In short, i think the difference in death rate between covid and hantaviruses’ respiratory infections is probably smaller than 40 to 1 (though still presumably high). This is because (i suppose) both number are a ratio of confirmed death to confirmed cases. As the article points out, the number of confirmed cases can fluctuate depending on how much you test people : for covid, this kind of mortality rate (CFR) was higher at first because few people were tested. Once a lot of tests were made, it diminished. I guess (and from now on it is 100% my uneducated take) that the respiratory infections due to the Andes variant are not well tested, and the high mortality rate is partly due to the fact that it’s more likely to test people dying or nearing death because of it, than people who had less or no problems but got silently infected.
Still, had no idea death rates were that high, thanks for sharing this ! I’ll be more careful about this issue now.
Because we knew we were gonna be fucked if a more transmissible variant showed up…
In 2024, the NIH identified several families of viruses — including hantaviruses — that were extremely dangerous and had no effective vaccines or treatments, making them of special concern for their potential to cause a pandemic. To better prepare for future pandemics, the NIH awarded a series of grants through the ReVAMPP program to study these viruses and develop new tools to combat them, including the grant that established the Provident consortium and enabled this latest study. McLellan and other Provident researchers have simultaneously been working to find ways to address other viruses that health officials have identified as especially dangerous in an outbreak, such as measles and Nipah virus.
Was curious about those numbers and ended up reading this article, which was quite interesting : https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
In short, i think the difference in death rate between covid and hantaviruses’ respiratory infections is probably smaller than 40 to 1 (though still presumably high). This is because (i suppose) both number are a ratio of confirmed death to confirmed cases. As the article points out, the number of confirmed cases can fluctuate depending on how much you test people : for covid, this kind of mortality rate (CFR) was higher at first because few people were tested. Once a lot of tests were made, it diminished. I guess (and from now on it is 100% my uneducated take) that the respiratory infections due to the Andes variant are not well tested, and the high mortality rate is partly due to the fact that it’s more likely to test people dying or nearing death because of it, than people who had less or no problems but got silently infected.
Still, had no idea death rates were that high, thanks for sharing this ! I’ll be more careful about this issue now.
I mean, it killed Gene Hackman’s wife…
It’s called “andes variant” but it’s been in America for a while.
Weirdly enough, it’s such a big concern that we mapped it like a month before this cruise outbreak:
https://news.utexas.edu/2026/03/11/scientists-map-deadly-hantavirus-bringing-treatments-one-step-closer/
Because we knew we were gonna be fucked if a more transmissible variant showed up…
And it may just have…