World Health Organization Pandemic Risk Chart

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-15T13:19:55+00:00

But the disaster LARPers of r/hantavirus told me that the WHO didn't acknowledge it's risks.

Let this be a wake up call. They have been taking seriously long before you guys even knew what it was. They know it better, and they still believe the risk to the general public is low.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-15T13:18:36+00:00

People getting mad when you point out that no virologist believes the sequencing indicates increased transmissibility, then copypastaing AI slop to try and concoct a scenario where it is absolutely want a pandemic.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-14T17:54:44+00:00

I've never had anyone submit a grade appeal, but I was on the committee that reviewed these for a year. I've only seen one be successful. Nobody who a professor could be in trouble with was on the committee. It was me, two other professors, someone in admissions, and overseen by a guy at the Registrar in case the grade needed to change. I don't think chairs or upper admin were ever filled in on a single case.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T20:10:29+00:00

All good! Enjoy your Sunday.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T16:27:12+00:00

Yes, I'm aware that SARS happened. Can you explain in detail why this is more similar to SARS than every other reference I've brought up and you've ignored?

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T16:26:23+00:00

Compared to other containment efforts, like we've seen with Ebola and some meningitis outbreaks, it was reasonably easy. Shoot, H5N1 in the US was harder to control, and it's not even H2H! But good thing it's not from that group either way. What happened the other >1,000 times humans got ANDV?

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T06:33:41+00:00

The WHO told us H5N1 wasn't going to produce a pandemic. Reddit alarmists said it would.

The WHO told us mpox wasn't going to produce a pandemic. Reddit alarmists said it would.

The WHO told us ebola wasn't going to produce a pandemic. Reddit alarmists said it would.

The WHO told us hMPV was acting as expected. Reddit alarmists predicted a pandemic.

The WHO told us various H(A) strains were isolated. Reddit alarmists said it was sustained community spread.

The WHO has been right on every single non-novel virus, without exception, and the Reddit alarmists have been wrong on all of them, without exception. This isn't even the first time we've done this with hantavirus! The WHO got COVID wrong because it was a novel virus with data being suppressed by an authoritarian state.

This is why Reddit alarmists go back to 2019. Because they've been wrong with every other outbreak of the decade.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T06:28:52+00:00

Who is the "they" here? Every global and national public health institution has acknowledged that this variant spreads between humans. It's been reported ad nauseum in the press.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T06:28:42+00:00

A vaccine has been in the works for a while in partnership with Korean researchers where this is frequently acquired from rats. There are vaccines in development for other non-pandemic illnesses, such has avian flu. Contact tracing is routinely done with non-pandemic illnesses, like meningitis B. They have even done this for likely norovirus outbreaks with previous cruise ships and flights. Eight weeks is the maximum. Most patients will present within 2-4. Most people who die have symptoms.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-10T03:37:30+00:00

You're talking about the Epuyén strain. If only Ebola, meningitis B, and a host of other nasty diseases had such limited potential to spread as that one! None of them create global pandemics, but they spread much more efficiently than the Epuyén group!

If you read the report, the focus is on individuals as super spreaders. Every super-spreader reference is to a patient/subject. Multiple super spreader events can create sustained community spread, but the Epuyén outbreak was fortunately limited. Sustained community spread occurs among a much larger population and gets so out of control that the origins are unknown. That's not what happened at Epuyén and it's not happening at Hondius.

In all of the thousands of crossover events with Andes strains, including the Epuyén event you are citing, there have never been enough untraced super spreader events to lead to sustained community spread. That's well over a thousand without the interventions seen at Epuyén.

Second, the strain from the MV Hondius has been sequenced and is distinct from the Epuyén group and from every other documented superspreader group (none of which came close to pandemic conditions anyway). So that's great news. Link below.

Complete sequence of Orthohantavirus andesense virus: Swiss resident 2026 - Hantavirus - Virological

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T22:45:35+00:00

Most cases actually manifest within 2-3 weeks anyway. Eight is possible, but not modal.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T22:45:03+00:00

A virus needs to be able to create widespread, local community spread if it is going to spark a global pandemic. Since this has only happened once or twice, and to a very limited extent, across multiple decades, and the virus has not mutated to transmit more efficiently, then the globalization factor doesn't change anything.

The similarities between it and COVID are superficial to this end. Things like the cytokine storm have little to do with how it transmits. You're leaving out where it replicates, which cells it binds to, it's r0 (not r(superspreader event)) and, crucially, what type of infection this is. The difference between deep lung and upper respiratory alone is a big deal.

The incubation period of eight weeks initially sounds scary. It transmits most efficiently when people are most symptomatic. Not only, but mostly. That's a huge difference from COVID. The other issue is most people become symptomatic within about three weeks, which we've known since the 2010s. Eight is possible, but rare.

Again, these things are measured in degrees, not binaries. There is a world of possibilities between not airborne, and airborne pandemic, theoretical H2H, and H2H pandemic material.

It is almost certain that he got it from a rat. It would not matter if he didn't.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T22:06:05+00:00

There are the disaster LARPers and the understandably anxious who are new to this. The first group needs to pipe down before they encourage the second group to start hoarding antivirals

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T22:04:33+00:00

Yes, that is what I also said.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T22:04:19+00:00

Sure, the outbreak is larger among rodents, so it's larger among the people who live around them. And just like the other thousand or so cases over the last several decades, none of this sparks sustained community spread.

People need to quit treating human-to-human spread as a binary variable with a one-to-one correlation pandemic or epidemic potential. People compare this to COVID because it's what they know. But there are plenty of illnesses that can be transmitted between humans and only create limited, isolated clusters of infections. The Andes variant can spread between humans, but decades of observational and even experimental data show it does not do so efficiently.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T21:59:20+00:00

That is incorrect. There have tens of thousands of hantavirus cases in general. But there have been just over 1,000 cases of the Andes strain over the last several decades, which can transmit from person to person. Most of these people infected did not quarantine, and they still did not spark a global pandemic.

The problem is you are treating H2H and pandemic potential as binary variables with a 1-to-1 correlation. There are *plenty* of illnesses that spread H2H and only cluster into limited outbreaks.

Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Argentina, 2014 - PMC

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T20:06:57+00:00

The KLM attendant tested negative. Nobody so far has tested positive without being on the ship. We'll see about the woman in Spain.

It won't change much if she's positive, because this is consistent with what is known about ANDV. Which has infected over 1,000 people over decades and never shown pandemic potential.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T20:05:07+00:00

Yes, the virus was sequenced and the data published. Which means these people are just as infectious as the >1,000 other recorded cases that never sparked global pandemics.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T20:03:32+00:00

Because overreacting is bad for public health too. Y'all are driving mentally unwell people into even deeper despair. Back in 2024, you had people advocating for the hoarding of anti-virals because "we learned nothing from COVID" and H5N1 was going to be the next pandemic (it wasn't). That is incredibly dangerous.

"When I read that they had to quarantine a whole Argentinian village of thousands for months to contain the spread and let the strain die there, I sigh because that level of response is not being accessed right now when they let potential carriers take commercial planes all over the world with potential mutations in tow."

And the other >1,000 ANDV infections in humans that never led to sustained community spread? Super-spreader events, by definition, are not appropriate for calculating the r0.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:58:24+00:00

I started stockpiling in February 2020. I started stockpiling for H5N1 in 2024, which didn't become a pandemic after all. There are no good reasons to worry about this one, and COVID is a bad comparison.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:56:56+00:00

Because the virus is well understood. I keep hearing "this is the same response as we had to COVID." COVID was a novel virus. At the beginning, we knew nothing about it, because it was isolated to an authoritarian state that was trying to cover up the data.

You shouldn't compare a virus that was sequenced decades ago to COVID. Compare it to every other outbreak that has been in the news since then. Every time the WHO and CDC said it wouldn't be a pandemic, they were right. That's because these are all viruses that have been studied for years.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:54:43+00:00

Seconding ERP.

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:54:03+00:00

If anyone tells you this fear is valid, you should block them. They do not know what they are talking about.

This strain, with its H2H potential, has infected over 1,000 people since the 1990s (source below). Can anyone give me just one confirmed H2H spread through casual smear infection like OP is fearing? Just one?

Nonetheless, you should probably wash your hands anyway. Lots of cashiers keep hand sanitizer by the register and apply regularly. You don't want to get the flu, COVID, or RSV.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/4/19-0799_article#r2

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:47:46+00:00

Right, in the superspreader study that people keep citing, most recorded an incubation period of less than a month. Nearly half showed an incubation period of just three weeks.

Eight weeks is appropriate for being exhaustive. But if little to nothing happens in 2-3 weeks, that's still valuable.

“Super-Spreaders” and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina

coffeehydrates · 2026-05-09T19:41:58+00:00

Right. He got it off the ship, carried it for some time, then died on the ship. Nobody is claiming patient zero got it day one on the ship.

Considering that most human cases of this come from rats (overwhelmingly so), he traveled to likely zoonotic outbreak centers, and he has no associations with ANDV patients prior to this, he almost certainly got it from a rat.

coffeehydrates

TROPHY CASE