Yosemite Expands Scope of Hantavirus Warning: More than 20,000 At Risk

redletterdave writes "In response to a recent outbreak of a deadly pulmonary disease commonly carried by mice and other rodents, Yosemite National Park has doubled the scope of those likely infected by hantavirus. Given the rising number of confirmed cases (currently eight) and deaths (three), U.S. officials have effectively sounded a worldwide alert for more than 22,000 local and international visitors that may have been exposed to the deadly virus. Health officials initially believed as many as 10,000 people were at risk to contracting the hantavirus after staying in Yosemite's popular Curry Village lodging area between the months of June and August.; unfortunately, that 10,000 'at risk' estimate was low. Officials expanded the warning this week to an additional 12,000 visitors to Yosemite's High Sierra camps, now that the eighth case of hantavirus was confirmed in a man who stayed in those camp areas. Furthermore, more than 2,500 of those individuals currently live outside the United States."

official CDC/National Park Service/WHO links

[Anonymous Coward]

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/outbreaks/yosemite-national-park-2012.html
National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/hantafaq.htm
WHO (via TFA): http://www.who.int/csr/don/2012_09_04/en/index.html

Am I the only one who does not see the quoted number of 20,000 on either website?
TFA, on the other hand, links to Fox News.

Re:I hear Central Park is no picnic, either.

[guttentag]

Great. First the supervolcano under Yellowstone, now deadly virus from Yosemite.

You nature lovers and conservationists feel good about yourselves for preserving it? Huh?

Right, because if we'd built a WalMart over Yellowstone the weight of several million obese consumers would keep the supervolcano from erupting. In the U.S., more people will die in car accidents this week on the way to WalMart than the hantavirus will kill this year. Still feel good about preserving GM?

Re:The Stand...

[cold fjord]

Unfortunately, it is one of the contagions in our biological weapon program.

Just so everybody is clear. . .

Biological Weapons [fas.org] - (United States)

In anticipation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, President Nixon terminated the United States offensive biological weapons program by executive order. The United States adopted a policy to never use biological weapons, including toxins, under any circumstances whatsoever. National Security Decisions 35 and 44, issued during November 1969 (microorganisms) and February 1970 (toxins), mandated the cessation of offensive biological research and production, and the destruction of the biological arsenal. Research efforts were directed exclusively to the development of defensive measures such as diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapies for potential biological weapons threats. Stocks of pathogens and the entire biological arsenal were destroyed between May 1971 and February 1973 under the auspices of the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the Departments of Natural Resources of Arkansas, Colorado, and Maryland. Small quantities of some pathogens were retained at Fort Detrick to test the efficacy of investigational preventive measures and therapies.

Factors influencing the decision to terminate the offensive biological program included pragmatic as well as moral and ethical considerations. Given the available conventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons, biological weapons were not considered essential for national security. The potential effects of biological weapons on military and civilian populations were still conjectural, and for obvious ethical and public health reasons, could not be empirically studied. Biological weapons were considered untried, unpredictable, and potentially hazardous for the users as well for those under attack. Field commanders and troops were unfamiliar with their use. In addition, the United States and allied countries had a strategic interest in outlawing biological weapons programs in order to prevent the proliferation of relatively low-cost weapons of mass destruction. By outlawing biological weapons, the arms race for weapons of mass destruction would be prohibitively expensive, given the expense of nuclear programs.

After the termination of the offensive biological program, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was established in order to continue the development of medical defenses for US military members against potential biological attack. USAMRIID conducts research to develop strategies, products, information, and training programs for medical defense against potential biological weapons. Endemic or epidemic infectious diseases due to highly virulent pathogens requiring high-level containment for laboratory safety are also studied. USAMRIID is an open research institution; no research is classified. The in-house programs are complemented by contract programs with universities and other research institutions.

Next Generation Bioweapons:Genetic Engineering and BW - The Former Soviet Union’s Biological Warfare Program [af.mil]

Despite signing the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), it is now certain that the former Soviet Union (FSU) continued a clandestine and illegal offensive biological weapons program until at least the early 1990s. Biopreparat (a huge military program with civilian cover) was organized to develop and weaponize biological agents for BW.3 It employed approximately half of the Soviet Union‘s 60,000 workers in more than 18 BW facilities, and in the 1980s had an annual budget equivalent to tens of millions of U.S. dollars.4 Unlike the American offensive BW program (1942-69) that worked primarily with organisms that were not contagious in humans (e.g., anth

reduce development

[bcrowell]

This seems like a typical situation that we see in the West arising from: (1) the legacy of heedless 19th-century attitudes toward the environment and (2) unrealistic expectations about human interaction with the environment.

A hundred years ago, people did all kinds of things to cherished natural resources that they'd never do today. San Francisco dammed Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite's twin that was reputed to be even more beautiful than Yosemite. Until ca. 1950, people intentionally fed bears in Yosemite Valley for entertainment, and sent burning logs over Yosemite Falls at night for people down in the valley to watch. They put permanent steps and cables on the back of Half Dome, which is something that just isn't a normal thing to do on a peak in the Sierra. And they developed the hell out of Yosemite Valley, turning it from a natural cathedral into an asphalt parking lot with big-city-style smog problems in the summer high season. All of these things have had negative consequences. A bunch of people have died on Half Dome, so they've had to start rationing access. Bear-human interactions, which are very, very seldom an issue in the undeveloped backcountry, are a huge problem in specific places, especially Yosemite Valley. And now we have hantavirus, which doesn't seem to be a big problem either in the city or in the backcountry.

People also have unrealistic expectations about how they can live alongside the environment. People build houses in beautiful forests, refuse to clear defensible space around their houses because they like the trees, and then yelp to the government to put out forest fires so their houses don't burn down. The result is that we build up tinder for decades, and then get huge, catastrophic fires that, unlike the many smaller fires that would naturally occur, have negative environmental effects. An example was the huge Station Fire in the San Gabriels a few years back. Various opportunistic species have taken over in the disturbed habitat. One of the worst of these is purple poodle bush, which is sort of like poison oak except ten times worse -- it gets microscopic needles under your skin like little syringes injecting you with the irritating chemical. The stuff is ordinarily pretty rare (thank God), but in the burned areas it's taking over like crazy.

It's not realistic to imagine that you can have a natural environment in Yosemite Valley with the population density they're trying to support. Why is it a surprise if they get disease-carrying rodents? If it was undeveloped backcountry, you wouldn't have a big enough supply of garbage to feed such a high density of mice. If it was a city, you could exterminate the mice. You can't do any of that in an environment that's basically a high-density suburb that you're pretending is a wilderness.

The guvmint-based solution is to scale back the density of development in Yosemite Valley radically, and also to stop allowing people to drive private cars into the valley.

As an individual, there are a couple of positive things you can do: (1) Instead of driving your car into Yosemite Valley, take the YARTS bus from a nearby town like Mariposa. (2) If you live in the Bay Area, please show a little originality by not doing the same stuff that everybody else does. The two things that people want to do are (a) climbing Half Dome as a day hike and (b) overnight backpacking in Little Yosemite. These areas are heavily overimpacted. Try something else. The Sierra is a big place.

Re:Hanta Virus, Ebola Virus, Nipah Virus ....

[SydShamino]

There were fewer people in any given area, and most people never traveled at all. Thus a given outbreak likely wouldn't spread and could only at most kill the people in a few small farming communities, i.e. a few hundred people at most.

Obviously there are exceptions for outbreaks of various things in cities like London. There are records of those.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=london+disease+history [lmgtfy.com]

For everywhere else, records don't really exist because people didn't keep many written records of their dead.

For the specific viruses you list, some of them could be new. Viruses replicate hundreds or thousands of times a year, and thus their rate of mutation is hence faster than that of humans. If beneficial (to the viruses) mutations occur and propagate, then, evolution is also faster. Ebola, for example, either existed for a long time but wasn't able to infect humans with a written history due to the remote nature of the sub-Saharan Africa jungle, or it only evolved the ability to cross infect from other primates to humans in the last 50 years.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ebola+history [lmgtfy.com]