RIP Gene Hackman

[Southern Elk]

Taking safety precautions is always a good thing, but it doesn’t seem like something to worry too much about.

 

[kansasdad]

Thanks for the linked paper @BrentD
Spring cleaning the garage will look a bit different with a spray bottle and N95 mask being employed.

Have there been retrospective studies on historical Hanta deaths going back centuries ago among early SW native Americans/pioneers/conquistador populations? I guess I’m asking if someone who dies from “ague” really was struck down by this virus.

 

[Bonasababy]

Couple of the things to add, although I believe my training and textbooks are dated so Brent might have more current info.

There are many species in the genus Peromyscus, sp. maniculatus is the most widely distributed one and probably most likely to interact with humans, but pretty sure others can carry HV as well.

I would suggest treating exposure to feces or urine from all rodents...and bats (where histoplasmosis is a big concern) with the same care.

 

[BrentD]

Couple of the things to add, although I believe my training and textbooks are dated so Brent might have more current info.

There are many species in the genus Peromyscus, sp. maniculatus is the most widely distributed one and probably most likely to interact with humans, but pretty sure others can carry HV as well.

I would suggest treating exposure to feces or urine from all rodents...and bats (where histoplasmosis is a big concern) with the same care.

Other Peromyscus can carry it, but in much lesser frequencies. It would be fair to say, from my reading, that the disease is not sustained in any of those species (they include harvest mice, chipmunks, and cottonrats as well (packrats, I disremember)), and that there needs to be a strong presence in the P. maniculatus to get it into other species.

Thanks for the linked paper @BrentD
Spring cleaning the garage will look a bit different with a spray bottle and N95 mask being employed.

Have there been retrospective studies on historical Hanta deaths going back centuries ago among early SW native Americans/pioneers/conquistador populations? I guess I’m asking if someone who dies from “ague” really was struck down by this virus.

Interesting you should bring this up, but after the disease had been known for a while, it was learned that Navajo have a bit of a "story" for lack of a better word, about spring being accompanied by a time of mysterious deaths. Spring is when the hogans are cleaned out from a long winter to begin the spring and summer ceremonial season. So there is some indication that they knew of this culturally, even if they did not link it specifically to rodents, much less deer mice. Navajo have a great aversion to speaking about the dead, however, so what we really know about what they know is probably somewhat limited.

Anyway, just take a little care. If you are sweeping out a deer blind or some cabinets in your garage (like I am about to do), wear a mask, gloves, and really clean up carefully when you take a break for a donut or ham sandwich. Maybe use a little disinfectant cleanser on your hands and what not. We all probably have a bottle of the stuff buried in our pick up trucks and mud rooms, left over from the Covid experience. Use it.

I can tell you that for decades before me, mouse biologists 3x per week, 50 51 weeks of the year, would live trap, mark, measure, and release mice and voles and then stop at Jenning's Daylight Donuts in downtown Lawrence, KS for a donut and something to drink before going back to the lab. Suffice it to say, that our hygiene was, at best, suspect. In all those years, I'm the only one that got sick. Also, associated with all the accounts that we could muster good ancillary data on, every victim curiously lived in a real dump of a house or field crew cabin, etc. Take that as an interesting correlative anecdote of questionable importance.

 

[MTTW]

A few years ago, maybe 10, my mother in law's boss got hantavirus and died within a few days. I think she was cleaning out a shed or something. I know that at the time there was no question where she got it. She got it on the weekend and never came back to work as I recall. It has made me a bit paranoid around mouse nastiness, which I deal with quite often. This was in SW MT.