Wendy Zuckerman

What happens from here is that your body starts to mount an immune response to get rid of this invader.

And that's often when you can start to get sick in a way that Michelle says might feel pretty familiar at first.

And it's possible that more of us have been infected with Hantavirus than we think.

Studies have measured the blood of thousands of people for Hantavirus antibodies, evidence that Hantavirus had weaseled its way into their body and then their immune system responded.

And they found that in the Americas, just over 2% of people that they looked at had Hunter virus antibodies.

A lot of those folks were probably never diagnosed with Hunter virus and might have had pretty mild symptoms.

But for others who get infected, like some of the passengers on the cruise ship, it can get very nasty.

In the first week of symptoms, you can start getting GI problems.

So think stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.

And in fact, more than half of the people who actually get diagnosed with Hantavirus end up with severe symptoms.

And that can happen because your immune system kind of gets completely carried away.

It creates this massive inflammatory response.

This is called a cytokine storm.

Cytokines are these small proteins that get secreted by your immune system, and they can go completely haywire during a hantavirus infection, where they can even start to attack your organs.

The same thing can happen with a particularly nasty COVID infection too.

But the thing that sets Hunter virus apart is what happens next.

So as the Hunter virus keeps attacking those cells that it loves, the endothelial cells, and particularly the cells that line our blood vessels,

that lining can start to break down.

The blood vessels become very leaky.

This means the fluid in your blood vessels, the plasma, can now leach into places it's not meant to go, like your lungs.