The Last Word with Matt Cooper
The Week Trending: Hantavirus, Attenborough Turns 100 & Pre-flight Pints
08 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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We're in Cork today at the Republic of Work, which means I'm joined by two Cork women from her own podcast named after her, Deirdre O'Shotnessy, who is also opinion editor with the Irish Examiner, where Jennifer Horgan is a columnist and, of course, secondary school teacher as well. And both of them have been on the programme many times before. Great to see you both here in the studio in Cork.
Deirdre, have you been following the Hanta virus over the last week?
Of course I have, Matt. Me and my COVID-related post-traumatic stress disorder have been watching this very, very closely, which I think a lot of other people have too. Why?
Why would it worry you?
It's the cruise ship thing.
Dr Chris Luke about this yesterday and he was saying it was actually it's like the start of a horror movie where everyone on the cruise ship starts dying of a mysterious infection like that is that is an absolute horror movie and it did happen in Covid do you remember there was that ship at the very beginning of Covid there was a couple of Irish people on it who were they were turned away from ports
They were at sea for ages with COVID on the ship. So it is a bit of a reminder of that. Now, I suppose I'm being a little bit glib about it, but obviously it is very serious.
And a bit alarmist.
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Chapter 2: What is the hantavirus outbreak on cruise ships about?
No, and they are all saying the same thing, which is this is not a repeat of COVID. So the biggest thing they're saying is... It's not a repeat of COVID. This is a known virus. COVID was a novel virus. That was the biggest thing about it. Nobody knew how serious it was. The hantavirus, there's a couple of different strains of it. This is the anti-strain.
Will you explain this to me? Because this is the one thing I was given out about last weekend. Listening to the radio reports, And it seemed to be an assumption that everyone would know what an antivirus was.
What is it?
Do you not know all the viruses now?
Should we all do? No, this is a virus. It's the global south largely, but there is a European strain as well. There's an African strain and there is an Andean strain. The Andean strain, which is the one that's on this ship, is more serious.
So apparently the initial couple that died very tragically on board the ship had gone birdwatching on a dump in Ushuaia and on the dump apparently it's in the rodent's urine and the rodent's urine obviously is in the dust and if you kick the dust up and it gets into your lungs that's how you contract this initially. It's not normally passed on from human to human apparently that's quite rare
But the difficulty with the Andean virus is it's much more fatal than the African one. So it's a worse thing.
But hold on, weren't there more people sick than just the two people that died? So they weren't all kicking up dust in the same dump, were they? Or was there something going on in the air conditioning system on the cruise?
We don't know. I mean, that's potentially very much the case. There does seem to have been human to human transition and actually transmission rather. And today, unfortunately, this is the bit now that actually... So again, all the immunologists are saying this is not like COVID. It's not going to spread in the same way as COVID. It is much more limited spread and they know how to deal with it.
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Chapter 3: How did David Attenborough celebrate his 100th birthday?
And I mean, only one drink isn't going to do any harm, no matter what time of the day it is. Surely the problem is caused by loads of drink.
Yeah, but who's going to police it? So I know that there was talk about a one or two drink limit in the airport, but that's very unfair on the bar staff. You know, the guy who comes up for the second drink. Yeah. Is it up to them to really control their drinking?
It's always someone who'll ruin all the fun for the rest of us. Okay, Jennifer, tell us about South Korea and Buddhist robots.
Yeah, I can't get my head around this at all. So there was a ceremony to initiate the first robot Buddhist monk in South Korea. So they put the beads on him and the robe and he had to, you know, usually they put in the birth date of whoever it was, but they had to put in the manufacturing date.
And then they had terrible trouble because usually when you become a monk, there's like the five precepts of Buddhism and you have to agree to them all. And one of those is to do with alcohol consumption. So they didn't know how to actually apply that to a robot.
So they were talking about doing something about, you know, the overcharging, you know, that you wouldn't overcharge yourself or something as a robot. But it's just, to me, it's just incredibly grim. Like when Buddhism is ultimately about, I think it's about kind of managing being a human in the world and managing your appetites and your desires and coming to terms with death. That's a big thing.
And how on earth can this apply to a robot? I don't know. I've had a lot.
Artificial intelligence coming in. One last thing I want to ask you about, please, Deirdre. And that's what's called the great hunkering down in the jobs market. What's this about?
Yeah, I think a lot of people have seen this already. They're talking about it. It's a piece, I think, originally in the New York Times. And there was research done in America about people, essentially, the choice has gone from the jobs market. So just after COVID, there was this whole thing where employees really had it their own way. And it was lovely.
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