Loading summary
Michaels Announcer
Graduation season is around the corner, and Michaels has everything you need, whether you're throwing the party of the year or just celebrating your grad's achievement. Start with a class of 26 banner. Then add party supplies and frame photos that'll have everyone remembering when. Then bring the wow factor with balloons. Order ahead for delivery or in store pickup. Shop now to create a celebration as special as they are.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
Hi, it's Paige from Giggly Squad, and this episode is sponsored by Experian Boost Summer. Glow up. Check credit. Glow up. Even better, boost your credit scores instantly by getting credit for bills you're already paying. Your phone, utilities, rent, and insurance. I wish dating kind of worked like that. Connect your bank account, add those on time payments to your Experian credit file, and your FICO score updates right away. You could instantly raise your FICO score by an average of 14 points with Experian Boost. Download the Experian app for free today. Results will vary. Users who received a Boost improved their FICO score 8 from Experian by an average of 14 points. See appstore or experian.com for details.
Experian Boost Voice
Results will vary. Not all payments are boost eligible. Users who received a boost improved their FICO score rate from Experian by an average of 14 points. Some may not see improved scores or approval odds. Not all lenders use Experian credit files, and not all lenders use scores impacted by experian boost. See experian.com for details.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Well, that's cool.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
So what's the problem?
Car Seller / Monday.com User
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
Maybe there's no catch.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
Wow. You need to relax.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
I think it's laminate.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
Laurel Bristow
Car selling without a Catch Sell your car today on Carvana.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Pick up.
Laurel Bristow
These may apply.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Hey, party people. Sam here with a reminder to rate and review Curiosity weekly on your favorite podcast app. We've been reading some of the reviews and honestly, we're loving the feedback. Like this one from LOL Listener. Love the name they said. Perfect blend of expertise, obvious preparation and understandability. Thank you. And please keep letting your voice be heard. It's really, really helpful in creating the show. And it gets more people Learning about science. Basically a win win onto the show. If you've been scrolling through the news lately, you might have heard whispers of a Honda virus outbreak and felt your anxiety spike. But before you start boarding up the windows, we got you. You're listening to Curiosity Weekly, and we're swapping the stress for clarity and the fear for fact. We've got a great conversation lined up to help you understand what's actually going on so you can feel informed. I'll talk with Laurel Bristow, an infectious disease researcher, about what this phenomenon is really about, why it's capturing everyone's attention, and how to keep your cool when the headlines get all too familiar. Before that, I'll look into a study that shows how consuming caffeine at nighttime is linked to reduced self control, AKA why espresso martinis make me crazy. And later, we'll check out some recent research attempts attempting to replace computer chips with neurons. This is Curiosity Weekly, and I'm your host, Dr. Samantha Amin. Let's get into it. Lovers of espresso martinis, be warned. Late night caffeine consumption increases impulsive behavior, particularly in women. At least if we're anything like fruit flies. Caffeine is the most consumed psychoactive substance on the planet. So some researchers wanted to get a better understanding of what different mechanisms might be going on in the brain when we have caffeine at night compared to what's going on when we have it during the day. To test this out, researchers from the University of Texas at El Paso worked with fruit flies. Now, fun fact, fruit flies share a lot of genetic makeup with humans, and the basic wiring of their brains works in surprisingly similar ways. So they're great test subjects for a study like this. They gave fruit flies caffeine overnight or during the day, either with or without sleep disruption. You might be asking, how do you know if a fruit fly is acting impulsive? Well, fruit flies don't like it when air blows against their direction of flight. The team found that flies who consumed caffeine during the nighttime were more likely to fly in those dreaded conditions with the air puff. Not only that, they flew around faster, signaling that they had less inhibitions about doing so. The more caffeine they were given, the more likely they were to lift off in the daytime, though the caffeinated flies were far less likely to fly in those adverse conditions. Sleep deprivation on its own didn't make the flies more impulsive either. So it seems like the effects are specific to caffeine at night, not just being tired. They also found that female fruit flies displayed much higher levels of this impulsive behavior than the males. This gives us a little more to look into for humans, where we already know that women are more likely to experience anxiety and nervousness from caffeine, whereas men more often report the positive effect. This study doesn't just relate to people like me who enjoy a late night coffee now and then. Think of the amount of people working night shifts that rely on caffeine to keep themselves awake. Often they're working critical jobs like healthcare or emergency services or piloting transatlantic flights. Understanding how caffeine can impact our brains differently depending on the time of day can help us make better decisions. Okay, class, let's begin.
Michaels Announcer
Love your boots.
Laurel Bristow
I just sold a pair like that on ebay.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
Oh, really?
Michaels Announcer
I actually, yeah, it took like two seconds to list and they sold almost immediately.
Laurel Bristow
I've been selling everything lately. Some chunky boots, a faux fur coat I never wore, and a vintage chair that was more of an expensive clothing rack. You know, I actually bought these on ebay. Wait, are you.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Kitty Sell stuff from Brooklyn.
Laurel Bristow
Okay, quiet please.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Find what you love, sell what you don't.
Michaels Announcer
Ebay Things People Love Graduation season is around the corner, and Michaels has everything you need. Whether you're throwing the party of the year or just celebrating your grad's achievement. Start with a class of 26 banner. Then add party supplies and frame photos that'll have everyone remembering when. Then bring the wow factor with balloons. Order ahead for delivery or in store pickup shop. Now to create a celebration as special
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
as they are, we all prefer things a certain way. Like groceries. If you want groceries just how you like them, you gotta try Instacart. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences upfront, helping guide their choices. Because when it comes to groceries, the details matter. Instacart get groceries just how you like.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
Monday.com AI agents took over my work, and I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind. Now I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com.
Dr. Samantha Amin
The Hantavirus cruise ship outbreak has been the topic of all my group chats lately, and I know not. Again, here at Curiosity, we like to stay informed so we can avoid the panic. But that can be tough when it's an evolving situation with things moving fast. So to break it down without stirring up a fuss is our friendly neighborhood public health pro, Laurel Bristow, formerly known as King Gutter Baby. She's the executive producer and host of Health Wanted, a weekly radio show and podcast produced in collaboration with Emory Rollins and WABE Atlanta and NPR affiliate station. Welcome to the show.
Laurel Bristow
Laurel hi, thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Can you give us a rundown of the cluster of infections from the cruise ship so far and where we're sitting at now?
Laurel Bristow
The working theory is that vacationers who started off a trip in Argentina were exposed to an infected rodent, or rather who were exposed or rather were exposed to potentially the droppings or urine or saliva of an infected rodent on land somewhere between Argentina and Chile. Got onto an exploration Cruise with about 150 other passengers. One person became ill. And it looks like there is now a chain of person to person transmission happening amongst people who were on this cruise ship. Currently we're up to 11 cases. Eight have been laboratory confirmed and there have not been any cases in anybody outside of the cruise ship.
Dr. Samantha Amin
I understand there was a bit of a lag between when the first passenger passed and then when everything else kind of happened and headlines started showing up. What was the reason for that lag? Is it concerning to you?
Laurel Bristow
No, it's not concerning. So hantavirus has an incubation period, which means someone the time between someone being infected and someone showing symptoms can range anywhere from one to eight weeks. You know, those are kind of the outliers on the outside end of the spectrum. The median incubation time is 18 days. So between getting infected and showing symptoms for most people, for half of cases will happen at 18 days. So the first case showed symptoms on April 6, passed away on April 11, and then the second case began showing symptoms around April 24. So it seems that, you know, this index case, potentially he maybe he and his wife, but it seems like he is the one that started the potential person to person transmission. So everybody after that is going to have an incubation period that goes on longer. And so it's not unexpected that we've seen a delay in cases and we might even see some more cases because while a cohort of people who were on the ship have been off of the ship for 21 days, so they are, you know, potentially have more time to develop symptoms. But we would have expected at least half of them to develop symptoms by now if they are infected, which is kind of a good sign. So we just have to really wait and see if more cases happen. And the thing that will be really important to pay attention to is if there are any cases in people who were not directly on the ship.
Dr. Samantha Amin
So far that has not been the case.
Laurel Bristow
So far that has not been the case.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Yeah, but that's a really long incubation period. And are people contagious during that period without showing symptoms?
Laurel Bristow
Well, we know for sure that people are contagious early on when they start to show symptoms. What we don't know is about pre symptomatic or asymptomatic. Symptomatic spread. Like I said, hantavirus, particularly the Andes version of hantavirus, which is the kind that can be transmitted person to person, has had very few cases over the last, you know, 30 years. And so we haven't had an opportunity to study it very well. And because it has a long incubation period, it means it's slow growing, which means it's really hard to grow into in the lab to study, you need high containment. It takes a really long time to grow. It's actually been really hard to find an animal model that will work for research if it's something that infects rodents and rodents don't get sick by it. Lab rats are not going to work to be infected with hantavirus to learn more about the virus. So we're waiting to see if we can get more information about if there's asymptomatic or pre symptomatic spread. If there is, I don't think that it plays a huge role in the transmission of this virus because I think there would just be more cases both historically and in this particular instance of an outbreak.
Dr. Samantha Amin
The Andy strain of the, of the virus is, is what is circulating now. How close does, I guess how close do you have to be for a transmission to occur? Because there is some human to human transmission happening. But like how infectious is it?
Laurel Bristow
Yeah, I mean it's definitely, we know that it's definitely not very infectious. It's not very easily spread between people. The transmission dynamics are the big question right now. Right. Because we know that there's transmission that happens between close contacts between people with prolonged contact. And the convers question now is, is it aerosolized? Is can it be spread in droplets that are very small that can be picked up in the air, or does it have to be really close like the flu is? The thing that I want to reiterate and stress to people is just because something could be transmitted via aerosolized particles, that does not mean that it's automatically very transmissible. Okay. So it's not going to be something like measles that can hang out in the environment for hours at a time and infect people who come in later. What we're seeing is this boat is a really good vector for transmission because it is an exploration boat that goes into really cold temperatures. So it's made to keep air in and keep air warm. So there's a potential for highly recirculated air, for rooms that have very poor ventilation to reduce heat loss, that sort of thing. So we're going to learn more as this outbreak goes on. But I really, I want to stress very much that even if there is airborne transmission of this virus, that does not mean that this virus is as transmissible as something like Covid or measles.
Dr. Samantha Amin
So we, we're learning about the. How infectious it is. What do we know about how deadly it is?
Laurel Bristow
So that's also a really interesting question. Historically, the case fatality rate, meaning the percentage of people who are infected who then go on to die, has been very high. It's been about 40%. But the thing that we are learning, especially from this outbreak, is that there are cases in people who show no symptoms, but they test positive for the virus. That's asymptomatic cases, which again, is different than asymptom spread. It just means that some people's immune systems might come into contact with this virus and be able to clear it without having any, you know, medical complications from it. And if that's true, it may be that there are more cases happening than we're aware of because people's body just clears it. And when that happens, if there are undetectable cases, that would bring your case fatality rate down because there'd be more people overall who have it. So right now, from cases that get reported, people who get, you know, sick enough to seek medical attention, that does tend to have a very high case fatality rate. But overall, that's another thing that we just need more information on.
Dr. Samantha Amin
So much of what you've been saying is very reminiscent of COVID How do you communicate, like, take this seriously. Don't panic, like, especially when trust is so eroded.
Laurel Bristow
I know. So it's really our job to explain to people two things can be similar in that they're both viruses, but that does not mean that they are the same. They behave very differently, they pose different risks. I know everyone's very concerned with the quarantining aspect that's going on. There's kind of a lack of consistency in who is being quarantined, Depending within the country that you're in, between countries, things like that. And that is an area that I think we could be improving upon. But I still don't think that our deficiencies in the way we approach quarantine is going to cause this particular virus to spread widely amongst the population.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Can we talk more about some of that isolating? Because there are a lot of frustrated people when it comes to that. And I know that you have some experience with at home monitoring from your experience working with Ebola. So what can you tell us about how that works?
Laurel Bristow
Yeah, so there are different tiers when it comes to people's level of risk. Right. People who were on the cruise ship have a much higher level of risk because they had many days and many people who were sick on that ship that they could have come into contact with, that they could have interacted with. So that increases the chances that they could be infected currently and in the incubation period and unaware of it. People who came into contact with people who, you know, were on the cruise ship but not showing any symptoms, that's a different level of risk. And so you kind of stratify how much focus you're going to have or how restrictive you're going to be with people based on their risk. Currently within the United States, I believe we're monitoring 18 people within a containment center with a. Which is a center that is equipped to handle highly pathogenic viruses and infections so that we can watch them to see if they develop symptoms. We are also monitoring another 40 people who either got off the boat before there were more cases who were just on that boat for the one case, or people who were potentially on flights with people who were actively sick. So those people are being monitored. I don't believe that they are being put into, you know, a containment facility, but they might be quarantining at home, having daily check ins. Unfortunately, it also varies by state what people are doing. So there is no uniform response across the board, which I think we really are missing the mark there. And we should have a uniform response. So there's an expectation of what, what will happen to people who are potentially exposed. But I do think that thankfully, because this virus is not so transmissible, because we have a good idea of who contacts are and what their risk level is, it's much easier to keep an eye on them and then to potentially kind of up what the restrictions need to be on people if they do not want to be active participants in this surveillance.
Dr. Samantha Amin
What are the risk factors here for global spread and how worried are experts?
Laurel Bristow
People generally, myself included, are really not worried at all. The only thing that would make me really concerned about the potential for more spread is if we saw cases in people who were not on the cruise ship because those would be secondary transmissions that happened, you know, potentially from a lower degree of contact, a lower degree of interaction, or from people who, you know, kind of had passing interactions. So that would be something that I would really want to pay attention to. And even then it would really matter who the person was and what their degree of interaction was. You know, if we see a case in someone who worked in a hospital where one of these people came into who was symptomatic, that's less of a concern for me than if we see a case in someone who was, you know, sitting 16 rows back on the airplane that, that the second case was on for maybe an hour during boarding.
Dr. Samantha Amin
There's something really different this time around compared to, let's say, the COVID pandemic, one of them being AI. We saw this fake WHO contact tracing diagram, for example, that was completely made up. Do you have any advice for how folks can spot things like that or navigate this landscape?
Laurel Bristow
Yeah, the fake WHO chart was really unfortunate because I do think people who are well intentioned get caught up in wanting to share, share good information. And that was something that should have been fact checked a little bit more before it got shared and simply didn't. And I think it's, you know, bad information and misinformation is difficult for all of us. And so it's important that people, I saw a lot of people who posted it, you know, take it down, apologize, which is really the important way to address that kind of stuff. But if you're afraid of AI, I think it's important to, you know, check for sources like so, so much news attention is happening on this. So many people are interested in this. If you see something that's really upsetting or, you know, seems kind of surprising, check to see if somebody else is reporting on it as well. That, that that report is not just referencing the report you read. You know, there need to be independent things, things that say stuff like, you know, the Minister of Health for Spain said this or the head of the who, you know, attribute these claims to someone who is in a position to be making them. I think is really important. And to read articles, you know, headlines are meant to grab attention. And I've seen a lot of instances where headlines have not accurately conveyed what actually is in the body of the article. So take the time to, to read the stuff that you are seeing before you repost it.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Especially how do we sustain our energy after the massive womp womp that was Covid, you know, how do we still care about public health when it was we have such negative experiences with it?
Laurel Bristow
I know that's, I mean, that's a question for the ages, really, because people really, you know, the reaction to this, your friends are not alone. A lot of people saying like, I can't do another pandemic. I can't go through this again. And thankfully right now you're not going to have to with hantavirus. But, you know, it's not unreasonable that there could be something in the future that becomes very serious. And I am concerned. So I think, think it's a matter of knowing where to spend your energy and where not to. You know, if the, the majority of public health people are trying to explain to you what the actual level of risk is and that there is nuance to, to listen to them. You know, if people are give telling you things that don't feel like you're getting more information but feel like you are having an emotional reaction, those are probably not people who are reporting things or trying to communicate things as best as what you need, and you can maybe tune them out. The point of communicating about outbreaks like this is to give people information rather than to elicit an emotional response.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Can you share for folks how you got into public health way before then?
Laurel Bristow
Oh, yeah. My journey into public health, you know, like any good millennial, I wanted to be a marine biologist. And so I did decided I wanted to do study abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, because that is where you can get on a boat and go see great white sharks that jump out of the water like Discovery Channel, which I did do, and it was awesome. But while I was there, I saw the impact that HIV had on the country and I got really interested in it, interested in how diseases can affect some countries and not others, how it can affect some populations and not others. And so that really changed my view and made me get particularly interested in infectious disease and then interested in public health as a result, because I'm very interested in the, you know, political and societal factors that influence the spread of disease and how we respond to that.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Laurel, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing so much helpful information with our listeners.
Laurel Bristow
Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Samantha Amin
That's Laurel Bristow, infectious disease researcher and host of Health Wanted from Emory's Rollins School of Public Health and WABE Atlanta and NPR affiliate station. Follow her to learn more at Laurel Risto with A W Online.
Michaels Announcer
Graduation season is around the corner and Michaels has everything you need. Whether you're throwing the party of the year or just celebrating your grad's achievement. Start with a Class of 26 banner, then add party supplies and frame photos that'll have have everyone remembering when. Then bring the wow factor with balloons. Order ahead for delivery or in store pickup. Shop now to create a celebration as special as they are.
Paige from Giggly Squad / Liv Perez
Hi, I'm Liv Perez from the let's Get Dressed podcast and this episode is presented to you by Depop. If you've been meaning to clean out your closet, but it feels so overwhelming, my best piece of advice for you as a fashion expert is to start with one thing. Depop depop makes it so simple to give your pieces a new home. Just snap a photo and their AI powered listings fill in all the details for you. And here's the best part. Make money easily with no selling fees on Depop, no seller fees means that you earn exactly what is yours. Another perk. There is someone out there who's going to love that piece the way that you did, and who doesn't love making room for something new too. Download the Depop app and list your first item today.
Laurel Bristow
Marketers, you know that feeling. When your creative clicks, when that social
Dr. Samantha Amin
post sends engagement through the roof, when
Laurel Bristow
your outside of the box campaign hits ROI positive. When a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers. It's utter marketing bliss. Contentful Helps you create tailored omnichannel experiences without working overtime.
Dr. Samantha Amin
No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels@contentful.com this is the Chase
Car Seller / Monday.com User
Sapphire Lounge in Boston. Logan, you got clam chowder in New York, dirty martini, over 1300 airport lounges and one card that gets you in Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding. Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval
Dr. Samantha Amin
Imagine a computer that doesn't run on silicon chips, but on living human brain cells. Sounds wild, right? Well, there are murmurs of it happening and it's reasonable to wonder why we'd pursue this at all instead of simply continuing with super fast silicon. And that's a fair question. First, let's manage expectations. This isn't about building a biological laptop anytime soon or replacing your smartphone with a blob of brain cells. Though I would love that, that's still not possible. But the idea of brain based computers does have some advantages, especially when it comes to energy. And lately, especially where there are so many concerns about new tech and energy consumption. AI data centers are becoming A bottleneck that's draining local power grids. So what if we could have all that computer power but with less energy being consumed? Well, our brains are incredibly efficient. Something that would take 20 watts of energy, which is just less than a dim light bulb, would take a silicon chip a million times more energy to compute. True biological computing would be nothing compared to the massive energy hog that modern data centers are. Although the cost of maintaining living brain tissue, the sterile labs, the nutrients, temperature control, that's currently a lot higher than running silicon servers. The energy savings are real. But the economic and logistical hurdles of keeping billions of neurons alive would be the new bottleneck. But that isn't stopping people from trying. There's an Australian startup called Cortical Labs in Melbourne that's testing a sealed system that grows about 200,000 lab made neurons on a grid of electrodes. And momentum is coming from major research institutions too. At Indiana University, scientists have developed brainoware. It's a system that uses human brain organoids to distinguish between different sound patterns. Johns Hopkins University is building a foundational roadmap for scaling these systems from tiny clusters into functional computing units. Because that's the real hurdle here. Despite some of the claims in this space, the reality is that we're far from being able to culture enough organoids economically or get them to come close to computing meaningfully. We're decades away from matching the capacity of even a mouse. Brain researcher Thomas Hartung from Johns Hopkins has been growing brain organoids from reprogrammed human skin cells since 2012. Now, he said that scaling this up to a functional computer is a, quote, enormous effort that faces massive engineering and ethical hurdles. So don't expect brain cells to replace your cloud server anytime soon. For Warner Bros. Discovery, Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey.
Laurel Bristow
Our producer is Chiara Noni.
Dr. Samantha Amin
Our audio engineer is Nick Kharisimi. And head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Yamin. Thanks for listening.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
What if a marginal gain unlocked greater performance? What if an insight in data could change everything? At Aramco, our focus on detail helps us deliver reliable energy to millions across the world. Because margins aren't marginal. They're where we can truly push the limits of what's possible. Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company. Learn more@aramco.com this is Kat and Nat
Kat and Nat
from Kat and Nat Unfiltered and this episode is sponsored by Michaels. Your destination for all things 2026 graduation. If you've got a graduation coming up, the party shop at Michael's is your new best friend. It's your one stop shop for everything. Graduation balloons, party decor, tableware, DIY gifting and more. Literally everything you need. All starting at just 1.99. We're all about making life easier and Michaels has made it to super simple with ready made balloon bundles, 2026 numbers and even free helium inflation on select styles. Plus you can shop same day delivery or buy online and pick up in store Michaels everything. To celebrate anything visit Michaels in store or shop online now.
Car Seller / Monday.com User
Security program on spreadsheets, New regulations piling up and audit dread it's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it compliance. Get IT join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to V A N T A dot com Calm.
Experian Boost Voice
You stopped waiting for permission and started building yourself your dreams. Your credit Experian Boost could turn your on time payments into instant FICO score gains. Every bill you paid could become proof of your power. Self made, absolutely self funded. Experian could help you get there. Download the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all payments are Boost eligible. Some may not see improved scores or approval odds. Not all lenders use credit information impacted by experian boost. See experian.com for details. Experian.
This episode of Curiosity Weekly tackles the recent Hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, aiming to replace fear with facts. Host Dr. Samantha Yammine welcomes infectious disease expert Laurel Bristow for a grounded, thorough discussion on what’s actually happening, why this outbreak is making headlines, and how to distinguish real risk from media-driven anxiety. The episode also briefly touches on a new study about caffeine and impulse control, as well as a segment on brain-like computers, but the central topic is the Hantavirus situation.
Timestamp: 07:04
“Currently we’re up to 11 cases. Eight have been laboratory confirmed and there have not been any cases in anybody outside of the cruise ship.” (Laurel, 07:47)
Timestamp: 08:29
“...the time between someone being infected and someone showing symptoms can range anywhere from one to eight weeks... The median incubation time is 18 days.” (Laurel, 08:41)
Timestamp: 10:06
“Because it has a long incubation period, it means it’s slow growing, which means it’s really hard to grow in the lab to study... it’s actually been really hard to find an animal model that will work for research.” (Laurel, 10:14)
“We know that it’s definitely not very infectious. Transmission happens between close contacts, between people with prolonged contact.” (Laurel, 11:31)
“Even if there is airborne transmission...that does not mean that this virus is as transmissible as something like Covid or measles.” (Laurel, 12:45)
Timestamp: 12:51
“There are cases in people who show no symptoms, but they test positive for the virus. That’s asymptomatic cases...” (Laurel, 12:51)
Timestamp: 13:49
“I still don’t think that our deficiencies in the way we approach quarantine is going to cause this particular virus to spread widely amongst the population.” (Laurel, 13:59)
Timestamp: 14:56
“Unfortunately, it also varies by state what people are doing. So there is no uniform response across the board, which I think we really are missing the mark there.” (Laurel, 15:38)
Timestamp: 16:47
“People generally, myself included, are really not worried at all. The only thing that would make me really concerned...is if we saw cases in people who were not on the cruise ship.” (Laurel, 16:52)
Timestamp: 17:46
“If you see something that’s really upsetting or, you know, seems kind of surprising, check to see if somebody else is reporting on it as well.” (Laurel, 18:05)
Timestamp: 19:23
“The point of communicating about outbreaks like this is to give people information rather than to elicit an emotional response.” (Laurel, 19:35)
Timestamp: 20:41
“People generally, myself included, are really not worried at all.” (Laurel, 16:52)
“Thankfully right now you’re not going to have to with hantavirus.” (Laurel, 19:35)
“Check for sources... Headline are meant to grab attention... take the time to read the stuff that you are seeing before you repost it.” (Laurel, 18:05)
“So much of what you’ve been saying is very reminiscent of COVID.” (Sam, 13:49) “Two things can be similar in that they’re both viruses, but that does not mean that they are the same.” (Laurel, 13:59)
| Segment | Time | |-----------------------------------------------|----------| | Intro to Hantavirus segment | 07:04 | | Outbreak rundown and details | 07:40 | | Incubation period and reporting delays | 08:29 | | Infectiousness and transmission explained | 10:06 | | Asymptomatic cases and fatality debates | 12:51 | | Messaging, trust, comparing to COVID | 13:49 | | Containment & monitoring procedures | 14:56 | | Risk of global spread | 16:47 | | The problem of AI misinformation | 17:46 | | Audience burnout and public health | 19:23 | | Laurel’s public health journey | 20:41 |
Recommended Action:
If you want reliable public health updates, tune into reputable sources and look for calm, expert voices like those featured here. Don’t let sensational headlines drive your decisions — and if you see something shocking or new, double-check its authenticity before passing it along.