When he got bored he chomped the entire mouse down, leaving no trace.
I think my house is protected.

When I woke up in the morning, of course they were chewing on the dead gopher on their bed next to mine. First thing I thought of was plague flees - but oh well! They have a doggie door out to a huge run so they made a midnight trip as I was sleeping.

I heard about the hanta virus cruise ship on the BBC overnight to the US a few nights ago.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/g-s1-120234/cruise-ship-hantavirus


https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/two-cases-hantavirus-which-spreads-human-to-human-linked-ship-south-africa-says-2026-05-06/



Also it turns out I am very very very afraid of being on a ship on an ocean

they did not contract the virus on the ship.

Can't envision how they would be as pernicious as a virus shared person to person just by our breathing.
Seems like a radically different situation.
Has there been evidence of P2P transmission. I don't recall hearing about that, but doesn't mean anything more than I may have missed it

Yes, as of May 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health authorities suspect that human-to-human transmission of a rare strain of hantavirus occurred on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

NPR
+4
While hantavirus typically spreads from rodents to humans, this specific outbreak involves the Andes virus strain, which is known to be capable of passing directly between people, often through close contact.

NPR
+1

Well, that's not good.

not contracted on board.

is supposed to be able to be able to be transmitted human to human as well as mouse/rat to human.

A South American variant that has P2P transmissability.
Go figure.

She got a job at an Apple ranch retreat that had her sweeping up mice feces from cabins that were vacant over the summer. She was given no respirators or anything to spray down mouse droppings. It was sad, as her mom was the teller in the bank in our small town. The mom would often be seen at the tiny local cemetery lying on her daughter’s grave. Beyond sad!

Grok- “ In 2016, 20-year-old Shawnee Romero from Moriarty/Torrance County, New Mexico, died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome on June 9 after cleaning up large amounts of rodent feces and urine at her job at the Manzano Mountain Retreat and Apple Ranch (also referred to as Apple Ranch in some coverage). She was exposed while disturbing mouse droppings (likely from deer mice, the primary carrier of Sin Nombre virus in the region), which can aerosolize the virus for inhalation. pressreader.com pressreader.com
• Hantavirus vs. plague: New Mexico sees occasional plague cases (bacterial, from fleas on rodents), but this was confirmed as hantavirus, a viral illness. State health officials noted it as one of the hantavirus deaths that year. ksl.com
• Symptoms typically start flu-like and can rapidly progress to severe respiratory distress.”

Not even measles, although because we’re stupid it’s making a resurgence, we possess the tools to beat it back into nothing if only the adults would ever get elected to office again.

It’s the next “unknown unknown” to quote a conservative vocabularic miscreant. The administration in its ultimate wisdom decided to replace career diplomats, virologists, scientists, generals, et al with fox news hosts, charlatans, and yes men cultists. If they’re lucky, nothing arises in the next 3 years. If we’re all unlucky, there’s a new pandemic that requires everyone’s best and brightest…and we’re going to gum up the works.

I have no predictive powers, but it seems to me this is what they usually think up to make the really scary big disaster movies. I don’t have a lot of optimism these days.

It is not contagious from person to person. You get it from rodent feces and only from specific rodents. Rodents were in their New Mexico house.

It is already endemic to the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/28/gene-hackman-betsy-arakawa-final-autopsy-results-complex-health-issues

Yet, it's not considered an epidemic in Argentina.

I believe Argentina has the highest rate of hantavirus in the Americas. I think they lose about 100 people a year.

I don't think a person to person case will result in the virus becoming endemic in the US.

When they say close contact, I'm not quite sure what they mean.

So far, they are allowing passengers to stay on the boat until they reach the Canary Islands. (Unless they are sick) Everyone could have disembarked at Cape Verde, but they didn't. So, I don't know how concerned they are about the disease spreading. I'm thinking there are rats on the ship, but they are saying there isn't.

I went on my first and hopefully last cruise this past January. (Family imposed thing). We disembarked at Progresso, Yucatan which is the longest pier in the world. We took a bus on the four mile pier to get to town. There were bait boxes every 50 feet or so. It was kinda crazy. But the bait boxes indicated that rats are a huge problem on ships.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/06/health/andes-strain-hantavirus-explained

I really didn't enjoy being on a ship for four days, but it was a Disney cruise with the grandkids and an in-law works for Disney. Yesterday I told hubby, "No more cruises: Hantavirus". Being on a ship, just isn't my thing. I wanted to get off and "go the the store" and felt confined. I also didn't like the "dress up" stuff. And I really didn't like the Disney shows. I did enjoy disembarking at Progesso and enjoyed the sites within the Chicxulub crater, including the cenotes and Mayan ruins.

This particular strain (spreading on a cruise ship) is transmittable from person to person.

The outbreak was reported on the MV (Motor Vessel) Hondius, which was travelling between Argentina and Cape Verde

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/03/three-passengers-dead-after-suspected-hantavirus-outbreak-on-cruise-ship

by a passenger and not originally contracted on the ship.
How is that different from getting sick from someone while flying.

Is Trump in charge again? Count on it with the same response to the dying victims.

While it's an interesting enough story, it's unlikely to go very far.

Let's rephrase this in mediaese: "Virus hits a few Westerners who were told they were not supposed to be subjected to this sort of thing."

And panic sells clicks and eyeballs.

Not even in the top fifty of things I'm worried about this week.

Where close contact and cross-contamination in spaces where people are eating together in large numbers is a thing.

I'm sorry. I can't be anxious about everything just because the media screams jump. And I certainly am not about to join in on Instant Internet Experts who are putting their Social Media University degrees in epidemiology in the microwave as we speak.

It would be a mentally exhausting way to live. I have shit to do.

Like schools, hospitals, prisons, retirement homes, etc..

I'm not telling you to worry.

Nothing much can be done anyway except the same precautions for COVID.

Hoping that the present clown car is monitoring is out of the question.

It's a discussion board.

We discuss things.

Emotions guiding response is the antithesis of evidence-based logic that should reign in science and medicine. Speculation and extrapolation work against these principles.

From the WHO:

Ebola is transmissible human to human and yet it's rare there's a case outside of Africa. A handful of cases of a disease doesn't mean a pandemic is happening. Bird flu variants for example.

the rats came from: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We can quarantine them for at least 2 years.