BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more 50 people Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents.
The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger.”
People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on Thursday after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer said, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.
Larry Madowo reports on CNN that fire has been started on a local Ebola containment facility in Congo. He says some locals were refused the body of a family member who died in the hospital. Most of them according to reports believe Ebola is a foreign disease brought to their… https://t.co/HYxbcuXIYQpic.twitter.com/A9Xk12l5Ii
The arson attack in Rwampara reflects the challenges of health workers trying to curb a rare Ebola virus by using stringent measures that might clash with local customs, such as burial rites. The disease has been spreading for weeks in a region lacking in adequate health facilities and where many people are on the move to escape armed conflicts.
In the 1998 ‘The X Files: Fight The Future‘, a deadly HANTAVIRUS outbreak is used as a cover to hide the existence of extraterrestrial organisms and evidence of alien colonization…
There’s a lot of these posts regarding the hantavirus as this situation develops now, with people around the world becoming nervous because of comparisons to the beginning of COVID-19. Endless stories are circulating about more than 40 people being released from the cruise ship plagued with the deadly Andes version of the hantavirus, and anxiety online is ramping big time (for clicks many times of course)…
Let’s first say this… the X-Files hantavirus connection is weird. …the Cigarette Smoking Man reveals that a Texas hantavirus outbreak was supposedly a cover for human alien hybrid programs designed to survive an impending colonization event. A plague to end all plagues… a reset of society..
There is little doubt that scenes like this would go viral again..
But let’s think back for a moment. Hantavirus was already in the news back in 1998 because deaths connected to the virus were occurring that year as well. For example, the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 12th, 1998 discussed Pennsylvania’s first hantavirus death that year.
It was a fearful time as scientists were still trying to understand the disease, and coupled with the popularity of The Stand, viruses were heavily on people’s minds.
For those who may not have been around back then, or are too young to remember, hantavirus is not something new on this planet. Back in the 1990s it was widely discussed and deeply feared. This was before social media and before the internet connected everyone instantly the way it does now, but people were absolutely talking about it.
As a matter of fact, by May 29th, 1994, scientists working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were already trying to unlock the secrets of the disease after outbreaks killed dozens of people, including victims in Nevada.
Over the years there have been additional scattered cases and isolated fears tied to hantavirus outbreaks, but this newest “plague ship” situation feels more unsettling to many people because it involves the Andes strain… and because the world itself is weary from pandemics.
That’s probably the real story here.
People are exhausted, hyperaware, and traumatized by what happened during COVID.
So now when a cruise ship quarantine appears in headlines alongside words like “deadly virus,” “human transmission,” and “Andes strain,” social media instantly transforms into a mixture of fear, nostalgia, conspiracy theories, old X-Files clips, and memories of a very different era when mysterious viruses already felt terrifying enough.
You know we’re inundated with so much information now that it’s tough to discern what really matters, but this cruise ship hantavirus problem has been lurking in the background for weeks and now it suddenly feels like it has gone from an Atlantic Ocean problem to a global problem.
When opening The Drudge Report this morning and seeing a headline that a rat virus is threatening the entire globe, on one hand it feels overdone and dramatic, but on the other hand it also feels a little bit like deja vu to the early days of COVID.
And don’t forget… we have a World Cup coming here this summer and it’s also the 250th birthday of America, so in the coined phrases of the past there are some pretty major “super spreader” events sitting on the horizon.
Here’s what we know…
There are patients from that cruise ship who have hantavirus, specifically the Andes strain, which reportedly spreads from person to person. Experts at this point say there is not a global threat and that the spread is not necessarily fast and furious like COVID, but viruses mutate and that’s part of the fear here.
Additionally, what at first felt like a quarantined and isolated boat with hantavirus has now become something different. We’ve heard that more than 20 people have reportedly left that boat over the last month and are now on land in different places. One person in Europe is reportedly sick and two people in Georgia are quarantined with no symptoms.
Listen… we’re not doctors and we’re not pretending to be experts. Experts will do what experts do, contact tracing will happen, and countries need to get a grip on something like this before it spreads. Let’s hope and pray it doesn’t spread because “Captain Trips” doesn’t exist… until it does.
The people on this boat are already going through a living hell, but if the planet ever went through that same living hell… we would truly be staring into the abyss.
The hantavirus outbreak has spread to Europe after a passenger who had already left the MV Hondius cruise ship tested positive once back home, authorities announced in an update Wednesday.
Swiss authorities said the man returned home last month following a trip to South America with his wife before testing positive for the virus, which can lie dormant for up to eight weeks.
He went to a Zurich hospital for testing after the cruise operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, emailed recent passengers about the spreading virus that has killed three people and sickened at least five, the World Health Organization said.
The WHO is saying that they have heard from people on the now cursed hantavirus cruise.. they are still saying that a global threat level is low..
pic.twitter.com/gTbK0TIKu1 Hantavirus lo último: La Organización Mundial de la Salud de la ONU (OMS) dice que no se puede descartar la transmisión de persona a persona a bordo de un crucero en el Océano Atlántico, aunque es rara. Siete de 147 pasajeros y tripulantes han caído…
A British Ship Doctor is ‘Among the Sick Patients on the MV Hondius’ After Hantavirus Outbreak Now a passenger on board the cruise ship has claimed that one of the sick crew members is the ship’s doctor…
A suspected hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean has killed three people and sickened at least three others, the World Health Organization said Sunday.
In a statement to The Associated Press, the WHO said an investigation was underway but that at least one case of hantavirus had been confirmed. Hantavirus, found throughout the world, is spread by contact with urine or feces of infected rodents, most often rats or mice.
WHO didn’t identify the vessel, but South African media reports said the outbreak happened on the MV Hondius cruise ship while it was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa.
The MarineTraffic global shipping website identified the vessel as a Dutch-flagged passenger cruise ship. It located it as docked in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on Sunday night.
South African media, quoting South African health department spokesperson Foster Mohale, said the first victim, an elderly man, died on the ship. His wife later died in a South African hospital, Mohale said.
To each their own, cruises are a perfectly valid fair means of vacation. But a part of this thought during and after covid we would kind of sort of learn our lesson when it comes to cruise ships and how they’re just this petri dish floating in an ocean with thousands of people on board sneezing and wheezing coughing and now in this case being infected by the hantavirus ..
For those in tick-prone areas of the United States, people are reporting that something big has changed … more ticks than normal. Reports of ‘boxes of ticks’ being dropped off on farms.. Dogs and people covered from knees down with dozens just from a quick walk in grass..
Numbers now prove that something may be very different this year..
Tick bites are sending Americans to the emergency room at the highest rate in nearly a decade, according to new CDC data.
During the second week of April, 71 out of every 100,000 emergency room visits were for tick bites — more than double the usual average of about 30 per 100,000, said the agency, which said this year’s numbers match data from 2017.
Oh … and on those boxes of tickets?
Well Pfizer is coming out with a LYME DISEASE vaccine and farmers are now finding BOXES OF TICKS ON THEIR LAND😞😞 pic.twitter.com/k71gVebXrK
A once-rare allergy that can cause severe reactions hours after eating red meat is dramatically rising across the United States, according to preliminary findings by researchers at VCU Health and Virginia Commonwealth University.
The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), is typically linked to bites from the lone star tick and is increasingly recognized as a growing health concern in many regions of the country. Different types of ticks cause the syndrome in other parts of the world.
The findings, presented last year at the American College of Gastroenterology’s 2025 annual scientific meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, show a 100-fold increase in positive test results for alpha-gal antibodies between 2013 and 2024. While these results are preliminary, the study represents one of the largest real-world analyses of AGS to date.
TMZ was the first to report this really tragic news yesterday.
Roger Sweet — the toy designer who created the He-Man character for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in the 1980s — is suffering from dementia, and according to his wife, he’s unable to afford the necessary care.
Marlene Sweet, who has been married to Roger for nearly 40 years, launched a GoFundMe to help with the $10,200-a-month bill for Roger’s memory care facility. According to reports, he took a pretty bad fall at the age of 91, and dementia was already complicating the situation.
Anyone who has been connected to this disease or has seen it in their own family knows the pain, the tribulation, and the long wind of dementia blowing through the minds of people with Alzheimer’s. It’s very unfortunate. Very sad. And in this case, it feels even sadder because of the amount of joy his creation of He-Man brought to a few generations of people.
My husband, Roger Sweet, is the creator of HE-MAN and MASTERS of the UNIVERSE. He was a toy designer at Mattel for over 15 years. Roger designed and named the original He-Man character, and worked for years with other designers to create all the other characters and playsets that enthralled kids for so many years – and still do today!
Over the years Roger was invited to and attended multiple COMICON conventions. He always loved talking about HE-MAN and MASTERS with all the fans! I was able to accompany him to several, and it was fun to see him interacting with HE-MAN fans.
We have been married for nearly 40 years. When we got married, the designers in the HE-MAN group “built” us a plaster wedding cake, with “HE-MAN TAKES MARLENE FOR HIS BRIDE” written on the side, and HE-MAN dressed for a wedding (with his bride holding all the weapons) for the cake topper! Very clever guys!!!
Roger is now nearly 91 years old and sadly has dementia. His illness has continued to progress, and I have done all I can to take care of his needs at home. He recently went for a walk and returned much later than usual and very tired. I discovered terrible bruising on his side and much disorientation, and when asked what happened he did not recall falling and getting this injury. The doctor sent him to the ER, and after 4 hours of tests they discovered he had two brain bleeds along with the massive bruising on his side. He was admitted to the ICU where he stayed for 3 days, then 4 more days in the main hospital, sleeping most of the time and continuing to be very disoriented, along with refusing to stay put and trying to go walking about. The doctors consider him a high risk for falls and say he must use a walker, considering the dementia and brain bleeds, but he says he does not need it and continues to walk around in his confused state.
They decided he must live in a Memory care facility, where he can be monitored and safe. He is now at our chosen care facility and is settling in. He has only been there a few days and his mental decline is sadly continuing. It is devastating to see this happening. Unfortunately these care facilities are not covered by Medicare, and the cost for a patient in his condition is $10,200 a month, well above our monthly income.
So I am reaching out to all the HE-MAN fans for help with these bills. Any donation will be greatly appreciated and will ease the burden of this new expense.
Sweet’s design work helped shape an entire era of toys and animation that still resonates with fans today. The He-Man fan base is pretty strong. Perhaps they’ll step up and assist in this case because of the amount of joy this man brought into their lives.
The only thing we can do right now is hope and pray that the family finds some relief — and some peace — during what has to be an incredibly difficult time.
The UK Daily Mail is promoting an article about thr Schumann resonance. Spikes and alterations have been getting noticed for several months now .. People have claimed its having an effect on their personal situation along with the planet itself.
On Thursday, MeteoAgent reported that Earth’s Schumann resonance was still registering as high because of a moderate solar flare that had caused Earth’s magnetic field to become unsettled.
Scientists track these disturbances using an index that measures how much the planet’s magnetic field is being shaken by space weather.
The scale runs from zero to nine, with zero meaning calm conditions and anything above five indicating a geomagnetic storm that can disrupt satellites, power grids and radio signals…
This week the Canadian government announced health screenings and quarantine of up to seven days for those coming back from the country.
And in December, Spain told its citizens to stay away from Cuba due to a “serious epidemic”.
Known just as “the virus” to many, reports suggest one third of the Cuba’s population has been infected – and the British Medical Journal described the “surge” as the country’s most serious crisis in recent decades.
MORE…
In areas like Camagüey and Holguín, cemeteries have reportedly been overwhelmed.
Three months after the disease spread across the island, the Cuban government recognised the crisis as an epidemic.
But the regime still refused to declare a national health emergency.
The disease has been called a type of “combined arbovirus” – where people are infected with multiple viruses at the same time and it becomes difficult to diagnosis.
