Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Friday, May eighth. We've already got
Speaker 1: three dead. Now we have more suspected cases and more
Speaker 1: suspected places.
Speaker 2: The CDC has upped its alert level.
Speaker 1: But hey, doctors are saying, we got nothing to worry
Speaker 1: about in this hantavirus outbreak in the ocean.
Speaker 2: And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Robes.
Speaker 2: Let's start there. Don't want to ever be accused.
Speaker 1: Of being alarmist, but it seems every doctor we're hearing from,
Speaker 1: every doctor we read about and see on TV, all
Speaker 1: seem to be saying there is a low, low risk
Speaker 1: that this thing is going to turn into much more
Speaker 1: than it is now.
Speaker 2: Is that fair? Yes?
Speaker 3: In fact, we actually chuckled just listening to one doctor
Speaker 3: continue to repeat so far, so good, and we were
Speaker 3: laughing because, look, I think many of us are on
Speaker 3: edge a bit, just having emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 3: We've all gone back in our minds and remembered the
Speaker 3: early oh and not a big deal, nothing to worry about.
Speaker 3: And now you just hear doctors kind of saying the
Speaker 3: same thing, and we're not saying that it's anything to
Speaker 3: worry about. It's just you start thinking, wow, well that
Speaker 3: sound by come back and bite him in the ass later,
Speaker 3: hopefully not.
Speaker 2: Well. We said that about a lot of doctors.
Speaker 1: They do seem it's almost and I'm not getting onto
Speaker 1: them road, but it seems like they're going out of
Speaker 1: their way to go the other way to tell everybody
Speaker 1: that this isn't a big deal, to the point that
Speaker 1: almost sounds ridiculous. It's almost like they're not taking into
Speaker 1: context our previous and very recent experience right right.
Speaker 3: They need I want some validation here, Yes, I want
Speaker 3: some validation that I have every reason to be slightly nervous.
Speaker 3: Both of our daughters have texted us saying, I'm a
Speaker 3: little worried. You know, even kids are hearing this, and
Speaker 3: they lived through the pandemic, you know, so they don't
Speaker 3: have as much perspective. I think Sabine said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go through two pandemics in six years of my
Speaker 3: thirteen years of life, and so from that perspective, you
Speaker 3: can see why a lot of people are on edge.
Speaker 3: And then you hear the CDC is announcing a level
Speaker 3: three outbreak. You even said to me, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: So I looked it up look, level three is the
Speaker 3: lowest level, but it does mean that they have activated
Speaker 3: basically an emergency operations center surrounding the haunt of virus,
Speaker 3: so that is now official. We now have a level
Speaker 3: three outbreak that the CDC is monitoring. Level two is
Speaker 3: a moderate concern. Level one is the highest, and the pandemic,
Speaker 3: of course was level one.
Speaker 2: But it probably started as a three.
Speaker 3: So yes, now we have begun a level three outbreak
Speaker 3: according to the CDC. Which look, initially, when this thing started,
Speaker 3: what was it. I can't even remember when we first
Speaker 3: started talking about this Monday, was it over the weekend?
Speaker 3: But even you were like, eh, it's just a cruise ship,
Speaker 3: a couple people, just a minor outbreak. It didn't seemed
Speaker 3: like it was going to be much at all, and
Speaker 3: fully contained the ship.
Speaker 1: It was so away from everything, like you said, fully contained.
Speaker 1: I think what was I'm not sure what it was.
Speaker 1: It turned around for me. I think when you started
Speaker 1: talking about the andes and human to human and this possibility,
Speaker 1: and certainly this woman had gotten off the plane certainly
Speaker 1: changed everything got off the boat. But she's not the
Speaker 1: only one. We have learned so so much more so
Speaker 1: we want to give you an update about where we are,
Speaker 1: and the updates includes, First of all, you should know yes,
Speaker 1: there are five states in the US that are monitoring
Speaker 1: people who.
Speaker 2: Got off that boat. Will give you the latest on that.
Speaker 1: We still have the numbers of three dead, another five
Speaker 1: cases either suspected or confirmed, but robes the biggest concern,
Speaker 1: and some headlines here are about people who never set
Speaker 1: foot on the damn boat.
Speaker 3: Yes, so this is what is concerning. This was the
Speaker 3: most concerning thing to me when I woke up this
Speaker 3: morning and saw that today this is the latest as
Speaker 3: of Friday, UK health authorities are saying a third British
Speaker 3: national is now suspected to have hantavirus. That British national
Speaker 3: lives in Tristan da Cunha. It's a remote British territory
Speaker 3: in the South Atlantic where the ship stopped. So this
Speaker 3: person was never on the cruise ship. This person lives
Speaker 3: in one of those remote islands who now has fallen
Speaker 3: ill and is suspected to have hantavirus. Now, if this
Speaker 3: case is confirmed, this is deeply concerning because I'm just
Speaker 3: wondering how somebody who lives on the island got in
Speaker 3: close personal prolonged contact with someone on the ship who
Speaker 3: had hauntavirus.
Speaker 1: Because Robes, that's one of the things they keep trying
Speaker 1: to calm us down about. They say, oh, we heard
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization representative speaking about this that it's
Speaker 1: not like is not like the flu and easily passed
Speaker 1: through a couple of droplets. He said, it has to
Speaker 1: be a longer, extended, even intimate contact. You could see
Speaker 1: a husband and wife around each other that long ropes.
Speaker 1: This gets my attention, And we don't know what. Maybe
Speaker 1: somebody on the ships dating somebody on the island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it went out for dinner, maybe they hung. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but Robes, this is a pretty random thing.
Speaker 1: Given a lot of what we're saying about how difficult
Speaker 1: it's supposed.
Speaker 2: To be for this to go from human to human.
Speaker 3: You're going to start to hear more about this case
Speaker 3: because literally Friday today, and obviously they are ahead of
Speaker 3: us there in Great Britain, but this just got released,
Speaker 3: this information that they now think perhaps a British national
Speaker 3: in one of these islands has haunted.
Speaker 2: How small as this island.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it's look, I traveled through some
Speaker 3: of this area let's just say it's the remotest place
Speaker 3: I've ever been to on Earth, so I can't imagine
Speaker 3: there would be a lot of people here. So that
Speaker 3: is the good news that it is isolated to this
Speaker 3: very isolated area. However, the bad news is the fact
Speaker 3: that this person could have contracted this and not have
Speaker 3: ever set foot on the boat, all.
Speaker 1: Right, and that this isn't the only one, right, we
Speaker 1: had the other one was on the plane.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, the French citizen who is isolating right now,
Speaker 3: and we're confused what this means. But this person is
Speaker 3: showing what they're calling benign symptoms of the virus after
Speaker 3: being on the plane with the Dutch woman who later collapsed.
Speaker 1: So that would make more sense, right if somebody that
Speaker 1: close proximity you could have been sitting next.
Speaker 3: To you, that would make sense. She is being tested
Speaker 3: right now, And there was a flight attendant who fell
Speaker 3: ill in the Netherlands. She was rushed to the hospital.
Speaker 3: They just said that she tested negative for hauntavirus. But
Speaker 3: she was also on that plane, and right now Dutch
Speaker 3: public health officials are currently can you imagine this contacting contact,
Speaker 3: tracing all the passengers, I believe they say eighty people
Speaker 3: were on that flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, so
Speaker 3: that's concerning. And then in addition, in Singapore, two men
Speaker 3: who were on that flight, who were on that cruise
Speaker 3: ship are now in quarantine and undergoing testing right now.
Speaker 3: I didn't see any word about their health. If Singapore
Speaker 3: is just doing this because they were on the ship
Speaker 3: and on the flight, or if they're exhibiting any symptoms unclear,
Speaker 3: but we're waiting for word on what their test results
Speaker 3: are as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just keeping up with my numbers here. How
Speaker 1: is it two or three people who are now suspected
Speaker 1: or confirmed cases that were never on the ship? That
Speaker 1: two or three? There are one the British national on
Speaker 1: the island.
Speaker 3: And then and then the French citizen. Okay, so too,
Speaker 3: all right, yes, because the right now the flight attendant
Speaker 3: apparently does not have hauntavirus. We're always a little suspicious too,
Speaker 3: having lived through COVID, you know how many times you
Speaker 3: could test negative and then test positive. So and they were.
Speaker 3: There was a growing sorry, a learning curve for even
Speaker 3: doctors epidemiologist on how this how the coronavirus was mutating, operating,
Speaker 3: how to test for it all of that? Not sure
Speaker 3: if there are those same vague areas, but you would
Speaker 3: imagine there would be. This isn't a common strain of
Speaker 3: this virus that we didn't even know about until last year.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much background they have on this virus
Speaker 1: if it was, you know, isolated to a remote area
Speaker 1: of the world, how much study, how much energy was
Speaker 1: put into this thing? Are we in a case where
Speaker 1: we have a brand new thing that they're trying to
Speaker 1: map out?
Speaker 2: Are we?
Speaker 1: I mean they're not starting maybe from the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the drawing board, but robes is this thing? How
Speaker 1: quickly How quickly did we know about strains of COVID?
Speaker 1: How quickly were we hearing we're dealing with this one?
Speaker 1: Now we're dealing with this one. I kind of remember,
Speaker 1: I mean, did we start out with just one strain?
Speaker 1: And was it more than one strain? I kind of remember.
Speaker 1: So we have this virus, this and these things are
Speaker 1: going to start doing weird stuff? Has it already done
Speaker 1: weird stuff?
Speaker 3: This is the concern? And look, I actually we're gonna
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call my dad, who's a microbiologist later today
Speaker 3: and see, because I know he knows a lot about
Speaker 3: this type of thing. And I think we are at
Speaker 3: a point now where we need some experts, and we're
Speaker 3: hearing them on television, but we're and we're all hearing
Speaker 3: them give us perspective to not get alarmed, to not
Speaker 3: be concerned. But look, this is just the beginning, because
Speaker 3: there are still one hundred and forty six people that
Speaker 3: I think we've finally got word. It's been confusing how
Speaker 3: many people are still on this ship. But the AP
Speaker 3: is reporting one hundred and forty six people from twenty
Speaker 3: three different countries, including seventeen Americans, are still on board
Speaker 3: that ship. Okay, that ship is arriving in the Canary
Speaker 3: Islands around seven am Eastern time on Sunday, and the
Speaker 3: US right now says it is going to send a
Speaker 3: chartered plane with all of the necessary precautions to pick
Speaker 3: up those seventeen people and bring them back to the United.
Speaker 2: States, where we'd all like to know where they're going
Speaker 2: to drive.
Speaker 3: We all like to know who knows. I don't have
Speaker 3: that worry.
Speaker 2: Maybe Atlanta, CDC down there, maybe DC that.
Speaker 3: Would make the most sense to do something.
Speaker 4: Either Walter Reid or somewhere affiliated with the CDC, seeing
Speaker 4: how they now have a devoted team solely now focusing
Speaker 4: on this hantavirus outbreak, So that supposedly is all happening
Speaker 4: in the next couple of days.
Speaker 3: A lot of attention and focus is certainly going to
Speaker 3: be on that. But look, we still have those passengers
Speaker 3: who disembarked early on April twenty fourth. They went to
Speaker 3: twelve different countries. They went to the UK, the US,
Speaker 3: the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Speaker 3: New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, and my favorite unknown. There are
Speaker 3: two passengers that they don't know what countries they went to.
Speaker 3: They just know that they left.
Speaker 2: Do they know what countries they're from?
Speaker 3: They only they just list an unknown and we have
Speaker 3: two passengers. That is certainly concerning. So for the perspective
Speaker 3: of this, health officials across four continents right now are
Speaker 3: scrambling to track down and monitor those passengers and trace
Speaker 3: all the people they came into contact with along the
Speaker 3: way before they were notified. So when we come back,
Speaker 3: we are going to talk about the five states here
Speaker 3: in this country who are now monitoring those passengers.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ,
Speaker 3: where we are yes talking about the level three outbreak
Speaker 3: deemed by the CDC, the hauntavirus outbreak and what that
Speaker 3: means and what is happening right now because this information
Speaker 3: is rapidly changing. But right now we know that there
Speaker 3: are five states in this country free monitoring known passengers
Speaker 3: who disembark from that cruise ship and now are trying
Speaker 3: to find all the people they came into contact with, me.
Speaker 1: Six or seven states, given those two unknowns, it's unknown.
Speaker 3: I hate that. How do they not know either where
Speaker 3: they're from, where they were headed?
Speaker 2: How do you not know who's on you a passenger
Speaker 2: on the ship? Unknown? You know what I prefer they
Speaker 2: just left that information.
Speaker 3: They just write refuge as theirs their place of origin.
Speaker 3: Obviously everyone had to have a passport. So that's confused.
Speaker 2: It's not a cheap.
Speaker 1: Trip, it's not it's not okay outside that unknown. I
Speaker 1: just leave that off. Don't even tell me that.
Speaker 3: Concerning all right, So we'll start in Virginia because they
Speaker 3: have one This is also slightly confusing, one resident who
Speaker 3: they say is currently in good health that they are
Speaker 3: monitoring and then they say there are fewer than five
Speaker 3: potentially exposed Virginians who might be identified in the days ahead.
Speaker 3: I quote to them, that's what the Virginia Public Health
Speaker 3: Office release.
Speaker 1: We were screaming at the TV watching the representator from
Speaker 1: Virginia Health Department do an interview yesterday. We couldn't figure out.
Speaker 1: We didn't understand they're monitoring a person. He literally said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we call, we text them, check in every day.
Speaker 3: And he's not isolating. Yeah, so I was concerning.
Speaker 1: Well, they didn't ask and they didn't get a claranza
Speaker 1: here robes on. Is this person allowed to just go
Speaker 1: walk around with the general population until they have symptoms?
Speaker 3: That's what it sounded like to me. The person who
Speaker 3: was the representative of the Virginia Office of Public Health
Speaker 3: was a physician and said that until a patient or
Speaker 3: a person starts exhibiting symptoms of the Haunt of virus,
Speaker 3: which is I guess a flu like symptoms, they're not contagious.
Speaker 3: But that's really alarming, because where are you going to
Speaker 3: be when you start developing symptoms if you should or
Speaker 3: would eventually develop symptoms. I'm just going to have my
Speaker 3: first knees.
Speaker 1: Where for babe, that's not an exact science. The symptom,
Speaker 1: is it a slight headache that I am now contagious
Speaker 1: or not until I have a full headache and a
Speaker 1: running nose and aches?
Speaker 2: How extreme do the symptoms need to be? Can it
Speaker 2: come on?
Speaker 1: Can I be contagious like ten minutes before the symptoms
Speaker 1: come too?
Speaker 2: That's too fine a line. Ro hoops.
Speaker 3: I Actually we were shocked. Our jaws dropped when we
Speaker 3: heard that the person who was on this ship, who
Speaker 3: was on the ship after someone already died on the
Speaker 3: ship from a virus, a deadly virus that passes from
Speaker 3: human to human, is allowed to freely walk around Virginia
Speaker 3: until they developed symptoms.
Speaker 1: It sounded like it maybe maybe this person is voluntarily
Speaker 1: staying at home.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's the case.
Speaker 1: But he did not make it sound like they were
Speaker 1: making sure this person was not out.
Speaker 3: They call them, they text.
Speaker 1: He literally said, we text and check in every day
Speaker 1: just to see how they're doing.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 3: He did say that this person takes their temperature twice
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, I.
Speaker 1: Think he also didn't say that person was very much
Speaker 1: wanting to stay in touch with them as well.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Obviously that person's very concerned. I'm sure it is probably
Speaker 3: taking their temperature ten times a day, because you know
Speaker 3: you would be if you had been on that ship. Texas,
Speaker 3: two individuals who were on this ship are now being monitored.
Speaker 3: They didn't have contact with a sick person and are
Speaker 3: not currently reporting symptoms. So that's what we got from Texas.
Speaker 3: Georgia has two residents also under observation. They say that
Speaker 3: neither has shown any symptoms. In Arizona there is one
Speaker 3: person being monitored who was also asymptomatic, and in California
Speaker 3: this is another. They're very vague. They are monitoring what
Speaker 3: they have described as an undisclosed number of people, but
Speaker 3: no information suggests they are ill or infected.
Speaker 2: Why would they say that.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know why they won't give
Speaker 3: us a number.
Speaker 2: That is that their wording, that's their warding.
Speaker 3: They just said residents. They just had al so there
Speaker 3: was no number associated with it. I don't know why
Speaker 3: there's been no follow up or any specification as to
Speaker 3: how long or how many.
Speaker 2: The story keeps.
Speaker 1: You and I said, it robes if if we hear
Speaker 1: that someone is in New York, it ups the conversation
Speaker 1: a little bit, but really we know what that was like. No,
Speaker 1: not just us, he's living here. Yes, we went through
Speaker 1: this thing, but the country watched us be an epicenter
Speaker 1: of something.
Speaker 2: Because of how we live. We are on top of
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 3: Shared airspace in apartment buildings, and yes, so it's a
Speaker 3: completely different situation if you've got one of these folks
Speaker 3: coming back to an urban area. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: dense urban area.
Speaker 1: We hear about somebody being monitored in New York. You say,
Speaker 1: on top of each other. I think how many times
Speaker 1: in my life growing up I had to get on
Speaker 1: an elevator. Seriously, robes, We're on an elevator in an
Speaker 1: enclosed space with someone several times a day. Strangers is
Speaker 1: uber like. People don't live like that the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. You're on one level. You're not going that's
Speaker 1: we I just thought about that. We are packed in
Speaker 1: together constantly in robes. No, COVID scared the hell out
Speaker 1: of us for a long time. We have the handle
Speaker 1: and understand it now, but we don't understand this thing,
Speaker 1: but we understand numbers robes. We have not in our
Speaker 1: lifetime dealt with something that kills forty percent of the
Speaker 1: people it infects.
Speaker 3: No, that is frightening.
Speaker 1: That's movie shit, that is terrifying. So they can tell
Speaker 1: us all day long, robes at the risk is low,
Speaker 1: but we are still shell shocked. And I hate using
Speaker 1: this word, it's overused, but this is triggering.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is a lot of us, absolutely all this one.
Speaker 1: So that's why we want to keep these updates coming.
Speaker 1: And they really this is changing almost every hour it is.
Speaker 3: And there are right now. I just want to say,
Speaker 3: in Argentina, right now they are testing rodents in the
Speaker 3: areas of Schwa but also just where this Dutch couple went.
Speaker 3: They really do believe that these were the folks who
Speaker 3: brought this inadvertently onto this ship. They were on a
Speaker 3: bird watching trip that went through Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and
Speaker 3: so they're trying to retrace this couple's steps to see
Speaker 3: where they went and where they could possibly have picked
Speaker 3: up this deadly strain of this rare virus. So that
Speaker 3: is what's happening right now in Argentina. They are trapping
Speaker 3: and testing rodents in the area to try and make
Speaker 3: sure this does not go any further than it already has.
Speaker 3: But we will continue to monitor this rapidly developing story.
Speaker 3: As always, we appreciate you listening to us. Everyone, I'm
Speaker 3: Amy Robach alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.