Comment on How worried should we be about hantavirus right now?
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
It’s fucked up but you’re seeing so much about it online and hearing so much about it because sensationalized fear translates to money and attention for those seeking such things.
That’s not to say that this virus isn’t dangerous and devastating to those affected, infected, and exposed to it. We definitely shouldn’t be down playing that. It’s just that this virus has no chance of causing a major disruption of our lives on a wide-spread global scale.
a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
This is exactly the sort of reasoning I used to downplay COVID though
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Brutal honestly here,
So because of your own willfully ignorance and lacking education on the topic. You are now over correcting in the other direction via fear and panic because you fucked up the first time. Due to the same external forces that you allowed dictate your actions the first time. Aka bad faith journalism and misinformation.
The actual solution to your problem is to go actually learn about the topic so you can make an informed opinion and action plan with our relying on random internet strangers to tell you how to think. And by learn, that doesn’t mean go watch some shitty 5 min video on YouTube or ask some random fucking idiot on reddit or Lemmy. Go actually educate yourself. Proper long form content from licensed doctors and nurses or books. Educating your self will help with the anxiety, fear, etc. And it prevents the fear mongering from bad faith news sources to dictate your thoughts and opinions.
a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Brutal honesty here: you are taking this Lemmy thread too seriously
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
That sounds like an unfortunate lack of perspective and information on your part, to me. While that may sound rude, it’s actually not a bad thing, so long as it’s not due to being willfully ignorant.
Kind of taking the “Explain like I’m five” approach to comparing hantavirus and COVID: It’s like being afraid of catching rabies from sparrows because you’re aware that bats can carry rabies. After all, they’re both flying creatures that can live in close proximity to people.
At the end of the day, COVID-19 was a novel pathogen, not well-understood in the early days, and something of a perfect storm of conditions and characteristics that allowed it to blow up in to a global pandemic. This strain of hantavirus is the sparrow to the covid bat. Superficial similarities (they’re both viral diseases), but very different different things in all the ways that count.
a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Im not saying that hantavirus is the next COVID. I just was saying that I wouldnt dismiss it solely because Im worried about the media hyping things up, because that can apply to anything