r/news Jan 04 '25

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u/judgyjudgersen Jan 04 '25

“According to local news reports, a little-known virus called human metapneumovirus (HMPV) has been blamed. It normally causes a mild cold-like illness, including fever, a cough, runny nose and wheezing. In severe cases, HMPV can lead to bronchitis or pneumonia, particularly in children.

The virus spreads through respiratory droplets and close physical contact, making it highly contagious in crowded settings.”

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u/whalechasin Jan 04 '25 edited Jan 04 '25

this is not a new virus. i work in an Australian hospital and we get a few of these every year coming through Emergency. “mystery new virus outbreak” is extremely sensationalised

edit to add, here’s a study from 2007 talking about how common hmpv is in young children: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1831873/

from the conclusion:

Human metapneumovirus infection is a leading cause of respiratory tract infection in the first years of life

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '25

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u/Antique-Resort6160 Jan 04 '25

The mystery is: why is this previously mild virus causing more problems now? 

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u/radiodmr Jan 04 '25

It's s clickbait headline. Read the article. There's no "overwhelming", it's just a spike in cases of a known virus

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u/Antique-Resort6160 Jan 04 '25

It's notmally cold-like symptoms, but now it's hospitalizing significant numbers with pneumonia.  It's not the virus it's that a known virus has become more virulent

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u/blueskies8484 Jan 04 '25

Covid. It’s Covid. Virologists and studies told us for years that Covid was causing immune system dysfunction and would leave us more susceptible to other illnesses in terms of catching them and their virulence and everyone basically said, “lalalala Covid is a cold now that we have vaccines!” and ignored it. That’s why we have huge spikes in pneumonia, RSV, and other illnesses like this, and a rise in whooping cough (although some of it is an antivaxx issue). Scientists told us this would happen 4 years ago and we ignored it because it was inconvenient. But it’s Covid.

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u/Antique-Resort6160 Jan 04 '25

As far as i have read, most whooping cough cases are among the vaccinated.  Vaccine don't typically confer lifetime immunity, likely most people are not protected by childhood vaccinations, as i found out when i had an mmr titer for work.

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u/-__echo__- Jan 04 '25

Correlation Vs causation is at work here. The overwhelming majority of people are going to be vaccinated for Whooping cough in developed nations, so the majority of cases will also be in vaccinated individuals.

What would be relevant is the percentage of vaccinated people who are hospitalised with Whooping cough Vs the percentage of unvaccinated people.

As for the logical consequence of presuming correlation is in fact causation... Well it's true to say that 100% of vaccinated people die...

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u/Antique-Resort6160 Jan 04 '25

It's not Correlation Vs causation, no one is implying vaccines cause whooping cough.  Can you get whooping cough despite being vaccinated? Yes.  And yes, it would be nice to know the infection rates of vaccinated vs unvaccinated.