Professor Luke O'Neill

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1,535 appearances 7 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3 Sep

Professor Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Hantavirus · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

And we now know exactly what happened there.

It was a ship called the Hondias, a lot of bird watchers.

Now, bird watchers are inclined to go to dumps because that's where the birds are, the scavenging birds and various rare species.

You'll find them in dumps.

So there was, it looks like there was a couple of bird watchers on that ship that went to a dump and got bitten by a rat or picked it up from an aerosolized

saliva sample or whatever it might be from the rat.

And then they went back on the ship and then because it was very close quarters, you're in cabins, you're in, you know, dining rooms, very close quarters, they began infecting others because it was the Andy strain, the only one that can spread from human to human.

In the end, there were 13 cases and tragically three people died.

So there was a reasonable mortality there.

And these cases happened.

And the 13 cases, the people are very sick.

Now, luckily, they could be treated and they could get through it with support.

And only three people died mercifully.

Why they die, it can be just bad luck.

Very high dose of the virus goes in.

One example would be that.

Secondly, their immune systems were a bit different because they were...

immunosuppressed for some reason.

So a bit of bad luck there maybe as to why they died.

The numbers are too small to see if it's genetic, for instance.

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