They Paid to See the Arctic. They Got Nebraska.

The MV Hondius is a serious expedition vessel, not a party boat.

It does Svalbard, Antarctica, the kind of itineraries that attract people who've already done the regular trips.

How does a ship like that end up with a hantavirus problem?

Mira, hay varias posibilidades.

Look, there are several possibilities.

Estos barcos hacen escala en puertos de todo el mundo entre temporadas.

These ships stop at ports all over the world between seasons.

El Hondius opera tanto en el Ártico como en zonas de Sudamérica, incluyendo la Patagonia y las islas Malvinas.

The Hondius operates in both the Arctic and areas of South America, including Patagonia and the Falkland Islands.

Y en muchos de esos puertos, la presencia de roedores en los muelles es algo perfectamente habitual.

And in many of those ports, the presence of rodents at the docks is perfectly routine.

So a rat gets aboard during a port call somewhere, and you've got a potential vector floating around a confined space with a few dozen tourists who probably have no idea.

O incluso algo más indirecto.

Or even something more indirect.

Los pasajeros de expedición desembarcan para hacer excursiones a tierra, caminatas, visitas a zonas costeras.

Expedition passengers disembark to go on excursions ashore, hikes, visits to coastal areas.

En esas zonas puede haber roedores infectados.

Those areas can have infected rodents.

Basta con inhalar polvo contaminado con sus excrementos para estar expuesto.

Inhaling dust contaminated with their droppings is enough for exposure.

No tienes por qué ver al animal ni tocarlo.

You don't have to see the animal or touch it.

That detail, inhaling contaminated dust, is the one that makes hantavirus genuinely difficult to guard against.

You can tell people to wash their hands.

You can't tell them to stop breathing.

Es así.

Exactly.

Y aquí hay algo que me parece especialmente relevante: en Sudamérica, específicamente en Chile y Argentina, existe una cepa del hantavirus llamada Andes que sí puede transmitirse entre personas.

And here's something I find especially relevant: in South America, specifically in Chile and Argentina, there's a strain of hantavirus called Andes that can spread between people.

Es la única cepa conocida que lo hace.

It's the only known strain that does.

Los demás hantavirus no.

All other hantaviruses don't.

Wait.

Person-to-person transmission in one specific strain, and only in southern South America.

That's the kind of footnote that could matter enormously if you're on a ship that just came from Patagonia.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y aunque no se ha confirmado públicamente qué cepa está implicada en el brote del Hondius, el hecho de que se haya decretado una cuarentena tan prolongada, hasta finales de mayo, sugiere que las autoridades sanitarias no están completamente tranquilas con lo que tienen entre manos.

And while the specific strain involved in the Hondius outbreak hasn't been publicly confirmed, the fact that such an extended quarantine was ordered, through the end of May, suggests that health authorities aren't entirely comfortable with what they're dealing with.

I want to come back to the Nebraska question because it's genuinely strange geographically.

You land in the US, you've been on a ship, you might have been exposed to hantavirus, and they send you to Nebraska.

Why Nebraska?

Pues mira, Nebraska tiene el Centro Médico de la Universidad de Nebraska, que es uno de los centros de biocontención más avanzados de Estados Unidos.

Well, Nebraska has the University of Nebraska Medical Center, one of the most advanced biocontainment facilities in the United States.

Ya gestionó casos de ébola durante el brote de 2014.

It already handled Ebola cases during the 2014 outbreak.

No es casualidad.

It's not coincidence.

Cuando el gobierno americano necesita tratar enfermedades infecciosas graves en un entorno controlado, ese lugar aparece en la lista.

When the American government needs to treat serious infectious diseases in a controlled environment, that facility appears on the list.

So it's not random.

Nebraska is, in a very specific sense, exactly where you want to be if something potentially serious is happening to you.

Correcto.

Correct.

Aunque entiendo perfectamente que para alguien que acaba de volver de ver ballenas jorobadas en las islas Malvinas, estar encerrado en Nebraska a finales de mayo no es lo que tenía en mente.

Though I perfectly understand that for someone who just got back from watching humpback whales in the Falkland Islands, being shut up in Nebraska at the end of May wasn't what they had in mind.

The gap between those two realities is almost too big to process.

But the thing I keep turning over is the anger.

The passengers who spoke to NBC News weren't just uncomfortable, they were furious.

They felt the quarantine was excessive given the transmission profile of most hantavirus strains.

Y desde un punto de vista puramente epidemiológico, tienen cierta razón si la cepa no es Andes.

And from a purely epidemiological standpoint, they have a point if the strain isn't Andes.

Pero los responsables de salud pública tienen que tomar decisiones con información incompleta, y el coste de equivocarse hacia el lado conservador es una cuarentena molesta.

But public health officials have to make decisions with incomplete information, and the cost of erring on the conservative side is an inconvenient quarantine.

El coste de equivocarse hacia el lado permisivo puede ser mucho peor.

The cost of erring on the permissive side can be much worse.

That's the calculation every public health authority has been trying to communicate since COVID and frankly failing at.

The logic is sound but the experience of being the subject of that calculation is something else entirely.

Sin duda.

Without a doubt.

Y hay otra dimensión que me parece importante mencionar: el turismo de aventura ha crecido enormemente en los últimos años.

And there's another dimension worth mentioning: adventure tourism has grown enormously in recent years.

Más gente, en lugares más remotos, con menos infraestructura médica cerca.

More people, in more remote places, with less medical infrastructure nearby.

La industria ha madurado mucho en términos de seguridad física, equipamiento, rescate en caso de emergencia.

The industry has matured considerably in terms of physical safety, equipment, emergency rescue.

Pero el componente de salud epidemiológica ha ido claramente por detrás.

But the epidemiological health component has clearly lagged behind.

I spent time in some remote places as a correspondent and there's a kind of invincibility logic that kicks in.

The danger you can see, the dramatic danger, you prepare for.

A rat in a warehouse in Ushuaia doesn't feel like a threat.

Y sin embargo, históricamente, esa ha sido la forma en que los humanos han contraído las enfermedades más peligrosas.

And yet, historically, that's how humans have contracted the most dangerous diseases.

No a través de los grandes eventos dramáticos, sino a través del contacto cotidiano y mundano con animales que nadie nota.

Not through dramatic large-scale events, but through everyday, mundane contact with animals nobody notices.

El hantavirus, la peste, la rabia: todas enfermedades de roedores o animales comunes que matan porque los subestimamos.

Hantavirus, plague, rabies: all diseases from rodents or common animals that kill precisely because we underestimate them.

The plague reference is pointed.

We think of bubonic plague as medieval, something that belongs to a history book.

But there are still cases every year in the American Southwest, same ecosystem, same prairie dogs and ground squirrels.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Estas enfermedades no desaparecen, simplemente pasan a un segundo plano cuando no hay brotes activos.

These diseases don't disappear, they simply fade into the background when there are no active outbreaks.

Y lo que hace el caso del Hondius es recordarnos que el riesgo viaja con nosotros cuando nos adentramos en esos ecosistemas, aunque sea en un barco con jacuzzi y sommelier.

And what the Hondius case does is remind us that risk travels with us when we enter those ecosystems, even if we're on a ship with a jacuzzi and a sommelier.

The sommelier detail lands harder than it should.

There's something specifically modern about getting a potentially fatal rodent virus while eating a tasting menu.

La naturaleza no lee los folletos de los cruceros de lujo.

Nature doesn't read the luxury cruise brochures.

Pero en serio, creo que este episodio, el del Hondius, debería ser un momento de reflexión para la industria.

But seriously, I think this episode, the Hondius one, should be a moment of reflection for the industry.

Las expediciones polares y subpolares están sometidas a regulaciones muy estrictas en cuanto a impacto ambiental, pero las inspecciones de sanidad a bordo no siempre siguen el mismo rigor.

Polar and subpolar expeditions are subject to very strict environmental impact regulations, but onboard health inspections don't always follow the same rigor.

Y eso debería cambiar.

And that should change.

The regulatory question is interesting because expedition ships operate under flag-of-convenience arrangements a lot of the time.

The Hondius is Dutch.

It might be sailing in international waters, stopping at ports with different sanitary standards.

The oversight picture is genuinely fragmented.

Y ahí está el problema estructural.

And there's the structural problem.

La Organización Mundial de la Salud tiene regulaciones internacionales de salud que incluyen a los barcos, pero la aplicación real depende de los países en los que atracan, y la coherencia entre esos países es, digamos, variable.

The World Health Organization has international health regulations that cover ships, but actual enforcement depends on the countries where they dock, and consistency between those countries is, let's say, variable.

Variable.

That's the diplomatic way to put it.

I've been on boats in enough ports to know that what gets inspected and what gets waved through can depend on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with public health.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y mientras tanto, los pasajeros asumen que si el barco tiene permiso para operar, alguien en algún lugar ha verificado que todo está en orden.

And meanwhile, passengers assume that if the ship is licensed to operate, someone somewhere has verified that everything is in order.

Esa suposición es comprensible pero no siempre está justificada.

That assumption is understandable but not always justified.

Which is cold comfort for the people sitting in Nebraska right now.

Desde luego.

Absolutely.

Aunque si tengo que elegir entre estar en cuarentena en Nebraska con médicos excelentes y seguimiento diario, o enfrentarme a un síndrome pulmonar por hantavirus en algún lugar sin recursos, prefiero Nebraska.

Although if I have to choose between being quarantined in Nebraska with excellent doctors and daily monitoring, or facing hantavirus pulmonary syndrome somewhere without resources, I'll take Nebraska.

That's a grim but fair point.

And there's probably a longer conversation here about how COVID changed public tolerance for quarantine measures.

People who would have accepted this without much complaint in 2019 are now primed to read every containment measure as overreach.

Es uno de los efectos secundarios más perniciosos de la pandemia, en mi opinión.

That's one of the most pernicious side effects of the pandemic, in my opinion.

No el escepticismo ante el poder, que siempre es sano, sino la confusión entre la gestión desastrosa que vivimos en muchos países durante el COVID y la validez científica de las herramientas de salud pública en sí mismas.

Not skepticism toward power, which is always healthy, but the confusion between the disastrous management we saw in many countries during COVID and the scientific validity of public health tools themselves.

Son cosas distintas, y mezclarlas tiene consecuencias reales.

Those are different things, and conflating them has real consequences.

You said something earlier, about how the disease passes to a second plane when there aren't active outbreaks.

'Pasa a un segundo plano.' I've been mulling that.

'Segundo plano' is a phrase that works differently in Spanish than its literal equivalent in English.

We'd say 'fades into the background,' but 'segundo plano' is richer, it's almost cinematic.

Sí, es una expresión muy interesante.

Yes, it's a very interesting expression.

'Plano' viene del vocabulario de las artes visuales, de la pintura y más tarde del cine.

'Plano' comes from the vocabulary of visual arts, from painting and later cinema.

El 'primer plano' es lo que está en foco, lo que el ojo ve primero.

'Primer plano' is what's in focus, what the eye sees first.

El 'segundo plano' es lo que está detrás, presente pero no dominante.

'Segundo plano' is what's behind it, present but not dominant.

Cuando dices que algo 'pasa a un segundo plano' no dices que desaparece, sino que deja de ser lo que organiza la escena.

When you say something 'passes to a second plane' you're not saying it disappears, but that it stops being what organizes the scene.

That's actually a more precise description of how diseases like hantavirus exist in public consciousness.

They're not gone.

They're just not the foreground.

And the Hondius reminds us they can snap back into focus without warning.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y de paso, 'primer plano' es también lo que en inglés se llama 'close-up' en cine.

And incidentally, 'primer plano' is also what you call a 'close-up' in cinema in English.

Así que cuando alguien dice 'un primer plano de su cara', está usando el mismo vocabulario que un director de fotografía.

So when someone says 'a close-up of their face,' they're using the same vocabulary as a cinematographer.

El español tomó prestado el lenguaje del encuadre visual y lo convirtió en metáfora cotidiana.

Spanish borrowed the language of visual framing and turned it into everyday metaphor.

Me parece bastante elegante, la verdad.

I find it quite elegant, honestly.

English does something similar with 'spotlight,' I suppose.

But 'segundo plano' is more flexible.

You can use it for ideas, for people, for diseases that everyone forgot were still out there, waiting for a ship to make a port call at the wrong dock.

Y con eso creo que hemos resumido bastante bien el episodio del Hondius, y de paso dado a los oyentes una expresión que vale la pena guardar.

And with that I think we've summed up the Hondius episode pretty well, and along the way given listeners an expression worth keeping.