Hantavirus: A Hidden Lethal Connection to Farming

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Hey, it's Mike here and today the haunt virus which I don't know about you but it has been haunting my feed. I'm seeing it constantly. And so we're going to look at the basics of this as well as what sets this virus apart, the origins, what's currently happening, and compare it to COVID in terms of its pandemic potential, its contagiousness, and all those other aspects. And I honestly thought, oh, this is a rodent virus that doesn't have anything to do with animal farming for once. Boy, was I wrong, which we will cover. Yes, with its original cruise ship outbreak and then the subsequent returning people to their original nations has got people a little on edge. So, let's learn about this.

[00:00:38]Let's go.

[00:00:40]So, if you clicked on this, you might be a little bit anxious about another pandemic, but I just want to say right off the bat, the level of contagious that this is is way lower than COVID or the flu. And that's something we just need to keep in mind. And I've noticed that some people are calling it Havirus and they're probably going to say, "I'm saying it wrong." Well, no. It is named after the Hanon River in Korea. But yeah, the memes are already coming like how 2027 graduates are going to have a diploma. PDF or how people are going to start learning to dance cuz this time they're going to be the dance influencer. And some people are freaking out about the ship docking.

[00:01:12]>> They let the people off the boat, y'all.

[00:01:15]They let them off THEING BOAT, Y'ALL.

[00:01:18]Y'ALL HUIE, GO GET MY GUN.

[00:01:20]>> But yeah, keeping a level head not as contagious. I mean, if this was on a Carnival cruise, which is the greyhound of the sea, it would just be scared away. But that being said, the high case fatality rate is really scaring some people. And so, I wanted to just compare it to COVID really quickly here to get a basic view. First of all, in terms of primary transmission, we're talking rodent to human. And this is mainly from aerosolized droppings or poop that has dried up and turned into dust in the air that people breathe in, with CO's primary transmission being human to human. And the rodent in question is the long-tailed pygmy rice rat. And I happen to have one right here. Oh, wait. No, that's the longtailed pudgy rice rat.

[00:01:57]Sorry, bud. I'll put I'll put you back.

[00:01:58]And this feels like a little bit of a misnomer because not only is this rat not eating rice, but it is so tiny that I wouldn't really consider it a rat, it's really the size of a house mouse, looks a bit like a house mouse, but yeah, it has a longer rat tail and rat jaw structure. So, sure. However, what sets this one apart is that it is a strain from the Andes mountains in South America, Argentina in particular, that is known to have humanto human transmission unlike other strains. Then we have ease of transmission which would be considered rare and inefficient for haunt virus and highly efficient in COVID. And then we have the R quotient of the contagiousness. And this gives you a good example. An R value of one here means that one case is likely to cause one transmission. We don't have an exact figure here. It's likely around one, but COVID is like an R of three to six or more depending on the variant.

[00:02:50]And this is where we have the case fatality rate. How many of known cases turn into deaths and that right now is between 20 and 50% depending on the outbreak which sounds really scary.

[00:03:01]COVID is like.1 to 2%. But this is where there's a little bit of hope because we can think of other corona viruses like MS Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome from camels which had a similar case fatality rate really high and that did not spread that did not become the next pandemic and that's because a lot of times more lethal viruses are worse at spreading and then we have that incubation period of haunt virus which has some people a little bit worried because it's between like 1 and 8 weeks which is much longer than cos 2 to 14 days usually just a few days until people start getting symptoms. And then here are the symptoms. People can just pause to read because I'm sure me reading symptoms aloud will not make people feel nice. There's a lot more to compare, but let's just learn more about where it actually came from and what's going on here. Because it appears that a couple of Dutch bird watchers went to a landfill and likely inhaled some dust that had some rodent feces in it that were infected with this haunt virus from the Andes. They then got on the MV Hondias cruise ship of course which had hundreds of other people leaving from Argentina and currently we are at eight cases and three deaths. Unfortunately those original Dutch bird watchers did pass away but then we also had a German individual die and this is really the hint of the humanto human transmission here because that guy died like 3 weeks later than the first bird watcher. you know, and that German person did not go to the landfill. They probably got it on the ship. It's unlikely that there's some rodent source on the ship, but I guess that's not impossible. And we have 23 people who disembarked before they really knew what was going on with the haunt virus. And one of those people is from the UK and is missing. Love that.

[00:04:42]Love that for us. Then we also have a Swiss guy who tested positive after he made it back to Switzerland. He's being quarantined now. Hopefully that doesn't spread. Yeah. Now it's almost like the ship is on a haunt virus world tour. But I think a good previous case, 2018 2019 case in Argentina that had humanto human transmission might put us a bit at ease.

[00:05:02]One guy got exposed to a rodent and then essentially had a party and got 34 people sick and 11 died. And we can just hope that it does not grow bigger than that. And I already see this mirroring the COVID situation a little bit. We're already getting claims that Ivormectin treats it. Yes, Marjorie Taylor Green claimed Ivormectin or as she said, good old horse paste can treat the virus, which doctors have had to go and debunk.

[00:05:27]And we also have a vaccine in development, which I can predict right now. People will say is more harmful than the virus. But I do think it's a bit hopeful that the first humanto human case was in 1996. So, we've had 30 years of potential humanto human transmission and thankfully haven't had more than a couple dozen cases at a time. But this is where we have to think about what needs to happen next to prevent this from growing bigger than it should. And the first thing that is unfortunate is that the US has removed itself from the WHO, the World Health Organization, as of January this year, completely removed, which means we're no longer giving them $680 million a year, which means the ability of the WHO to respond to this is definitely hampered. And then for a lot of other viruses, we've had concerns of farm animals as reservoirs, for example, swine flu, bird flu, or nepa virus where you can have pig infection. We don't see that yet here.

[00:06:22]These animals appear to be a dead end if they do get it. But things can change, of course, and we raise and slaughter 80 billion land animals, giving 80 billion opportunities for that. But this is where livestock and eating animals comes in really hard. And that is because those environments heavily attract rodents, whether we're talking about grain that is fed to livestock, hay and straw bedding like that, as well as animal feces where there might be some leftover seeds that they are attracted to. So livestock workers are getting haunt virus at a higher rate than your average person here. And that's because they're going to be cleaning out stalls, barns, etc. where you have this rat poop that is dried up, turned into dust, and they're sweeping it, clearing it out or whatever, and breathing it in and getting exposed. And from one study, 91.7% of positive cases were farm workers, indicating that the probable cause of infection occurred during barn cleaning. We'll elaborate on how this varies by strain, and not all barns have animals in them, but that's huge. So, in Argentina especially, there needs to be some major public education. We're talking PPE or using wet cleaning methods to clean out any of these places that could have haunted rats.

[00:07:36]Additionally, when zooming out, 83% of overall haunt virus cases are in northern Argentina, making that Usuaya case more rare. But in the north, deforestation for cattle ranching and feed crops has destroyed over 7 million acres in the last few decades.

[00:07:52]Greenpeace did a report on this area specifically and like the Amazon, we see fires for clearing grazing land. And as the International Union for Conservation of Nature mentions, rodents like the rice rat thrive in these disturbed environments and clearly interact with humans as a result with 30% of Argentina's cattle now being feed lot finished. That's more demand of grain as well. And I'll say, well, it's responsible for over four times as many deaths. Thankfully the northern variant is yet to go human to human but of course the southern one could migrate or the northern one could evolve. We want to mitigate this. So of course have the larger scale approach which is going to be contact tracing these organizations communicating with each other quarantining properly actually properly which people of course are concerned about and as experts mentioned the average person is not going to be exposed to this but still whenever there's a virus like this I can't help but think hey why not be healthier yourself and that brings me to this BMJ study which found that people who are on a plant-based diet had a 73% lower odds of moderate to severe cases of COVID, which is wild and this is another one where that cytoine storm is what ends up doing the damage in the end and threatening lives. But there are conditions like chronic kidney disease and hypertension where diet and lifestyle play a huge factor. For example, and of course can't help but mention that vegans in the epidemiology have about half the hypertension risk compared to meateers. And then we also see plant-based diets being prescribed for chronic kidney disease and having amazing results or preventative factors there. But in terms of pandemic potential, I still view H5N1 bird flu as a bigger threat. That's in terms of how contagious it would be, how widespread chicken farming is and humans eating chickens. We have a ton of chicken exposure in various ways. All right, in the end, I hope you are leaving this video more educated and more relaxed than you were when you first started watching it. You weren't? Oh well, maybe that's partly my fault. And perhaps the largest overlooked point again is that 83% of cases and most deaths are from that haunt virus in the north of Argentina, which is driven by animal a deforestation. Again, over 90% are a workers, mostly from cleaning out barns.

[00:10:05]Anyway, let me know down below what you think about this. There's going to be so many developments and things changing and new knowledge, etc. But of course, feel free to like, subscribe, all that good stuff, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.