Jim Reid

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

I mean it is very rare that that should happen. The vast majority of cases of hantavirus appear to be spread from rodents, as you say. And this isn't particularly nice, but it's mice and rat droppings and urine that then dry and then the dust then blows up into the air and people inhale it. There was a famous case in Yosemite National Park in the U.S. in 2012.

where ten people were infected, three died, because mice had burrowed into the base of a cabin and made nests. But as you say, it does look like in some cases person-to-person transmission is possible, particularly this Andy strain of hantavirus, which is found mainly in South America, which is of course...

The only reason we know about

These cases, though, is because they are so unusual. It's not the kind of thing that happens all the time. The World Health Organization, as you said, saying this morning, it believes that human-to-human transmission may have taken place. But again, it's stressing this is very uncommon. And maybe it's something about the nature of these cruise ships with quite tight, small cabins that increases the risk.

The WHO has been keen to reassure people that this is not like Covid, that this is different, but it will reawaken memories of the pandemic. How is this different? I think a lot of people listening to this are bound to think that. There are some key differences here. Coronavirus, Covid, was a brand new disease. People had never been exposed to it before, had the chance to build up any sort of immunity. And that, as we know now, it can spread very easily worldwide.

Hantavirusta on erittäin erilainen. Se on yksi virusta, eikä yksi syötä. Ja tärkeintä, että se ei ole uusi. Hantavirusta oli ensimmäisenä isoloitunut 1989 South Korea-teamilla. Hantavirusta on kutsuttu Suomeen Hantavirusta.

It does not spread very easily. You normally have to be, as I say, in extremely close contact with another infected person, which is why the message from the WHO this morning is that the risk to the wider public is still much lower than it was back in those days of COVID and coronavirus. And briefly, the WHO is also trying to contact passengers who are on a flight.

That's right. This is a flight that someone who sadly died, later died of the virus, apparently took on April the 25th. They're going to be doing all this work to contact other potential people who might have been infected. One of the issues here is that the incubation period for this form of the illness is really unclear how long it is. Sometimes it develops between two and four weeks. It can develop in a matter of days, though, as little as four days. And that makes it quite difficult for patients.

The health authorities, when they're trying to track exactly who else may have been infected in this suspected outbreak.

Lääkärit ovat saaneet niistä, eivätkä he ole saaneet mahdollisuutta sanoa, että katsotaanpa, että haluamme...

When I travel to Ukraine, when I've traveled elsewhere in Eastern Europe to Estonia, for example, on those border regions, the issue of whether you're speaking Russian, brackets, originally forced to speak Russian, or now adopt Ukrainian or Estonian or another language is absolutely critical to that argument that's going on.

Language needs protection. In some places there is minority language protection, but you're right that every time identity politics enters the fray, it's very likely that language follows. And is there a new threat with technology to language, which is that AI, largely trained on the English language, therefore is going to make it much harder to learn, not just relatively obscure dialects, but other languages? Yes, we should always remember with technology it inherits language.