The Hantavirus Outbreak | A Pest Control Podcast

In this short episode Anthony talks about the hantavirus outbreak that has been seen all over the news.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the pest files. As always, I'm your host, Anthony. I'm a business owner and operator of a pest control company out of the state of California. Today's episode, the Hontavirus. I'm sure you've heard about this. It's been on the headlines a lot. It was a pretty viral story. Uh, at the time recording this, it's uh May 12th. So I would say it seems like a lot of the scare has gone down. Although, condolences to those who have lost their lives to this virus and those who are being affected by it and the families and the loved ones. But let's talk about the hauntivirus. Why would we talk about it? Well, it relates to our job, believe it or not. The hauntivirus is spread through rodent droppings, right? At least that's what I learned in uh when I start, you know, training things like that. Um, rodents can spread infectious diseases, right? They can spread viruses, things like that. So, and this is one of them. Um man, imagine if you were the company in charge of that cruise ship. You you did the pest control there, and then this happens. Doesn't look too good for your company. I wonder if you could get sued for that. Because the the PR damage that all cruise ships probably will have is pretty hefty. Because, yeah, I mean, how clean is your ship, right? And you had a mouse infestation, and the droppings contaminated your you know, airways and your food and water, things like that. So the biggest thing is that how does this happen? How does something like the Hantavirus occur? Well, for the most part, it occurs from rodents, right? The biggest thing is that it comes from rodent droppings mainly, right? Um I won't really say in terms of like you know, the human-to-human spreading, things like that. I'm not going to facilitate that in the sense of um right. I'm gonna focus more on the rodent-to-human aspect. I'm not a doctor or infectious disease expert by any means, so please um bear with me here, I guess. But let's talk about it from the pest control standpoint. That's my expertise, that's where I'm an expert. So let's talk about that. Now, a lot of people, and I've had a client actually not too long ago, bring it up to me in fear of saying, Hey, can you make sure those run stations are full? Um, I'm pretty, you know, scared about the hontivirus. Now, in all my years of doing pest control, I have not heard of one case. It might be different for you, but here in California, Sacramento area, I've been doing the pest control for about eight years now. I have not heard of one case of any clients or even any companies I worked for where a client had the hontivirus. But this has definitely heightened everyone's sense to the severity of rodents. And maybe you're getting more calls. Maybe your your sales are upticking, who knows, right? Because this heightens the sense of everything, doesn't it? You hear Hontavirus and it they say, well, it's spread through rodents, and then you'll have a client looking in their backyard, they see a rodent, that's what they're going to see. They might not know the fine, the more you know, minute details behind everything, how it can spread, things like that, but that's what they'll see. So the biggest thing is rodents, right? They can spread disease, they can spread these viruses. That's why it is key to be able to prevent rodents. And I'm hoping that this sort of sheds light on the because I know in California, a lot of you could say you're kind of declawing pest control. Um, don't get me wrong, like things that affect the environment, such as like certain rodent baits that do cross-contamination or forever products that sit into the environment too long and start to mess with the microbial life. You know, I know terminador, um, more importantly, the active ingredient, uh, fipper nil just lasts in the environment forever and eventually it does go into the water and it just destroys the microbiology. I understand that, but my biggest thing is that we need to make sure we are completely on top of pest control. It's very important, right? Now, I have no clue if the ship even had pest control. I assume they need it because if you're serving food and you're preparing food and you need to pass the health inspection, and more so you need to be able to have preventative measures in place as well. So I can pretty much guarantee they had pest control. Now, obviously, it didn't work because yeah, the the virus outbreak, right? So, my biggest thing is that how does this correlate to us? Well, it shows the importance, right? It shows us the importance of pest control, it shows us the importance of understanding the dangers of pests, but more so, I hope it shows the importance that most of us in this industry. I understand there's a lot of people that maybe do this for a paycheck, but I do take pride in what I do. I do take pride in killing black widows, uh, you know, for daycares, things like that, right? Um, I know it's a strong word killing, but you know, that's what I do. Like I see a black widow, that black widow will not be living much longer. Uh, you're out of daycare, sorry. Um, but I take pride of getting rid of fronts for clients. I take pride in getting rid of ants, cockroaches in kitchens, things like that, because someone needs to do it and it needs to get done, or else a lot of illness can happen. And in worse cases, such as this case here, and like I said, condolences for everybody because I believe there's some deaths that have been confirmed from this hauntivirus outbreak, um it can lead to death, and that's that's serious, right? So let pest control do its job. And like I said, I understand things like FIPR-NIL, I understand the bait, rodent bait, and it cross-contaminating other wildlife. I understand that. But we need to improvise, we need to progress. That's the biggest thing. Because when you start harming us from doing our job by limiting certain aspects, such as getting rid of certain products, or completely altogether making certain products illegal, aside from certain settings, then the population of critters, rodents, cockroaches, things like that, are going to increase. Now, I'm not saying allow us to spray fip or nil everywhere. I'm not saying bring back all the old rodent bait, the rodent poison, not saying that. But we need to make sure we're staying on top of this for specific reasons, right? Reasons are to keep people healthy, to protect the health of a community, such as the Hantavirus. It's a reality, and it's made headlines all across the nation, probably all across the world, because this is a global emergency. Who the World Health Organizations involved, the court they quarantine the people, everything like that. So this is serious, and this comes directly from rodents. And who deals with rodents? We do, pest control. No matter if you're in the office, manager on the route, we deal with them. So I guess my message here is take your job serious, right? Um, this is serious. I know a lot of times when you're doing a pest control business, you just kind of get into the numbers and running a route, and until something serious happens, it doesn't happen. And so you kind of leave that mindset. But hey, this should be a wake-up call for a lot of people. Um, this episode's gonna be short and sweet. Just want to address it. It correlates to us, so take it serious. We got an important job. Maybe if you're feeling a little lazy and you don't want to put extra traps out or replace the bait and you're dealing with runs. Let this be some motivation for you and make sure you do your job the right way. Anyways, thank you for listening. This was a quick one. Until next time, thank you.