person contagious.
Per their theory, it was deadlier to the Aztecs than to the Europeans because Europeans had larger genetic variability than the native american populace.
The documentary I saw on the topic made a pretty convincing case for it being something unknown to Europeans, because the missionaries who were there at the time didn't recognise it as smallpox. Their term for it translates to English as "the Great Pest".
They also made the case that it was hantavirus, because weather conditions in the two years previous were conducive to an explosion of rodents that were carriers: a long drought followed by several wet years, leading to a rodent population explosion.
--PM
I have real patents, corporate bioresearch, degrees better than Ivy, and NSF gold. Just trying to help the common folks out, but the truth here is, can't cure stupid.
It helps to inject the correct form, the *sodium salt* of ascorbic acid, in a sufficient quantity. The life you save might be one of your own family. In some cases, like highly venomous creatures, time is important, without delays for argument or research. Already been there.
Then why don't you point to some real studies or try to get them done? Do you have any real life cases where this has been done? Can you describe, in a technical paper how this is accomplished? What is it that causes the virus (or bacteria?) to breakdown? What is the method by which it cures the infection? Does it work on parasites?
That seems like an awfully high amount. That's like a 10th to a 5th of a pound, intravenously. At what point does C, or this specific form, become toxic?
Instead of calling us stupid and railing about corporate fascist states, try disseminating the data. Don't tease us and then lord your credentials on high while calling us stupid.
I live in pain right now and nobody can tell me why. If you have some secret then by all means... please explain it. I'll keep an open mind.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions like your own.