So, many years ago, long before covid, I returned from three weeks at the moominbeach to my childhood tech job. It was a Monday morning and I was feeling a wee bit under the weather. Very odd for me. It was not respiratory stuff, it was mild gastro stuff, emphasis on MILD! I suppose I could’ve taken a sick day but I have a work ethic that knocks me upside the head to begin with and I also knew there would be a stack of printouts on my desk. Error situations that nobody else could figure out. I couldn’t wait to dig in. Anyway by the next day I was fine.

But when I walked in that Monday morning, my buddy/co-worker Manuel greeted me with something like, “Have you heard about thees theeng? It eez coming from thee west!” (He was a Chilean/Spanish immigrant who had a lovely Hispanic accent and I am NOT making fun of it. We had so much fun back in those days.)

Of course he was talking about a hantavirus. This was the first time any of us knew there was such a thing. It was very scary because people were dying from it. Rather quickly. At the time, we were told you could only get it from hanging around rodent droppings. Well. Here at the Landfill the mice come in, the mice go out, (the mice play pinochle on your snout). Anyway, we do occasionally have to clean up rodent droppings. So we were all a bit nervous about this scary virus until we learned that it doesn’t spread between humans, not to mention it didn’t seem to spread widely at all. It mostly remained in the southwest. The story petered out and we all forgot about hantavirus.

So covid happened and we were all freaked out about that, so much that at my adult tech job, we were all dumped at home to work remotely, never to return. This happened literally overnight. (I had the foresight to stop at the liqwire store on the way home.) A couple weeks later, I joined the daily stand-up meeting in the middle of a discussion between Amazon Woman and some of our Indian colleagues about some “new” (and deadly) virus that had killed a few people in India. Hmmm, thought I… What virus was this? It was our old friend hantavirus. They were all excited but once I could get a word in edgewise, I reassured them all (I hope) that there were major differences between covid and hanta. Both can be deadly but covid is HIGHLY transmissible between humans while you have to be cleaning up rodent droppings to pick up a hantavirus.

The recent cruise ship situation was terrifying and I did not know that there was a strain of hantavirus that does transmit person to person. I’m still not afraid I’ll catch it. Of course, I’m not even afraid of covid any more.

Note that I am not in any way shape or form qualified to provide medical/scientific information or advice. I got most of this from NPR, where I get “all” my news and information. Just ask my MAGA husband. [snort]

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2026 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.