Missives from the 6th Floor

I've done a bunch of reading about the Hanta virus over the last day, and pretty much the only good news is that it's rare, and that the virus isn't viable long in the environment (a couple days).

So the next six weeks (the documented incubation period) are going to be, shall we say, a bit stressful.

The bad news is that there's no no test for exposure, no effective treatment, has symptoms that resemble a cold - 'till you go into respiratory arrest - and a 1/3 mortality rate. Between 1 and 5 cases are reported in Washington each year - I've got a call into the county public health office to see if I can get any additional information on their geographic distribution.

I put traps in the basement last nigh - which shows no new evidence of mice since my ill-advised cleanup - and each day I don't see evidence will make me more confident that I found old traces, and that my chances of exposure were low. If I do find fresh traces, it doesn't tell me much, unfortunately, as there's no effective way to determine if these particular mice are carrying the virus.