How Serious is Hantavirus?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Speaking of which, a lot of this wildness happened after COVID. That was a really fun time for Okay. Yeah, yeah, keep going. And so now I'm hoping I've always been hoping Yeah. when is the next pandemic coming around?

[00:00:10]>> Okay.

[00:00:10]>> And you've been following up.

[00:00:11]>> Yes.

[00:00:11]>> Okay. God. All right. Yeah, 2020 there's this this pretty funny prank on the world. And so you might have heard >> that bat, right? You ate that bat or that pangolin.

[00:00:21]>> [laughter] >> Is it pan- Yeah, pangolin? You were on your other China trip. You were >> On my other China trip. You were smoking a little weed.

[00:00:27]>> you ate it in a lab if I remember. In a in a lab? No, a lot of people think it was in a lab, but I just went to the market bought the pangolin.

[00:00:33]>> bought the pangolin. I just [laughter] bought a pangolin. And then I I cooked.

[00:00:36]Yeah.

[00:00:37]>> but not well enough.

[00:00:38]>> [laughter] >> You didn't bring I've spent a lot of time in China last decade actually. A lot of people don't know that.

[00:00:43]>> You're the Forrest Gump of China, bro.

[00:00:45][ __ ] is happening around you.

[00:00:46]>> I flew straight to Italy.

[00:00:48]>> [laughter] >> And then you met Tom Hanks at his house.

[00:00:50]I think you met up with Tom Hanks.

[00:00:52]And it kicked everything off. Now, fingers crossed because this one this new fun version of a new virus came from South America. Tell me you have not gone there recently.

[00:01:02]No. No, just China. All right. Just kind of so You were saying you were saying your Venezuelan friends recently haven't been visiting.

[00:01:07]>> No, just phone calls. Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:01:09]>> Phone calls. All right. So hantavirus, you might have heard of it. This is a I guess like very small outbreak that is happening of a rare disease. And I think it's kind of bringing up some of the same types of fears about pandemic stuff because we're all fresh off of a horrific pandemic. So this is a disease that comes from rodents. Does not normally affect humans, but some rare strains can. Basically, it's like you get the flu symptoms that are bad and then it can affect your lungs or kidneys and and kill you. It can be pretty rough. There's no treatment, vaccine.

[00:01:38]The the kind of scary part is it's 1 to 6 weeks incubation period, meaning by the time you get it versus showing symptoms, it's 1 to 6 weeks, which is a long time, which means you might have it and be contagious without knowing it.

[00:01:51]But we don't know how it spreads. So you might if you've heard about this before this point, it's because this outbreak happened on a cruise ship like very recently.

[00:02:01]>> Lights super cruise. Yeah, so the this is over the past like two uh like two-ish weeks, couple weeks. It spread on this cruise ship, but we don't know how because normally these things spread by basically rat or rodent droppings. So, if you're like if you're like snorting lines of rat urine, like that could get you hantavirus. You're probably not going to get it if you aren't like uh directly exposed to like rodent droppings and you're inhaling them in small spaces. So, this is like the one strain, it's called the Andes strain, that can spread between people of hantaviruses. We've known about this for a while. This isn't like out of nowhere, this particular thing that is spreading on this cruise ship, but it's it's infrequent enough and it's small enough and it's hasn't really been a big deal before that we don't know how it's transmitted.

[00:02:40]>> Well, rat droppings are cool now cuz everyone's been like Are people even That's like what the kids are doing.

[00:02:44]Yeah, it's Tik the Tik Tok's on it, bro.

[00:02:47]Like I took NyQuil, you know, in high school to try to get to try to hallucinate. Kids now they're doing rat urine.

[00:02:52]>> it Chucky Cheezing, bro. They go crazy.

[00:02:54]>> [laughter] >> You go to the club. You get a little baggie of drops.

[00:02:58]You have yourself a night, bro. You were doing it with Jensen Huang in China, bro. Don't act like you're above it. But it was pure. It was [laughter] pure.

[00:03:05]It was pure. It was the good stuff. It was pure weed. You think Jensen's getting bad [ __ ] >> Yeah, yeah, he's You think Jensen's getting bad [ __ ] Every story Every story we've talked about today, you were actually involved with any of these at any point. It's so funny if we interview Jensen Huang like a year from now and they we cut [laughter] to this clip.

[00:03:21]Are the allegations true? New York Times, they grilled him about his rat dropping usage. [laughter] No, Jensen, to like hundreds of thousands of people listen. It's crazy.

[00:03:30]>> [laughter] >> Here's a little uh article from or or image, excuse me, from Bloomberg showing the map. So, basically this leaves from South America. The idea is probably a couple people got onto this cruise ship, which only had 150 people, it's small, but got onto this ship. They probably spread it to some degree. It spread. So, while this all might sound scary, you might have heard of hantavirus and all this stuff, it's not like a huge deal, to be honest. So, here's here's what we do know. Three people have died in total. It's kind of bad if you get it.

[00:03:55]There's been 13 total cases and at this point the cruise ship is like done.

[00:03:59]People have disseminated, but they're under the under watch basically cuz it's in a couple different countries now, but people are quarantining and whatnot.

[00:04:07]World Health Organization and CDC it says the risk is super low. European health officials are saying this isn't showing like it's going to mutate or anything, which is what would make it more contagious, right? That's the thing with COVID. It keeps mutating to become a new thing that spreads.

[00:04:21]Um but that does not appear to be happening here according to the European CDC. They've already sequenced the genome. Fortunately, the result of this, you might have heard about this and been a little freaked out like I was until this morning. It's like basically seems fine. The two things to be concerned about. One is just there is a long incubation period. So, there's a world where this suddenly starts spreading, but it seems to just not be nearly as scary.

[00:04:42]>> Isn't there not a confirmation of like to what amount of that incubation period you're contagious at all? We don't even know how it transmits. We know very little about it. So, that is the part that you might be afraid of, but of the information that is now rapidly developing like the CDC like said this was an emergency or took emergency actions immediately, but they're saying it's contained. They're saying it's fine. And if you if you really need comfort, take a look at this Polly Market poll of which a hantavirus pandemic in 2026 only 6% chance. So, I really see no concern at all. I think the main story here honestly >> Honestly, is that people are freaked out because of COVID and distrust of government. So, that even though the CDC and the WHO are both like this is good.

[00:05:23]We've got it under control. We're just going to keep it careful. Like we don't have a CDC director, permanent one, anymore and we haven't for a long time.

[00:05:31]People generally are distrusting the government. So, I think this is less of a real serious concern for a pandemic right now. All the signs point to this will be contained even though it sounded kind of scary. I think it just >> tough because like last I mean I agree with you. I I I from what I saw it doesn't seem to be the COVID level, but people said this [ __ ] like I remember all the [ __ ] I remember Elon Musk saying no new cases by April. I remember saying all this stuff downplaying it or it's it's contained to overseas or there are only a few cases in America. You know, it's like it just became bigger and every step of the way people were downplaying until it until Tom Hanks got it and then it was like this big deal. Yeah. And Jake calling a homie. Call I've got a friend. You got a friend?

[00:06:09]>> Doctor. Studies infectious disease.

[00:06:11]>> Like he plays Melee though. Special no.

[00:06:13]Oh, I thought you had a Melee. No. Oh, no, no, no. He's he's just a doctor.

[00:06:16][laughter] This is what I talked to you for about vaccines, right? I see. You you connected me with him for vaccines, right?

[00:06:21]>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we talked yeah, about vaccines.

[00:06:24]>> and he we had an interesting conversation not about Hantavirus, but about something similar a long time ago where he was talking about there's a really high percentage chance that if you do get it, you die. And the question in medicine of how effective is it actually for a virus to have a really high percentage chance of killing you.

[00:06:44]Because if the virus kills like 40, 50% of the people it infects, it lowers the chances of it spreading.

[00:06:51]>> All right. Or that's the argument is that it's it's not actually good for the viruses like life in the long run.

[00:06:56]>> viruses I mean, maybe I'm speaking out of my butt hole here, but they don't want to kill the host at all cuz then they die, right? And the reason you have viruses killing us in the first place is cuz they come from animals. They're not supposed to be in our bodies.

[00:07:09]>> Some of them do it for the Oh.

[00:07:11]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I but I haven't And they're depraved they've been on social media.

[00:07:14]>> I haven't had a conversation >> how hot the other viruses are. pathogens are.

[00:07:18]>> [laughter] >> Wait. Wait.

[00:07:21]Viruses are at the bottom of the social standing in like the and they want to move up in the world and killing is how they do that. I think knowledge on this topic is something that I maybe have >> This is >> to contribute. [laughter] I I think I actually want to call I I call him about this cuz I haven't had a chance to speak with him about it and get his >> we do a costume where we dress up as doctors and we just We give We give our takes, dude. Yeah, we give our takes on medicine.

[00:07:44]>> Well, last week's episode was pretty scientific, so I think we got We have a process going on, too.

[00:07:48]>> [laughter] >> I You're right. Like this this could get bigger. It is a thing that is still technically scary right now. And I think it primarily cuz we're all like a little scarred from this recent thing. But public health officials, including the CDC of Europe and of America, are both saying, "We are monitoring this closely, but this does not appear to have the same kind of like particularly scary property." So it is obviously possible, but I think the main question here is like in that horrible nightmare scenario where it happens, would people go back to playing Among Us or swap to Peak, which is the better game? Yeah, I'm in if this happens, if you tell me that yeah, you're seeing the cases pick up, I'm investing in Friends Lab Games.

[00:08:26]>> [laughter] >> I'm putting so much money. I'm taking my entire net worth and I'm dumping it on that because >> Get to work twos coming out real quick.

[00:08:32][laughter] Yeah. I'm going to shovel where that [ __ ] out, dude. I'm going to reskin it. Okay, I This is more an open question because I literally don't remember. I I get your brief pushback of like people were downplaying the seriousness of COVID. But am I crazy? I don't feel like institution like health institutions downplayed it. I feel like figures and people who had like more vested interest or obvious lack of knowledge. But it was like Maybe I'm crazy. I This is years ago. I literally do not remember. I'm trying to remember.

[00:09:02]>> No, I don't I'm not sure. Like I remember news, basically. I remember news telling me that it was contained and not a big deal, but I'm not sure if they were quoting Remember when like our best source of news were podcasts and they would just like have random doctors on who would be like, "This is what we're seeing here." It'd be invalidated in like 3 days.

[00:09:18]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it was crazy. This thing's been going on for like a month and a half, by the way. So this isn't like the last week it's becoming a panic. It's basically a thing you might have heard about. Seemingly right now everybody's in quarantine and we're you know, knock on wood.

[00:09:31]>> Knock on wood, okay. I feel like Rock will tell me what to do.

[00:09:33]>> There's a good point. Also, there's a Ebola outbreak, too. Jeez Louise.

[00:09:36]>> Oh, yeah. I was thinking about it. I think I was thinking about Getting that ready for you. Getting Getting Ebola?

[00:09:40]Well, trying it out. Yeah. Well, I you know, I'm a world traveler. You're a traveler, and you've always been jealous of those that had Ebola cuz it was like a thing you never got to do.

[00:09:48]>> Yeah. Yeah. [snorts] Well, I'm like >> [laughter] >> Plath and Plath said that. What is Who wrote that that story about the the fig tree? Plath.

[00:09:58]Right? What? Nobody knows what I'm talking about.

[00:10:00]>> a stroke.

[00:10:02]Do you know Do you know Do you know Do you Is it Olivia? Saying that. Is it Olivia? Sylvia Plath?

[00:10:07]>> Sylvia Sylvia? I don't know. Fig Sylvia Plath. My bad. [laughter] It's Sylvia Plath. I don't know why Is Sylvia Plath >> What is it all over Plath? The story of the fig The story of the fig tree where you look at like it's a it's this tree and it has all your lives at the end of Every fig is a different version of your life. And the one with the Ebola, it's like I I want to experience that, too.

[00:10:30]Um And Sylvia Plath Uh [ __ ] let's keep all that in. Stick your head [laughter] in an oven or something.

[00:10:37]Uh Shout-outs to Sylvia. What you got?

[00:10:39]YEAH, I WAS WHAT >> [laughter] >> WHAT YOU GOT? What you got going on in there?

[00:10:44]>> to stew in this for a bit. I really love to hear your thoughts on poets. I want out. I don't think we should move on until we've heard everything you have to say about Sylvia Plath. Well, actually I have a story that uh that