Honest to god I’m trying to trust all the comments I read saying this won’t become Covid 2 for various scientific reasons, but every article I read about this is just screaming Jan/feb 2020 to me.
Looks like this outbreak in 2018 was estimated to have an R value between 1.2 to 3.4 before control measures and 0.6 to 1.4 after control measures. There’s also some analysis of previous outbreaks. Worth noting that this has happened a few times and they’ve all been contained.
I haven’t looked to see if this current strain has any notable mutations. We’ve seen with covid how that can change transmission rates unpredictability.
I still don’t think this is likely to be a widespread issue (relative to other shit like covid and bird flu). But if there was ever a time for something with a low R value to cause disproportionate damage it’s now, what with universally-weakened immune systems and hollowed out disease prevention. The long incubation period and wide dispersal of potential vectors is somewhat worrying too.
Related: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2026/05/08/hantavirus-updates-outbreak--live/89982270007/
Honest to god I’m trying to trust all the comments I read saying this won’t become Covid 2 for various scientific reasons, but every article I read about this is just screaming Jan/feb 2020 to me.
Its R0 is super low. Hard for a pandemic to start. And people are traveling less, so hopefully that helps
I thought the r0 was like 2? It’s not measles but that doesn’t seem like nothing
I searched and found this
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2009040
Looks like this outbreak in 2018 was estimated to have an R value between 1.2 to 3.4 before control measures and 0.6 to 1.4 after control measures. There’s also some analysis of previous outbreaks. Worth noting that this has happened a few times and they’ve all been contained.
I haven’t looked to see if this current strain has any notable mutations. We’ve seen with covid how that can change transmission rates unpredictability.
I still don’t think this is likely to be a widespread issue (relative to other shit like covid and bird flu). But if there was ever a time for something with a low R value to cause disproportionate damage it’s now, what with universally-weakened immune systems and hollowed out disease prevention. The long incubation period and wide dispersal of potential vectors is somewhat worrying too.