My girl is super smart and of course super devious. Recently she taught me a trick. When she wants under the covers at night and I'm not paying attention she paws at the covers to get under herself. But daytime naps she likes to be covered by her baby blanket. So the other day she looks at me really hard, and paws the floor then looks at me hard again. I didn't know what she wanted but I made a guess and got her baby blanket. After that whenever she wants the blanket she comes to me and paws at the ground. Apparently I'm a fast learner. Good human.

"Long COVID may be affecting far more Americans than current estimates suggest, with a study published last week in JAMA Network Open estimating that roughly one in six people infected with SARS-CoV-2 develop the condition, and nearly 90% go on to experience chronic health problems.

For the study, a team led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed health record data from 457,950 adults treated for COVID-19 (also known as postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or PASC) across 58 hospitals and clinics in New England, Southeast Texas, Southern California, and Western Pennsylvania.

The researchers identified long COVID cases by detecting symptoms and conditions that emerged after infection and could not be explained by preexisting conditions. 

15 million Americans may have long COVID

The team identified 74,560 long-COVID patients, representing 16.3% of COVID patients in the study. The estimate, which translates to roughly 15 million Americans, is far higher than the rate captured by current code-based surveillance systems. Prevalence ranged from 13.6% in Western Pennsylvania to 22.7% in Southern California. 

Millions of people “would go entirely undetected by the diagnostic code that health systems and policymakers rely on to track the disease burden," senior author Hossein Estiri, PhD, of the Mass General Brigham (MGB) Department of Medicine, said in an MGB news release. "The figures we uncovered are almost certainly an undercount."

Long-COVID burden continues to grow

Most long-COVID patients (89.3%) identified in the study developed at least one chronic condition requiring ongoing clinical management. 

The researchers also found evidence that the burden of long COVID continues to grow rather than fade. Long-COVID prevalence increased across all four studied regions through mid-2024.

Millions of people 'would go entirely undetected by the diagnostic code that health systems and policymakers rely on to track the disease burden.'

Hossein Estiri, PhD

“Our finding of persistently increasing cumulative prevalence through mid-2024 (4 years into the pandemic and well after widespread vaccination) contradicts assumptions that PASC represents a legacy of early, severe infection waves,” the authors write. 

When the researchers used the quarterly increases they observed—which ranged from 0.3% to 1.5%—to estimate the relative increase in cumulative long-COVID prevalence over a decade, they found rates could increase 13% to 81%, “underscoring the substantial long-term burden if current trends persist.”

The study also revealed substantial differences in how long COVID manifests. Systemic, respiratory, and gastrointestinal symptoms were common across all regions, but endocrine complications varied in different parts of the country. New England patients were more likely to experience thyroid-related conditions, while patients in Texas, California, and Pennsylvania showed more metabolic abnormalities such as prediabetes and hyperglycemia.

Better surveillance, tailored treatments needed

Jiazi Tian, MSc, lead author and data scientist in the Clinical Augmented Intelligence Group at MGB, said many patients with long COVID are already receiving care but are not being recognized as having the condition.

"These patients are not absent from clinical care; they are absent from the diagnostic code that would identify them as long COVID patients," Tian said in the release. "The cardiologist seeing new dysautonomia, the endocrinologist seeing new metabolic disease, the neurologist seeing unexplained cognitive complaints—some of these presentations are long COVID arriving without the label that would connect them to a COVID-19 infection."

The findings suggest that long COVID has become a significant healthcare challenge, requiring better surveillance, coordinated care, and new treatments, argue the authors. They also conclude that because different people experience different combinations of symptoms, treatments should be individually tailored."

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/long-covid-may-affect-1-6-infected-patients

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/generalinfectiousdisease/121425

"States are monitoring additional people for potential hantavirus exposure, in many cases due to air travel, MedPage Today has learned.

While the CDC initially reported a total of 41 people in the U.S. under monitoring, the total now stands at 57opens in a new tab or window.

Here are the states where the number of people being monitored increased:

• California: from 2 to 8
• Maryland: from 2 to 5
• North Dakota: from 5 to 7
• Virginia: from 1 to 3
• Washington: from 2 to 5

While states would not provide specific details as to why the numbers increased, health department spokespeople from California, Maryland, and Washington said the additional people under monitoring shared flights with those who may have been exposed to hantavirus aboard the cruise ship.

A California Department of Public Health spokesperson said the CDC notified the agency of "additional individuals with possible Andes hantavirus exposures due to sharing flights with people known to be exposed aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship."

Maryland's health department "is monitoring three additional Maryland residents who were also on a flight that briefly included a MV Hondius cruise ship passenger infected with hantavirus. These residents are considered lower risk," a spokesperson told MedPage Today.

Finally, a Washington state health department official said the "additional two individuals were on the same international flight as an ill person who was later confirmed to have Andes virus. However, they are considered low risk because they did not sit close to the sick passenger."

MedPage Today, which first reportedopens in a new tab or window that people had disembarked from the cruise ship on April 24, has been trackingopens in a new tab or window where people are being monitored for potential hantavirus exposure, since the CDC has not been reporting that information.

In addition to state-based home monitoring, 18 passengers are also being monitored at a national quarantine facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Two of those passengers received official quarantine ordersopens in a new tab or window from the CDC; the others agreed to remain at the facility until May 31, which would mark 21 days from their last potential exposure to the virus.

On Sunday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said in a post on Xopens in a new tab or window that the hantavirus "situation is stable for now." There have been 12 cases and 3 deaths, with no additional deaths reported since May 2, he said.

"All passengers and crew remain in quarantine and under close monitoring to ensure they receive care if needed," Ghebreyesus added. "We continue to remain vigilant and in close contact with all relevant governments."

Despite full knowledge that the Epuyen outbreak had an Ro of 2.12 in line with Covid and that it was spread easily at a distance and through casual social contact, and the full knowledge that infected people on the cruise ship had no close contact with the infected people, WHO today is still unwilling to admit this virus transmits efficiently with casual contact.

https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2026/05/20/default-calendar/hantavirus-in-focus-i-what-we-know-and-what-it-means

"In May 2026, WHO was notified of a multi‑country cluster of hantavirus infections linked to an expedition cruise ship. As of 13 May, 11 cases, including three deaths, had been reported, associated with Andes virus—a strain capable of limited human‑to‑human transmission through close contact.

First article about respiratory viruses going all year round. Of course Monica Ghandi seven years later attributes it to immunity debt. Big surprise /s. I think this will go the way of climate change. People will go from that couldn't possibly happen to oh, yeah, it's completely normal with no transition.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/rsv-northern-california-22264981.php

This is a really good article, no BS anywhere, clearly showing the absolute shtshow the quarantine situation is becoming.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/19/health/countries-managing-hantavirus-travelers-different-ways

"Ms. Perryman said she and the 17 other passengers were told during a video conference call with federal officials on Sunday that if they did not remain at the unit voluntarily, they would receive a mandatory quarantine order keeping them there.

Her order came on Monday, authorized by Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Citing federal public health law, it requires her to remain in the Nebraska facility for 21 days after her arrival, a period that expires on May 31."

https://archive.is/jPKad

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/health/hantavirus-spread-risk.html

"Close, sustained contact.

That, health officials have repeatedly said, is the only way that the Andes hantavirus, which caused an outbreak on a cruise ship and has gripped the world’s attention, spreads among people.

“You have to be in close contact with someone who has a lot of symptoms,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview on Fox News.

But scientists who have studied hantaviruses for decades are far less certain about how the virus might behave.

They agree with health officials that the Andes virus is not particularly contagious and is unlikely to spur a bigger outbreak. But they said research has shown that under certain circumstances, the virus can be transmitted without direct contact.

“It’s important to be honest scientifically and communicate that, because otherwise you lose credibility,” said Steven Bradfute, a viral immunologist and hantavirus expert at the University of New Mexico.

In an interview, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, acknowledged that officials have emphasized close contact as the way the virus spreads to avoid panicking people over rarer possibilities.

“It’s very difficult to explain to people saying, ‘OK, this is the exception, this is the norm,’” he said. “When you say the exception, they might still think that that’s something frequently happening as well.”

The hantavirus outbreak that began on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius last month has thus far sickened at least nine people and killed three. Many of the roughly 150 passengers, including 18 in the United States, are being closely monitored in quarantine. The remaining were given a set of instructions to avoid spreading the virus to others including: take your temperature daily, don’t fly commercial and try to use your own bathroom.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Dr. Bhattacharya could not recall when some passengers who disembarked on April 24 in St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, had arrived on American soil. None had symptoms at the time of their travel, he said, so officials had not seen a need to alert the public or trace contacts.

“The virus doesn’t spread unless somebody has active symptoms,” he said.

That, too, is not certain, although some scientists believe people may be most contagious just as they are developing symptoms.

Some labs have studied hantaviruses for decades, but there is still much that’s not known about them because they grow slowly and are difficult to analyze genetically.

Hantaviruses are naturally found in rodents. The Andes virus, found primarily in Argentina, where the cruise ship began its journey, is the only hantavirus species known to spread among people. But scientists were slow to acknowledge that possibility.

“It was very difficult to convince people of that, even here in Argentina,” said Valeria Martinez, a virologist at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Buenos Aires.

In the largest outbreak characterized so far, in Epuyén, Argentina, Dr. Martinez and her colleagues carefully traced transmission patterns among 34 cases and 11 deaths between November 2018 and February 2019.

The study confirmed that the virus does not spread easily: None of 82 health workers who cared for patients became infected, even though many of them did not wear protective gear.

But the researchers also identified what they called “super-spreading events,” in which a single person spread the virus to several others. The outbreak began after a man who became infected from rodents developed a fever, and attended a birthday party with 100 guests.

“He was there only 90 minutes because he was feeling ill,” Dr. Martinez said.

Within three weeks of the event, five people at the party had become ill. One of those five soon died, and his wife most likely passed the virus to another 10 people at his wake. In all, six of 34 cases in the outbreak had no direct contact with those who were ill, and one seems to have become infected after simply saying hello as they crossed paths.

“That’s not close contact, and it’s also not prolonged contact,” said Joseph G. Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Studies so far suggest that the disease is most contagious when people are carrying a lot of virus, perhaps just as they are starting to feel sick. But there have also been too few outbreaks large enough to be sure of that.

“We have so little data that it’s really hard to say anything concrete or definitive,” said Kartik Chandran, a virologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Still, the fact that there have been very few cases should in and of itself reassure people that the virus is not very contagious, he and other experts said. After weeks of being cloistered together on the ship, only 11 of the roughly 150 passengers became infected, Dr. Tedros noted. “You can see how the virus actually is not really as efficient as Covid,” he said.

One person in the Argentina outbreak became ill after sharing a hospital room with a hantavirus patient, but again, had no physical contact.

Hantavirus typically infects people when they breathe in virus particles aerosolized from rodent droppings. That fact, some experts believe, leaves open the possibility that person-to-person transmission could possibly occur through the air too.

“I don’t understand why we are so reluctant to acknowledge the inhalation route when we’re talking about person-to-person transmission,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne transport of viruses at Virginia Tech.

“Airborne transmission is certainly the simplest explanation in those cases,” she said of the Argentinians who had no direct contact with patients.

Dr. Tedros of the W.H.O. said his organization had not referred to the findings about the birthday party spread because they have not been replicated by other studies and because close contact is the most common way the virus spreads.

But Gustavo Palacios, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an author on the paper, disagreed with that stance.

“Our paper is important because it helps define the outer boundary of what Andes virus can do under favorable transmission conditions,” he said. “Most events will not look like that, but public-health guidance still has to account for that possibility.”

In the United States, the C.D.C. did not issue any guidance or statements on the hantavirus outbreak until late on Friday, and did not hold a news briefing till Saturday, nearly a month after the first passenger died. It still describes transmission as requiring close or intimate contact.

The C.D.C. appears to have designated an arbitrary measure of closeness, acknowledging the threshold as “not absolute.” It has cited being at a distance of less than six feet for longer than 15 minutes, out of the Covid playbook, as an indication of risk.

In public, some U.S. health officials have shown uncertain command of the facts of the current outbreak. Speaking about the first two people who died from the virus on the Fox News interview, Dr. Bhattacharya incorrectly said the couple had been in their 80s (they were 70 and 69) and added, “People who were very close to them, the roommates, a doctor who was caring for them, they’re the ones who got symptomatic.”

He was wrong about the details. C.D.C. scientists were not on the ship to investigate the outbreak, but W.H.O. officials who led the investigation are still working out how other passengers became infected.

The third person who died, an 80-year-old German woman, was not a roommate of the first two or even on the same deck. But she may have shared meals or been in other spaces with them, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the W.H.O.’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C., said federal agencies have “been fully engaged from the outset.”

He did not respond to questions about the scientific basis for the six-foot guidance or about Dr. Bhattacharya’s errors.

“Attempts to second-guess this response overlook the ongoing work being done to protect the health and well-being of American citizens,” he said.

The W.H.O. does not include the six-foot distance in its guidance and its description of the outbreak acknowledges the scarcity of data, including on transmission.

“We are learning, and we will continue to learn, I think, for quite some time,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said. “The book is not written.”

I've read most of the news now, no worries, this isn't going to be anything more than a small outbreak. Why? Because Hantavirus isn't easily spread like covid or flu. Well, there is one variant that supposedly spreads human to human, but it's so rare. Well, actually this variant on the cruise ship does happen to be that strain, but, you know, it's hard to spread. Sure we are trying to contact the people that we allowed off the ship who are now spread out to many countries, but that's just good sense precaution.

So then I take a look at studies and first thing I find is a superspreader of the Andes version of Hantavirus from a birthday party. Apparently the lead author Palacios did a further note that said one of the people got it after a brief greeting that lasted only second at a distance of 0.5 meters.

"Our findings traced the first person-to-person transmission event to a birthday party with approximately 100 guests. The index patient (Patient 1) attended the event for 90 minutes and was reportedly symptomatic at the time, with fever and malaise. Five persons (Patients 2 through 6) who had been seated close to Patient 1 reported onset of symptoms consistent with ANDV hantavirus pulmonary syndrome between 17 and 24 days after the party (Fig. S3). Patient 2 was the most likely source for six infections in other persons during the early prodromal phase because of his active social life. Patient 2 died 16 days after symptom onset, and his spouse (Patient 9) was febrile while attending his wake. An additional 10 persons who attended the wake and were in close contact with Patient 9 became ill between 14 and 40 days after the wake for Patient 2.

The remaining 12 patients were each in contact with at least one previously symptomatic patient. Four patients (Patients 10, 29, 33, and 34) may have been infected by more than one person. The mean (±SD) serial interval (the time from symptom onset in a primary case to symptom onset in an epidemiologically linked secondary case) was approximately 23±7 days (Fig. S4). Incubation periods ranged from 9 to 40 days."

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2009040