Could be just me but it seems like the PTBs from a bunch of countries are trying their buttzoff to minimize our concern over the hantabug. Using a medical 747 to fly 17 suspicious folks to Nebraska? That there is some industrial overkill.
There’s a bit more to the first part of the story that the pin stripes are skipping over. The Love Boat was starting on a bird watching trip to the Andes, in Patagonia. The first lady who died was one of the bird watchers. But the slopes of the lower Andes is where GUANO comes from. The birds they’re watching leave piles of bird poop hundreds of feet deep. I learned in grade school geography back in the 50’s that they found out the stuff makes good fertilizer so they’ve been mining it ever since. The notion that one can stick his/her nose into a cloud of bird poop dust with no health risk is some heckuva stooped.
If you have an overwhelming urge to watch birds poop on an Andean mountain get a really good pair of binoculars and stay the bleep away, or just buy a postcard. And don’t lock yerself up on a love boat with a bunch of butt rubbing bird freaks.
I just about busted a gut at that one.
Inhaling the dust from the bird feces is most definitely unhealthy, but how could it give one the hantavirus?