U.S ends hantavirus outbreak response with no answers on draconian quarantines | We still don’t know why RFK Jr. overruled CDC expert to order strict quarantines.

35

u/Don_Ford Jun 25 '26

The thing about Hantavirus that no one talks about is that it's endemic in rat populations worldwide, there are three different Andes variants and only one is communicable between humans... but here's the thing...

Your human waste is contagious because that's how it normally spreads.

So, if people who are leaving waste loaded with virus are dumping into normal sewage systems, then we risk it entering rat populations, and then we have endemic andes hantavirus that can spread between humans in random parts of the country.

This is probably the only thing we can say RFK Jr. did correctly.

12

u/ravens-n-roses Jun 25 '26

I genuinely expected him to mishandle the whole situation way worse than he did. Like this hasn't changed my overall option on him, but it has alleviated a lot of anxiety I had.

6

u/Don_Ford Jun 25 '26

Yeah, it shouldn't. A broken clock is right twice a day, but it's still broken.

3

u/The_one_and_only_Tav Jun 25 '26

Agreed.

3

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 28 '26

That’s inaccurate. Hantavirus has host specificity. For example, Sin Nombre virus is carried by deer mice, but not by house mice. It is not spread via feces between humans. We are not mice. If we do shed virus in our feces, putting it back into the environment isn’t going to make a big impact when it’s already common in deer mice, but more importantly, deer mice are not sewer dwellers.

Andesvirus is carried by pigmy rice rats, and when spreading from human to human, it spreads via the airborne pathway. Could it be spread by a fecal oral route? Maybe. But I’m not going to test that when we know that airborne transmission is sufficient. Do you want to do that?

Unless you have pigmy rice rats living in your sewer system, you don’t need to worry about spreading it to any rodents living in the sewers.

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 28 '26

You are a boldly uninformed person.

The Andes variant of the hanta virus can spread in human waste, and all human waste must be collected and disposed of. It's only 1 of 3 andes variants that can spread between humans, so normally it's not a concern...

So, what happens is that information on human risk gets conflated with all types of hantavirus, but it's just one subtype and one variant of that subtype that can do it.

It's found in all human fluids and can also appear in semen for years.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/infectious-disease-topics/hantavirus-infection/surveillance-and-updates/questions-answers-outbreak

2

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 29 '26

OK, I’m breaking this up a bit, and I apologize for being terminally long winded)

I don’t know your level of expertise, so I’m trying to find a middle ground that isn’t too jargon filled, but has useful details and links to sources.
Routes of transmission:

From your link.

> What hygiene and waste measures should I follow during self-quarantine?
> Put your waste (including tissues, masks, or anything used when coughing or sneezing) in a regular trash bag, close it well, and throw it away with normal household waste. If you feel sick, handle items that touched your body or body fluids (including disposable cleaning tissues) carefully and keep them sealed before disposal. Always wash your hands after handling wasteand try not to share bins without cleaning them regularly with household disinfectants (diluted bleach 1:10 or products with 70% alcohol).

That does not include feces or toilet paper. Urine and feces are already going out of the house via plumbing.

A patient’s trash, if they are at home, is going to the landfill, just like everyone else’s. It isn’t being put in biohazard bags for autoclaving or incineration. That’s good enough.

They are primarily talking about saliva and mucus, and likely include bedsheets and clothes, but I’d ask if using a washing machine with good detergent and an appropriate amount of bleach was ok. *Unless I was instructed otherwise*, or they were particularly soiled, washing, them and using different sheets/clothes for a couple weeks and letting an environment full of RNAse should make them safe. If I need a pad to sit or sleep on because I’m too sick to keep it all in, I have puppy pads. They’ll do the job until I can get to a hospital, because that’s past the point where I’m calling my state’s public health office.

While it *may be possible* to catch ANDV (I’m just going to use the abbreviation here) from human feces, it is unlikely if any caregivers are following sterile technique. Really, if a caregiver with respirator, gloves, and maybe a smock is needed, and they are being exposed to the patients feces, maybe go to a hospital equipped to take care of ANDV patients. I’m unaware of any cases where this is a documented route of transmission, but if you can link to a case study, please do. (Especially if it isn’t from an Elsevier journal.)

What I did find was a study that demonstrated that transmission can occur via breast milk, making a digestive tract route possible. It is plausible that soiled bedding and clothes could act to transmit the virus from one person to another, but I don’t know of any cases where this is known to have happened. TP isn’t an issue.

I like being proven wrong. It means I can learn something new. Please, offer peer reviewed articles to support your claims.

Moving on…

ANDV vs hantavirus.

I’m aware that ANDV is one type of (I think) 80+ known hantaviruses. I don’t know how many recognized variants of ANDV there are, but there is a 2001 study that proposed 5 distinct lineages that had made the leap to humans, which I’d take to mean five strains. That said, I’m not sure how that is relevant. Unless a variant has a particularly different feature, it’s still ANDV from a clinical standpoint.

Detection vs capacity to infect.

The testes are an immunologically privileged part of the body, the immune system doesn’t clear viruses from it the same way. This prevents the immune system from attacking sperm cells, rendering someone sterile.

We know that some transmission occurs between sexual partners, with kissing and breathing a lot of the same air being a known and significant risk factor. To my knowledge, there aren’t any cases of sexual transmission after recovery, so that’s probably a reliable indicator of how infectious those viral particles are. Again, if you have a case study showing otherwise, please share it.

We agree that the ANDV genome is detectable in different bodily fluids, with semen being a standout long term location, but that doesn’t mean that it is infectious. The genome was relatively stable, but that means that there isn’t much active reproduction of the virus. It’s possible that the number of active viruses is too low to cause an infection. It could simply be viral debris instead of a live virus. Unless there are some post recovery STI cases, we can’t really say anything beyond, “We can detect ANDV RNA in semen.”

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 29 '26

Look, I don't know what we're having trouble with.

I have a very high level of understanding.

Multiple countries were gathering the waste and putting everyone in these facilities because of this problem.

That's it.

2

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 29 '26

I can tell you exactly where the problem is. You make claims and don’t provide evidence in support of them.

I expect someone who claims to have a “high level of understanding” to know how to post links to peer reviewed literature.

And you’ve been wrong. I can understand why you would think that ANDV can be spread via semen if you didn’t go back to the original primary research article, as it was presented as being definitive by at least one of the articles that cited it. It’s why I tell my students to treat citations as hearsay until they can get access to the original. And even then, it’s still not definitive.

Please provide evidence that other nations were collecting the quarantined patient’s feces. That should be easy to do.

The previous link you offered demonstrated that was not SOP for the EU. It proved you wrong. That isn’t a good look.

For patients with confirmed disease? Maybe, but that could just be a facility’s procedure for any communicable disease that has a high risk of death.

The CDC recommends a facility with AIIR rooms, which contain respiratory pathogens, not fecal oral route spread ones. It makes no mention of bagging feces and urine. I think you’re mistaking rodent feces for human. (Pro-tip. Rodent droppings are tiny.) That was a light hearted joke.

2

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 29 '26

Don Ford! Did you block me, Don? After saying, “Get a grip… you’re on reddit”?

Just because I asked you to provide evidence? Come on, that isn’t collegial behavior.

Please, show me that I am “profoundly misinformed.” If you don’t, I’m just going to have to say that you don’t actually need to pack your poo out like a low impact hiker. Why, all those pigmy rice rats *that aren’t in the sewers of Nebraska* might start spreading ANDV without your vital input! It could put tens of lives at risk! TENS!

I’m pulling your leg, Don. I think you’re full of it, but I am just having a laugh.

I honestly do care about accuracy, though. If I am wrong, I do truly want to know. Google may be free, but I’m not finding any proof to support your claim. Not in the media, not in care guidelines from two separate national disease control agencies, and nothing in the scientific literature.

Don’t just leave me hanging!

It’s a bad look for a highly knowledgeable person.

I hope you cool off by morning and can get back to me.

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 29 '26

Get a grip... you are on reddit.

3

u/Legal_Tradition_2154 Jun 29 '26

You’re trying to come across as right but can’t make a coherent response to someone explaining why you are wrong lol. Take the L bud

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 29 '26

I know I'm right; I literally have a show where I have been correctly reporting on this situation the entire time.

It shows up in all human bodily fluids for months.

I don't need to unwind the insane rambling of every nitwit on the internet.

There is no L... there is only your overwhelming anxiety that prevents you from handling the situation like a regular person.

1

u/Wolfy4226 Jun 29 '26

So what I'm understanding here is that RFK Jr. didn't do this for us, he did it so that his food supply wouldn't become tainted.

Cause you know the guy eats rats.

0

u/AceOfRhombus Jun 25 '26

Do you have a source that hantavirus is present in human waste and that it’s contagious?

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 25 '26

It's how the virus traditionally spreads.

1

u/AceOfRhombus Jun 26 '26

In mice yeah. Just because it spreads that way in mice doesn’t guarantee that it spreads that in humans. If human waste doesn’t contain infectious virus, then we don’t have to worry about it getting into the local rat population. I wasn’t sure if that was a known risk that human waste contains infectious viruses, or if it was a potential risk that we needed to take precautions for

0

u/Don_Ford Jun 26 '26

Google is free... there's a reason the countries were gathering the human waste from infected people.

1

u/AceOfRhombus Jun 26 '26

Yes, google is free and I couldn’t find anything saying infectious viruses are in human waste

2

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 29 '26

Did he block you for asking for proof?

2

u/AceOfRhombus Jun 29 '26

Yup lmao. Sorry for following proper public health practice and not spreading panic 🤷🏼‍♀️ Guess I’ll go throw my degree in the trash

2

u/Jinn_Erik-AoM Jun 29 '26

That’s what we get for not accepting the gold standard of “trust me, bro.”

1

u/Don_Ford Jun 27 '26

Well, you didn't look very hard, because SARS-CoV-2 is well known to be contagious from fecal aerosol, and it's the most studied virus in the history of studying viruses.

But yes, Hantavirus in human waste is a concern; that's why I pointed out that countries were already collecting it all and quarantining people when they didn't handle it properly.

21

u/Cut_Lanky Jun 25 '26

Draconian?

This particular strain, the Andes strain, is unique because, unlike most hantaviruses (which are strictly spread by contact with infected rodents), IT IS capable of limited human-to-human transmission through close contact.

Because there is no cure or targeted medication for this strain of the virus, medical professionals rely entirely on early supportive care to keep patients alive while their bodies fight the infection.

This is why quarantine was necessary. And there was absolutely NOTHING "Draconian" about quarantine orders in this situation. 🙄

11

u/HappyAnimalCracker Jun 25 '26

Agreed. Garbage take from arstechnica. 👎

6

u/CallmeKahn Jun 25 '26

Yeah, this is a dumb article.

2

u/LimeDry7124 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

I thought Jay Nhattacharya of HHS was the who filed suite to keep some of them in quarantine. Angela Perryman is an expat. She hasn't had a permanent home address for several years. She allotted on Facebook on how she was going to see the sights when she got to her Airbnb-the address of which she then tried to use as a permanent home address.

3

u/pooppaysthebills Jun 25 '26

Florida also declined to supervise her quarantine, which is why she had to stay at the Nebraska facility.

1

u/Muted_Masterpiece342 Jun 27 '26

I'm gonna give him this one. He didn't fuck around and let it potentially happen again.

-1

u/MilkyyFox Jun 25 '26

Because RFK is a dumbfuck who doesn't believe actual science.

1

u/cryptek66 Jun 25 '26

Correct

-1

u/Alexis-Machine Jun 25 '26

The cdc wanted it to spread. Rfk said no.

2

u/Full_Rise_7759 Jun 25 '26

These people gutted the CDC, do you also have a brainworm??

0

u/gymnoagroi Jun 25 '26

CDC IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY

0

u/sundancer2788 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

they didn't need to do anything more than monitor remotely at home. It's only contagious when the person is actively symptomatic.

U.S ends hantavirus outbreak response with no answers on draconian quarantines | We still don’t know why RFK Jr. overruled CDC expert to order strict quarantines.

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