You might wonder why hantavirus has such high mortality but isn’t very transmissible. Viruses are limited by the underlying biology, including the cells they infect and the responses they elicit in their hosts. Hantaviruses like to infect the cells that line the capillaries where oxygen absorbs into the bloodstream, deep in the alveoli in the lungs. This causes viral pneumonia (deadly) but means less virus shedding from the nose and mouth (less transmissible except in certain circumstances).

This virus could adapt to shed from the upper respiratory tract and we don’t know how easy that would be mutation-wise. But that would require a lot more human cases—and there’s no evidence of that.

Grateful to work with The Save America Movement to provide these updates—even live from the runway at Heathrow airport.

PS there’s no evidence that this outbreak is of a more transmissible Andes virus, despite some insisting otherwise. I think it’s weird to be so openly nostalgic for a pandemic because it was an opportunity to be on TV