Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hanta Virus......and maybe a wakeup call.

We've all heard of this.....just like Ebola and other "new" Viruses. Today, I just ran into a guy that I know (friend of a friend) that just survived Hanta Virus..........barely!!

He is 62 and has had a chunk of land in Rural NV for many years. He was on the property and discovered that the earthwork dam that forms a stock tank for himself and a few others was in bad shape. There were several large drain flumes that hadn't been cracked in years. He went around and opened up some of them to lower the water level in the tank. As water flowed through each, a big blast of dust belched out. He didn't think anything about it.

A few days later, he's thinkin' he's got a cold. Another day, and he's thinkin' the flu. Next day, he's is downright sick and drives back to Reno to be with family. Wife thinks he's in deep chit and takes him to the ER. They check him in, run a few tests and tell the wife they'll keep him overnight and send him home in the AM. Early next AM, wife gets a call, from the hospital saying get the family in here "we don't think he's going to make it" She goes rushing down. Docs tell her his fever went to 104 during the night, his lungs were filling he's convulsing and they don't know what's happening.

Here is what saved his life..............................

In a completely unrelated instance, his sister died in '97 from Hanta Virus. His wife remembered the symptoms and said to the Doc's "test him for Hanta" They did, she was right, and they put him into a drug induced coma for 21 days while his body fought the virus. He made it...................Just!!

I ran into him by chance today, and hadn't heard the story. We talked for a bit and he filled me in and said that during the coma, he was dead to the world and didn't remember anything except for one detail. To paraphrase, here is what he told me.

"Jimmy, I don't remember anything about that time except this..........There IS a tunnel, and there IS a light. I was in that tunnel, and the light was far away. But I wanted to go toward the light more than anything. Somehow I didn't go, and I think it was because my wife was the room with me holding me back somehow"

Food for thought on several levels.

JimF

Your friend is a lucky, lucky man!! Hanta is scary chit!! Glad he was able to make a full recovery.....must not have been his time to go.....thankfully....

HoundGirl

That Hanta is some serious stuff, alright.

Not to make (too) light of it, but beware - sniffing mouse poop can do you in! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The mouse poop thing was what got his sister when she and her hubby were cleaning out an old shack on some property near Hemet Ca. In his case, they speculate that it was from Jackrabbits.

This stuff is so rare, that the docs in Reno that saw him had never seen a case. They thought that he had simple pneumonia. (which he technically did) But it was caused by tha Hanta. Aparently there were CDC folks popping out of the woodwork for a while.

JimF

Hanta occures in desert areas mostly. But with the drought and heat wave over most of the midwest, we all need to be aware.
For some reason we are really getting a population boom of mice. We started finding them in the house again, I got to fire the damn cat, and start spraying every thing down with bleach again.

Didn't the last outbreak have more to do with what the mice were eating or do mice in general carry the virus?

I was told many moons ago that there are a variety of bugs laying dormant in the dirt. Just takes the right conditions for the STHTF. Some would make Ebola look like a walk in the park.

I saw on the Discovery Channel where two or three Navahos died with it. It was awful, congesting the lungs. A guy and his girlfriend.

They said it is related to mouse droppings and mouse urine. They also said the Navaho have a belief that if a mouse runs over your clothes, you're supposed to burn them.

They may not have known what hte word "virus" meant back centuries ago, but they were smart enough to observe.

The show said that they'd had a wet spring, which led to a lot of extra food and extra breeding. I guess the press for food drove the extra mice into populated areas. And the same can happen with drought.

Mice crap all the time, and apprently pee also. Also, apparently not every mouse has the virus.

Time to get out the old Red Ryder.

Re: the desert/dry comment, that matches with what we're told. Here in B.C., it's not a worry on the west (wet) coast, but in the drier areas in the interior, it's no uncommon. People there are cautioned when dusting, cleaning, or doing anything that might stir up dust.

Only one species of mouse is likely to carry Hanta. The deer mouse, or Peromyscus maniculatus. It is widely spred through out North America but not found in the South East.

Most mice in houses do not, cannot, carry HV. But members of the genus Peromyscus can. The most common mouse in houses, house mice of course, do not carry HV.

It's not very contagious and mortality rates are under 50%. Frankly, you have a better, much better, chance of dying from lightning strikes or deer-vehicle accidents or a gazzilion other things.

That said there are some simple precautions to take if you find your self having to mess with mouse messes. Lysol or bleach solutions sprayed to keep the dust down are very helpful and simple. Wear a dust mask. The virus adheres to dried fecal or urine dust and is inhaled most often.

HV isn't something to get real worked up about. It pays to be aware however, and use your head when you are in the right sorts of situations.

Brent

check out this page from CDC

Hanta Map

something like 36% dead out of 438 cases

Sycamore

This is the exact same information I got on this subject a few years ago when I was involved in rodent control work.

Currently West Nile is a much greater concern. We are seeing a lot of that this summer in the local area.

Interesting stats. 438 cases is not many at all over that time span. I still think I'm gonna wear a respirator when I go under the house this fall. Deer mice are pretty common here.

From what John was told, the concentration of the exposure has some effect on the severity of the case. He figured that rabbits and mice had been poopin' in those flumes for years. When the water pushed that big blast of dust out, it was probably a pretty heavy concentration.

JimF

Hanta Virus is nothing new, they just know what it is and how it is spread. If I remember correctly the Army in Korea in 1950-53 had a problem with it, and figuired out what it is and were it comes from. This is a good reason not to shoot every snake you see. And of course keep your house and Cabins clean. Eboa been killing African Jungle dwellers for centuries. No big deal, a village would die and go back to seed. Nobody got to far from home , now you could catch it and be in New York before you get to sick to move. Its a problem, but like all problems in the pass these will get solved. CDC Doc's and a whole lot of research is going on to find at least a vaccine for it. As for use as a weapon, well easier said than done, A lot of nation states worked on it for decades and it came to nothing, to unreliable and unpredictable, this is not to say that some Terror group might not try, there was the Antrax thing in 2001 and that Nerve Gas attack in Japan. Glad to hear that your friend of a friend made a recovery. It could not have been fun, heck when I was 32 I came down with pnumonia and it dam near killed me.

Jim,
The concentration of the exposure might be pretty high under your house. It's the kind of place where those that have contracted the disease have often picked it up.

Brent