The Backstory: Hantavirus: Do I Have It?

Do You Get Stressed Over News Stories About a Bunch of People Getting Sick With a Disease You’ve Never Even Heard Of? Lately, It’s the Hantavirus. But Here’s the Thing. These Outbreaks Have Been Around for Thousands of Years. Problem Is, You Can’t Ignore What’s Happening, but the Anxiety Can Really Gnaw at You. So It’s Better to Know the Origin Story, Because Like They Say… Knowledge Is Power.

Feel Free to DM Me if You Have a Story You’d Like Me to Cover… on Facebook It’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Let's be honest. Do you ever feel overwhelmed
by the news, especially when it's about a bunch of
people getting sick with the disease you've never even heard of. Now,
it's all about the hand of virus. But these random
outbreaks of all kinds of ailments have been around for
not just hundreds, but thousands of years. Now. The problem
is you can't ignore it for fear you're going to

(00:22):
put yourself in harm's way. But if you're worried too much,
the stress will gnaw at you. It's better to know
its origin story, right, I'm Patty Steele. Like they say,
knowledge is power. That's next on the backstory. The backstory
is back. Are you like a lot of folks the

(00:44):
type who hears about the latest outbreak on the news
and then becomes obsessed with the thought that you might
have it or may have been exposed to it? Somehow,
Close to seventy percent of us worry about our health,
and up to twelve percent of folks have full blown
health anxiety disorder, also known as hypochondria. Then there's cyberchondria,

(01:06):
believe it or not, where you literally doom scroll looking
for symptoms and illnesses you think you could possibly have.
So lately we've been hearing a lot about the hantavirus.
What hantavirus, and it turns out this is something that's
been around for probably at least three thousand years. The
earliest reports were from China, but there have also been

(01:29):
outbreaks in Korea as well as in the US during
the Civil War and in parts of Europe during World
War One. It does seem scary, but funny enough, almost
all types of it aren't contagious between humans. It's just
our interaction with rodents and their droppings. So what's all
the fuss, Well, because it seems when humans do get it,

(01:50):
it seems to target healthy young people under the age
of forty, and if they get it, as many as
thirty percent of those cases will be fatal. So this
isn't illness like the plague which wiped out up to
fifty percent of Europe's population in the thirteen hundreds and
hit North and South America one hundred years later, killing
as many as fifty six million indigenous people here, and

(02:13):
head of virus isn't even nearly as deadly as the
nineteen eighteen Spanish flu, which killed fifty million people or
COVID nineteen which may have killed over twenty million worldwide.
But it's the unknown that terrifies us. How do I
get it? Where does it come from? Some pretty existential questions. Right, Well,

(02:34):
let's go back to the last time we got worried
about an outbreak of head of virus. It's spring nineteen
ninety three and something terrifying is moving across the American Southwest.
Healthy young people in their twenties and thirties are suddenly
gasping for breath, collapsing and dying within hours. Doctors can't
figure it out. No known disease fit the symptoms, and

(02:57):
the deaths are happening in the open desert and small
towns where outbreaks like this aren't supposed to happen. It
began in the Four Corners region where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado,
and Utah meat. The area is enormous and beautiful, red
rock maces, dry winds, lonely roads stretching through Navajo land

(03:18):
and small desert towns. But suddenly the deaths begin. One
of the first victims is a young guy from New Mexico, athletic, healthy,
newly engaged. One day he complains of flu like symptoms,
which throws you off guard. Right, everything seems to be
flu like. It's the typical fever, body aches and exhaustion.

(03:39):
But within days he can't breathe, and by the time
he gets to the hospital it's too late. His lungs
had filled with fluid so fast that the most aggressive
treatment can't save him. Next, his fiance got the same symptoms,
moving through her body with terrifying speed. Within days, she
dies too. Something is spreading, but what is it? Is

(04:02):
it airborne, a new plague, some kind of environmental poisoning.
The timing didn't help. It's the early nineties and the
AIDS epidemic is still fresh in everybody's mind, adding to
the anxiety. Movies and books about deadly outbreaks are everywhere.
The CDC and the NIH are on the scene and
it looks crazy to them. They say. The victim's lungs

(04:25):
look like they had drowned from the inside, but there
was no obvious infection. The disease moved insanely fast. Patients
walked in the er, talking normally, and some were dead
less than twenty four hours later. As they studied the victims,
they found they all lived in rural areas where they
were exposed to rodents. What they discovered was the hand

(04:48):
of virus, which spreads through mousurine droppings and saliva. When
contaminated dust becomes airborne while sweeping a floor, opening up
a cabin, cleaning a garage or barn, people are breathing
it in. It was devastating. You didn't need to be bitten,
you didn't need direct contact, You just needed to disturb

(05:09):
the wrong dust in the wrong place. And because the
symptoms look like the flu, doctors sometimes missed the diagnosis
until people were already in critical condition. The public reaction
gets really intense. Of course, media coverage turns head of
virus into a nightmare headline disease, tons of stories about

(05:31):
healthy young people dying almost overnight like a disaster flick.
People were afraid of camping trips, national parks, and remote cabins. Today,
as in thirty five years ago, people are just getting
over the stress of another disease, COVID, so that intensifies
the fear. While hand of virus is deadly spreading from

(05:52):
human to human, even in the type that does on
rare occasions spread that way is extremely rare. What makes
it so no one settling for us. Control freaks is
how it destroys our illusion of control. It doesn't arrive
with dramatic warning signs. There are no swarms, no obvious contamination,
no bites, just an old shed, a dusty cabin or

(06:15):
a barn in need of being swept out, a few
unnoticed mouse droppings, and then suddenly catastrophe. It's a reminder
that even in our modern world, with satellites, advanced medicine
and genetic science, nature still hides ancient dangers in simple,
ordinary places. A tiny rodent carrying a microscopic virus changed

(06:39):
public health in nineteen ninety three, just as it did
in fourteenth century Europe, fifteenth century America, and Europe and
Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These outbreaks, large
or small, are a reminder that the next deadly outbreak
might not begin in a laboratory or a foreign city
among people we feel unconnected to. It could begin in

(07:02):
a musty corner of your garage, or inside the walls
of a quiet cabin in the desert. It's a reminder
to be watchful. Hope you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele.
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dm me if you have a story you'd like me

(07:23):
to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram
Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a
production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group, and
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Mike Pieseglia. Our writer
is Jake Kushner. New episodes are out every Tuesday and Friday,

(07:47):
and feel free to reach out to me with comments
and story suggestions on Instagram at reel Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know.