Posted on 05/09/2026 5:57:56 AM PDT by DFG
Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life.
The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. They first landed in Argentina on Nov. 27, and traveling through Chile, Uruguay and then back to Argentina in late March, where they went on a fateful birdwatching adventure.
The couple — from Haulerwijk, a small village of 3,000 people in the Netherlands — were identified in obituaries published in their monthly village magazine.
They co-authored a study on pink-footed geese in the Dutch ornithological magazine Het Vogeljaar in 1984 and went on adventures across the world, including an “unforgettable” private 12-day birdwatching and wildlife tour in Sri Lanka in 2013 — where the couple raved about spotting a rare Serendib Scops Owl.
When the Schilperoords returned to Argentina on March 27, they visited a landfill four miles outside the city of Ushuaia.
The spot, overrun with trash, is avoided like the plague by its residents, but serves as a pilgrimage point for birdwatchers from all over the world in search of a rare creature — the white-throated caracara, nicknamed Darwin’s caracara after famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, the first to collect it.
The Ushuaia landfill is where Argentinian authorities suspect the Dutch couple inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats, which carry the feared Andes strain of the hantavirus — the only form known to transmit from human to human.
“It is common for birdwatchers to visit landfills because there are many birds there,” Gastón Bretti, a photographer and local guide told Ansa Latina.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Exactly. Granted, they are a few months late. I expected this back in December or January, enough time to ramp it up.
Like I said during the COVID con, the Vader variant will kill everybody. I remember when there are announcing a new variant every week drumming up the fear like cowboys cracking whips to keep the herd panicked. It’s amazing how people are hyping us up only 4 years after getting scammed with the same scheme.
Its THE BIRDS!
Was he working on the bird flu?
The North American variant of Hantavirus isn’t transmissible human to human. So there was no reason for Hackman’s wife dying of Hantavirus to have been a big issue. Just avoid rodent droppings in the SW US.
The cruise ship passengers have the Andes Hantavirus which can be caught from an infected person. And with a mortality rate as high as 50% that tends to get people excited. There’s the difference.
That’s a fact. They never miss a chance to stoke hysteria.
Silly, that’s what Gain of Function is for! /S
Walmart is adding many more pick up lanes as the second lockdown looms.
Did anyone else notice the turn of the phrase in this bit of the article?
“The spot, overrun with trash, is avoided LIKE THE PLAGUE by its residents.”
This is not making a mountain out of a mole hill.
It is following a pattern.
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