The Truth About HMPV Panic, According to Experts — and How It Really Compares to COVID; HMPV, RSV, H5N1: Why the World is Under Attack from Respiratory Viruses, and other C-Virus related stories
The truth about HMPV panic, according to experts — and how it really compares to COVID:
News of a respiratory virus spreading in China and footage of crowded hospitals have predictably led to panic, with concern that the human metapneumovirus (HMPV) may be COVID 2.0 for 2025.
Cases in the US have been increasing since November. Though the numbers are low overall, the CDC found that 1.94% or 13,800 people tested positive for HMPV the week of Dec. 28.
However, health experts say the rise in cases is not necessarily cause for alarm, maintaining that HMPV is a very different type of illness.
Professor Jill Carr, a virologist at Flinders University, told SBS News that the uptick in Chinese cases of HMPV is in no way comparable to the pandemic.
“HMPV can certainly make people very sick, and high case numbers are a threat to effective hospital services, but the current situation in China with high HMPV cases is very different to the threats initially posed by SARS-CoV-2 resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.
Amesh Adalja, an infectious-diseases physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, maintains that any big reaction to HMPV is just a knee-jerk response.
“There’s just this tendency post-COVID to treat every infectious-disease anything as an emergency when it’s not,” Adalja told the Washington Post. “You wouldn’t probably be calling me in 2018 about this.”
The CDC said it was aware of increasing HMPV cases in northern China following reports from Beijing-run media confirming positivity rates have risen significantly among children 14 and younger.
However, it stressed that the number of respiratory disease cases in America remains at “pre-pandemic” levels and is not a cause for concern.
And in a statement released on Friday, the Chinese government downplayed claims that HMPV cases were skyrocketing.
“Respiratory infections tend to peak during the winter season,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. “The diseases appear to be less severe and spread with a smaller scale compared to the previous year,” the office added.
Sanjaya Senanayake, an associate professor of medicine at the Australian National University, told SBS News, “At this stage, the likelihood is that China is experiencing a bad HMPV season, in the same way that in some years we have an overwhelming flu season. This could be due to a combination of viral and behavioral factors, but it should settle down.” —>READ MORE HERE
HMPV, RSV, H5N1: Why the world is under attack from respiratory viruses:
The evidence has been piling up all around us for months.
Lurid headlines warning of a “quad-demic” and a mysterious virus spreading in China; relatives sickened for weeks with flu and hospitals stretched to breaking point.
Little more than a year-and-a-half after the Covid-19 pandemic was finally declared over, the world is once again under attack from respiratory viruses.
This time, though, the waves of infections are not the result of a new pandemic pathogen. Instead, the apparent onslaught is the result of a seasonal spike in respiratory disease.
Every year, a host of illnesses including colds and flu surge as the air becomes cooler and drier and people spend more time indoors, making it easier for viruses to spread.
The effects can be severe – hospitals across the world come under intense pressure from millions of people requiring treatment for respiratory conditions. Hundreds of thousands of people will be killed by influenza alone.
This winter is no exception. But is this annual respiratory virus season really as bad as it seems?
What – if anything – has changed this time? And, with so many viruses going around and an outbreak in China causing an almost farcical global panic, could the real threat be slipping under the radar? —>READ MORE HERE
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