This entry connects with our reading from "The Coming Plague", more specifically, Chapter 15 All in Good Haste: Hantaviruses in America. In that chapter we learned about the hantavirus that killed several people in america and first broke out on the Navajo reservations in the Four Corners area of the United States. The symptoms associated with this virus if you remember were particularly terrifying.
You will be happy to know that a certain rodent, the California Vole (Microtus Californicus), is a carrier of a certain hantavirus dubbed the Isla Vista virus, making Santa Barbara County a reservoir for a potentially deadly strain of hantavirus. More information can be found at these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_vole
http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/76/12/3195
1 comment:
Voles are abundant on the University of California Santa Barbara campus with 20,000 students immediately adjacent to Isla Vista.
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