Hantavirus is not spread by person-to-person contact.
Facebook tells me that one of my old friends is planning to Yosemite soon, but was worried about it since the hantavirus outbreak occurred.
My advice to him was:
"Go ahead and stay in the cabins, the park employees are trying prevent a mass panic, so the cabins are probably the cleanest they've ever been."
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
I agree. After an outbreak, management always goes above their normal standards for cleaning. Besides, I doubt you could find a mouse anywhere around there right now.Originally Posted by Sarcasm the elf
I was snorkeling in St. John, I left a cinnamon muffin in my day pack, zipped up and my hat on top. I swam back to my stuff, the hat was moved and the pack was UNzipped. No muffin, hum, did I leave it on the counter? All of a sudden behind me a terrible ruckus was going on.....3 mongoose we having a battle-royal over my muffin, still in its plastic bag!!!!!!
Another reason to stay in your tent
Fear ridges that are depicted as flat lines on a profile map.
My mistake, since I have no way to edit I'll just leave it. I think he stayed in the hospital for several weeks. Thanks for pointing it out. I also don't know all the details on the research student death, I did read he was catching mice for his study. I don't think he was a hiker.
Those Curry Village tent cabins are a zoo - like "camping" in a city. Yosemite has numerous campgrounds outside the Valley. Most fill up but if you're there early, you can find a spot or in our case, get on the daily waiting list at Tuolumne. And there's some excellent Forest Service CGs not far outside the Park.
I saw this last night on the PCT News Facebook page. I'm getting ready to hit the JMT next week and was considering just slacking it from Curry Village to Tuolumne Meadows and this pretty much seals the deal for me. So now I have to hope this doesn't spread and there aren't any more fires.
Pain is a by-product of a good time.
+1 Hammock in my case! Maddog
"You do more hiking with your head than your feet!" Emma "Grandma" Gatewood...HYOY!!!
http://www.hammockforums.net/?
I love the video of the honey badger that gets bitten by some very deadly snake and looks dead for two hours then wakes up, eats the snake and walks away like nothing happened.
I'm telling you - Honey Badgers rock! I wonder if they have to be kept on a leash on the AT?
Roger That! http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/cd...emite-outbreak
CDC says 10,000 at risk of hantavirus in Yosemite outbreak
By Dan Whitcomb and Ronnie Cohen, Reuters
Aug. 31, 2012 5:00PM PDT Aug. 31, 2012 5:00PM PDT
LOS ANGELES/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Some 10,000 people who stayed in tent cabins at Yosemite National Park this summer may be at risk for the deadly rodent-borne hantavirus,
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
The CDC urged lab testing of patients who exhibit symptoms consistent with the lung disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, after a stay at the California park between June and August and recommended that doctors notify state health departments when it is found.
Two men have died from hantavirus linked to the Yosemite outbreak and four others were sickened but survived, while the CDC said additional suspected cases were being investigated from "multiple health jurisdictions."
Most of the victims were believed to have been infected while staying in one of 91 "Signature" tent-style cabins in Yosemite's popular Curry Village camping area.
"An estimated 10,000 persons stayed in the 'Signature Tent Cabins' from June 10 through August 24, 2012," the CDC said. "People who stayed in the tents between June 10 and August 24 may be at risk of developing HPS in the next six weeks."
Yosemite officials earlier this week shut down all 91 of the insulated tent cabins after finding deer mice, which carry the disease and can burrow through holes the size of pencil erasers, nesting between the double walls.
Park authorities said on Friday that they had contacted approximately 3,000 parties of visitors who stayed in the tent cabins since mid-June, advising them to seek immediate medical attention if they have symptoms of hantavirus.
Nearly 4 million people visit Yosemite, one of the nation's most popular national parks, each year, attracted to the its dramatic scenery and hiking trails. Roughly 70 percent of those visitors congregate in Yosemite Valley, where Curry Village is located.
YOSEMITE LOGS 1,500 CALLS
The virus starts out causing flu-like symptoms, including headache, fever, muscle ache, shortness of breath and cough, and can lead to severe breathing difficulties and death.
The incubation period for the virus is typically two to four weeks after exposure, the CDC said, with a range between a few days and six weeks. Just over a third of cases are fatal.
"Providers are reminded to consider the diagnosis of HPS in all persons presenting with clinically compatible illness and to ask about potential rodent exposure or if they had recently visited
Yosemite National Park," the CDC said.
Although there is no cure for hantavirus, which has never been known to be transmitted between humans, treatment after early detection through blood tests can save lives.
"Early medical attention and diagnosis of hantavirus are critical," Yosemite superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement. "We urge anyone who may have been exposed to the infection to see their doctor at the first sign of symptoms and to advise them of the potential of hantavirus."
Yosemite spokeswoman Kari Cobb said rangers have answered some 1,500 phone calls from park visitors and others concerned about the disease. But she said the outbreak had not triggered a wave of cancellations "Right now it's normal numbers for Friday," she said. "There have been cancellations, but it would be grossly overstated to say they're cancelling en masse. There's quite a bit of people out there still. It's still summer and a holiday weekend. It's still the summer crowds."
A national park service officials has said that public health officials warned the park twice before about hantavirus after it struck visitors. But it was not until this week that the hiding place for the deer mice carrying the virus was found.
Hantavirus is carried in rodent feces, urine and saliva, which dries out and mixes with dust that can be inhaled by humans, especially in small, confined spaces with poor ventilation.
People can also be infected by eating contaminated food, touching contaminated surfaces or being bitten by infected rodents.
Not known to...
I wouldn't want to shake hands with someone that has been scooping mouse droppings. Why take a chance...
Curious what the treatment for this involves?
I'm also curious to know if there is any way to test for it before symptoms present, or if they have to wait and treat it as the cases become apparent.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Im not making light of this.
But a small percentage of people are always more succeptible to various viruses, than others, for whatever reason.
I suspect hantavirus may be one of those things, or we would have more widespread issues.
West nile is likely similar IMO.
There have been cases on the AT of hantavirus too.
The death percentage is quite alarming though.
A strong immune system may be a problem with this virus. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...498042156.html
Rodent Riddles: Why Hantavirus Is So Deadly
Scientists Discover that Immune Response Is Key; Searching for a Way to Damp T-Cell Function
It's unlikely you'll catch the hantavirus from drinking soda from a can or riding the New York subway, as some urban myths warn. But the deadly virus can still crop up in some innocent-seeming places.
Breathing in airborne excrement from some types of rats and mice—often unknowingly swept into the air by people cleaning out remote cabins or camping in the mountains—can cause infection from hantavirus. That, in turn, can lead to a rare but serious illness called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, or HPS.
Figuring out why HPS is so dangerous has perplexed scientists since the first known outbreak of the disease in the U.S. in 1993. Unlike with many other infectious diseases, it doesn't appear that the virus itself is causing the damage. Rather, the problem appears to be an overreaction of a patient's own immune system, says Frank Ennis, an infectious-disease professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Individuals experience an "immune explosion," says Dr. Ennis, who has been studying the hantavirus since the 1993 outbreak. Ultimately, if scientists can figure out how to "tone down the immune system," the research could lead to an effective treatment for HPS and other viral infections, such as severe cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever, that work in a similar way, he says.
HPS is quite rare but often fatal. The disease affects the tiny blood vessels in the lungs, causing fluid in the blood to leak into the air spaces in the lungs. The lungs swell, and blood pressure drops, which can send patients into shock. Currently, HPS patients are treated mainly with steroids, but often the patient is already too seriously ill for the treatment to be helpful. The disease is fatal in about a third of cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HPS is likely rare in humans because exposure isn't common, says Dr. Ennis. Studies suggest that some people with a certain gene variant are most susceptible to the most serious cases of HPS.
A Medical Mystery
The first U.S. case of HPS was identified after an outbreak among a group of Native Americans in Four Corners, N.M., in 1993. The first known victim was a Navajo runner. While examining his death, investigators discovered that the man's fiancee and five other young, healthy people had died as well. That such a healthy group of people would suddenly take ill and die was a mystery that sparked national attention. Scientists speculate that an explosion in the mice population sparked the illnesses.
Since that event, there have been 465 documented cases of HPS around the U.S. through early 2007, mostly in rural areas, according to the CDC. A more common version of HPS is found in South America, says Dr. Ennis. According to the CDC, there were 592 cases in Argentina, 331 cases in Chile and 35 cases in Panama from 1993 to 2004 A similar type of hantavirus-caused illness which can damage the kidneys, called hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, is much more common and is reported around the world. There are between 150,000 and 200,000 cases of the disease each year, and more than half of those cases are in China, according to the CDC.
When Dr. Ennis heard about the HPS symptoms in the 1993 outbreak—primarily the swelling of the lung—he recalls thinking that these sounded similar to the symptoms of another infectious disease that he had been studying: dengue fever. That disease, which can be a big problem in tropical regions of the world—including parts of South America, Asia and Mexico—is caused when mosquitoes transmit a virus to humans that results in blood-vessel leakage in various parts of the body. "It's dengue of the lung," Dr. Ennis recalls thinking at the time.
The Immune Response
Dr. Ennis's team, which includes longtime colleague Masanori Terajima, began studying the blood of 26 people who fell ill during the 1993 outbreak after getting the samples from University of New Mexico professor Frederick Koster. They found that during the earliest stage of HPS, when patients get a fever, their bodies contain a large quantity of the virus. But when the fever dissipates and fluid begins to collect in the air sacs in the lungs, the virus count drops sharply. This pattern suggested that the virus itself wasn't responsible for the lung problems, but rather the body's own immune response that was causing the damage, Dr. Ennis says.
In subsequent research, Dr. Ennis and his colleagues sought to identify which molecules involved in the body's immune response are responsible for the strong reaction to the hantavirus.
The scientists looked for the virus and for lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that attacks infections.
Several years later, using more precise testing tools, the researchers then took a closer look at 11 previously frozen blood samples from victims of the 1993 outbreak. Two of the patients had died, and the others had been hospitalized. The researchers found that the sickest patients had the highest concentrations of a certain type of lymphocyte, known as the CD8+ killer T-cell. The findings, suggesting that this T-cell was responsible for the disease's severity, was published in the Journal of Immunology in 2004.
Although large amounts of the killer T-cells help the body fight infection by clearing out the hantavirus more quickly, they also create problems of their own. T-cells flood the body with immune system chemicals called cytokines, which help the T-cells function. But cytokines, when present in excessive quantities, also can damage the thin layer of cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels, causing capillary leakage.
Search for Treatments
Now, Dr. Ennis's lab is working to understand the mechanism by which the hantavirus sparks a proliferation of T-cells. If treatments targeting T-cells, either by damping their response or limiting their production, can be developed, they could prove useful in treating patients with HPS and other conditions that induce blood-vessel leakage.
There are about 50 known strains of hantavirus, not all of which cause HPS. (The strain identified in the 1993 outbreak is dubbed "Sin Nombre.") Dr. Ennis says his group is working with researchers in Finland on a strain of hantavirus that causes the kidney disease common in China. The group also is studying dengue fever in school-age children in Thailand. (Scientists and various companies are working on the development of a dengue fever vaccine.)
Accidental exposure to hantavirus is greatest for people who go hunting or camping in remote areas, according to Sabra Klein, an assistant professor in molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies hantavirus. The virus can live for about two weeks in droppings. When staying in or cleaning remote locations where rodents might have been, it is best to wear a mask, she says.
Despite the persistence of urban myths, there isn't any strong evidence that the disease can be contracted from dried urine or droppings on soda cans, Dr. Klein says, adding that the best way to get the virus is through the nose. Dried fecal matter from rodents in a place like the New York City subway isn't likely to be problematic either because the infamous subway rats don't appear to be the type that carry the hantavirus. And, she says, their fecal matter is unlikely to be airborne in sufficient quantities.
Third Yosemite visitor dies; eight now infected
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