Hantavirus update, Pentagon’s UFO files, can art slow biological ageing?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Last Friday was a pretty big day for those who believe the US government is hiding something.
UFOs? Real. The Trump administration released its first tranche of declassified UFO files from the Pentagon, NASA and the FBI. It's a thing. It's a real thing.
The trove of documents released by the Pentagon details reports of alien encounters, sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena and videos of strange objects flying through the sky. There's a whole fleet of them.
Look on the SA. My gosh.
What is the latest update on hantavirus and the MV Hondias?
And from spaceships to cruise ships, namely the Hantavirus hit MV Hondias. As scientists analyse the virus and health organisations continue in their response, the passengers have finally been allowed to disembark. But many will now be facing six weeks of quarantine. A question they might be asking themselves is how to stay occupied. And they could do worse than indulging in some arts and crafts. According to a new study, activities like singing, dancing and painting have been linked to slower biological ageing. So today I chat to Ian Sample about the stories that have caught our eye this week. From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finlay and this is Science Weekly. Ian, since our episode about Hantavirus last week, the epicentre of the outbreak, the cruise ship MV Hondias, has been on quite a voyage.
So where do things stand now in terms of the numbers of cases and what's happening with the response?
So at the moment, the latest figures at the time of recording are 11 cases reported, though only nine of those have been confirmed. So two of those 11 are probable, but they're still awaiting the checks. And we know, of course, there have been these three deaths, the Dutch couple and a German couple. But the World Health Organization has warned that countries should prepare for more cases due to the interactions of those passengers before the ship really went into sort of infection control measures. So all of those passengers now have scattered to their various countries, but they're being either kept in various facilities or they're self-isolating and being monitored. But some of those may pop up as extra cases still.
And of course, this has such a long incubation time as well that there's some delay in the cases coming to light. But do we know any more about how the virus actually made it onto the ship and then spread among the passengers? You know, it's been confirmed that this is the Andy strain, which is known to sometimes transmit between people, but that is very rare.
Yeah, we don't know for sure how the virus got onto the ship, but the strongest suspicion has fallen on the first two cases, the Dutch couple who sadly died. But they had travelled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birdwatching trip prior to boarding. And when authorities went through their itinerary, they stopped at sites and reportedly even a landfill where you can see various birds, but you also find the type of rat that carries the Andes virus. So It's possible one or both of them contracted the virus during that trip and that would be from infected rat droppings or urine and then spread it to others when they boarded the ship.
And scientists are now obviously delving into the genetics. Does that tell us any more?
It does. What's coming through at the moment is that certainly the confirmed cases all seem to come from the same original source of infection, which is probably what you'd expect. It's nice to know that from the genetics. It also shows, which I think is really comforting, that it's not a new variant. This virus is similar to the Andes viruses that are known to circulate in South America. And it's actually when you group them with sequences that we know about from the past. It's actually most similar to sequences from this 2018-2019 outbreak that happened in Argentina.
What new information did the Pentagon release about UFOs?
And in that event, three people who came into contact with infected rodents spread the Andes virus to 34 other people and 11 of those died.
How did the Pentagon's UFO files come to be declassified?
So what it suggests so far... is that the cases on that ship are the result of a single spillover event from these infected rodents rather than the emergence of a radically different strain.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:53
2
What is the latest update on hantavirus and the MV Hondias?
0:53–4:27
3
What new information did the Pentagon release about UFOs?
4:27–4:37
4
How did the Pentagon's UFO files come to be declassified?
4:37–5:41
5
What evidence of alien encounters is included in the Pentagon's UFO files?
5:41–8:50
6
What cultural activities are linked to slower biological aging?
8:50–11:48
7
How is the hantavirus affecting passengers on the cruise ship?
11:48–21:11
Speakers
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