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This is what the news sounds like when nobody told the hosts to behave. Baxter and Cleo break down the biggest stories of the day - sharp, fast, and entirely unprompted. New episode every morning.
--so they let twenty-nine people walk off the ship at St. Helena. April 24th. Before anyone had even named the Andes strain. Before the first death was officially on record. Twenty-nine people just... departed. Into the world.
But wait -- the ship is still going?
Still sailing to Tenerife. Three people dead -- a Dutch couple and a German national -- five confirmed cases, and the MV Hondius is continuing to its next port.
Okay. Because the thing nobody's actually saying -- and this is the part that stopped me -- the Andes strain is the one that goes person-to-person. That's not a footnote. Every other hantavirus you get from breathing near rodent droppings. The Andes strain can jump from a sick person to someone caring for them. That's the whole anomaly.
Right. That's the whole sentence.
Okay. Let's do the biology first.
Unprompted. I'm Cleo, with Baxter. Episode eight. Today: the cruise ship outbreak -- and whether the coverage is asking the right question about it -- a posthumous EP from SOPHIE and Big Freedia and the word that keeps stopping us, and a redistricting fight that's getting buried under a photo op.
A biology lesson, a grief question, and a map problem.
Is that the right order?
Ship first. Definitely ship first.
Okay. So baseline first, because the coverage keeps skipping it. Hantavirus -- family of viruses, rodents carry it. The normal transmission story is: you're in a crawl space, you're cleaning out a shed, you breathe in particles from rodent droppings or urine. That's it. No coughing, no handshake, no being near a sick person.
Rodents to humans. That's the whole chain.
For almost every strain. The Andes strain is the exception. It's one of the only hantaviruses ever documented to transmit person-to-person. Sick patient, someone caring for that patient -- that's the chain. No rodent anywhere in that transmission event.
So when people hear 'hantavirus on a cruise ship' and think 'weird, how'd a ship get rodents' -- they're already asking the wrong question.
Completely the wrong question. And three of the five confirmed cases on the Hondius tested positive for Andes specifically.
Right.
So Maria Van Kerkhove from the WHO says -- and she's quoting exactly -- 'this is not COVID, this is not influenza, it spreads very, very differently.' And that sentence is technically accurate. But what does a normal listener actually hear when they hear 'not COVID'?
They hear 'fine.'
They hear fine. And the biology is sitting right there saying -- this specific strain has a documented human transmission pathway, and it showed up in a closed population on a ship, and then twenty-nine people walked off before anyone raised an alarm.
April 24th. Before any alert. Three people dead by that point -- a Dutch couple and a German national -- and twenty-nine passengers disembark at St. Helena. Which I need people to understand is not a layover hub. That's one of the most remote inhabited islands on earth. It's a dot in the South Atlantic. These twenty-nine people leave from a dot and scatter to California, Georgia, Arizona. And the ship keeps sailing to Tenerife.
Mm-hmm.
So who made that call? Active outbreak, human-to-human strain, five confirmed cases -- and whoever was in that decision room looked at all of that and said keep moving. How does that happen?
Okay -- and I want to stress-test that framing a little. Because I think the decision looks worse than it might actually be.
You're defending it.
No. I'm saying -- those twenty-nine contacts left April 24th. By the time any official is deciding where the ship docks, they're already home. The Georgia residents are already in their houses. Anchoring the ship somewhere dramatic doesn't change their situation at all. The contact-tracing problem exists wherever the ship is sitting.
...yeah. Okay, that's fair.
The docking dispute and the scattered contacts are genuinely separate problems. I think optics were probably in the room. I just don't think there was a clean containment option that got passed over.
Still bothers me. But -- fine. What about the passenger count? Because here's a thing I can't get past: Oceanwide Expeditions says twenty-nine people are at risk. Dutch officials earlier said closer to forty. That's not a rounding error. What's actually happening there?
The contact tracing is still catching up to the exposure timeline. And that gap tells you something real about how much uncertainty is still in the system -- the 'extremely low risk' framing from the CDC is probably accurate for the general population, but does that translate to someone sitting in their house in suburban Georgia right now, potentially two weeks into a five-week incubation window?
No. It doesn't.
Exactly. And institutional reassurance that's technically right but functionally incomplete for the actual exposed people -- that's its own problem.
You had a face coming out of the music. There's something you haven't said yet.
There is no approved medical countermeasure for hantavirus.
...say that again.
A WHO panelist -- Anaïs Legand -- said it on the record. 'Currently, there is no approved medical countermeasure for the hantavirus.' No antiviral. No vaccine. You get supportive care. Manage the symptoms. The patient's immune system either handles it or doesn't.
So the entire public health response for anyone who actually gets this is...
Don't get it.
Don't get it.
That's the whole play.
Nothing in the toolkit. And we have a strain with documented person-to-person transmission, contacts scattered across at least four states, a passenger count that's still shifting, and the answer is... supportive care and hope.
Right. Though -- and I want to be honest about this -- the Andes strain's person-to-person transmission is documented but not runaway. The WHO saying this isn't influenza isn't spin, the transmission profile really is different. The 'probably contained' read isn't unreasonable.
But 'probably contained' only holds if the assumptions hold. And if you're in the incubation window, that statistical comfort doesn't -- I mean, it doesn't live in your body the way it lives in a press release.
Yeah. And here's the part that's actually keeping me on this. Who's watching when the window closes? Not the ship -- the ship has a port dispute, it has Tedros calling the captain daily, it has a health minister doubling down on Tenerife. That story has infrastructure. But the twenty-nine scattered contacts doing their incubation windows in suburban Georgia -- what does that coverage look like?
Not photogenic.
There's no ship in it. So the news moves on, and somewhere in three or four states there are public health workers quietly monitoring individuals for the next several weeks, tracking something with zero treatment options, across multiple jurisdictions. For a story that already filed its lede.
The setting got the airtime.
The pathogen is the news. The ship is just where it happened to surface.
Yeah.
And if any of those twenty-nine people are listening right now -- I mean, I hope they're not, I hope they're fine -- but the honest answer is nobody will know for a few more weeks. That's just the biology.
That's the story people should be holding.
Okay. Different thing. I've been sitting on this all morning and I need to say it out loud.
The SOPHIE record.
Yeah. So -- for anyone who hasn't been in this corner of music: SOPHIE was a Scottish electronic producer. Died January 2021, thirty-four years old. She was doing things with sound that nobody else was even attempting -- hyper-pop before it had a name, production that was maximalist and strange and completely hers. And Big Freedia is New Orleans bounce. That's the genre that basically invented twerking as a musical form -- percussion-driven, call-and-response, enormous physical energy. Two artists whose whole deal was maximalism in completely different registers. The collaboration should be extraordinary.
Mm-hmm.
And then I hit the phrase 'first official posthumous release of SOPHIE's production work' and something just -- stops. That word. 'Official.' It keeps snagging on me.
What does 'official' actually mean in that context? Because I think most listeners hear it as a stamp of authenticity.
Right. And in practice -- in practice what it usually means is: lawyers reached an agreement. Someone with legal authority over the estate signed off. That's what 'official' signals legally. Whether the artist would have called the work finished, whether it met their standards -- the paperwork doesn't answer that.
For most artists you might shrug at that gap. But SOPHIE's whole project was about radical control. Over her sound, over her image. She transitioned publicly and entirely on her own terms. She controlled every release. So the estate question here -- it's not sitting adjacent to the art. It's the same question the art kept asking.
Which is.
Who gets to say what this is.
Yeah.
The Pitchfork piece says the EP stems from sessions before her death. Doesn't say whether those sessions were done to her standards, or whether someone else made that call about what 'done' looks like. That gap bothers me.
It bothers me too. And I've been trying to figure out where I actually land on it because -- okay, honestly? I want to be wrong. That's where I keep arriving. I want to press play on this record and have it feel complete. Feel like something she would have stood behind. I want the collaboration to be real and authorized in the way that actually matters, not just the legal way.
Yeah.
But wanting it doesn't make it true.
No. And I keep asking myself -- does the uncertainty change how you listen? Like practically, as a listener, does it change what you do?
I don't think you can un-hear something because the estate paperwork is ambiguous. The sound exists regardless.
Sure. Though I think there's a version of listening where you hold the question alongside the record instead of resolving it before you press play. Let both things be true at once.
Can I tell you what keeps catching me on the language specifically? 'Posthumous official release.' As a phrase. You know how 'artisanal' ended up on supermarket bread?
Oh no.
The word is performing care and intention that it cannot actually verify. 'Artisanal' doesn't prove anything was made by hand. It's doing emotional labor the word was never equipped to do. 'Official posthumous' is the same move -- it signals that someone who cared made a deliberate choice, but legally it just means the rights got cleared.
Wait. That's -- okay, that's actually exactly it. The word is carrying two completely different signals. A listener hears 'this was intentional, this was chosen.' The legal reality is 'the estate authorized it.' Most people only hear one.
And the music industry has been running that gap for decades. Every posthumous release since the industry figured out dead artists move units.
Five years it sat. And now it comes out. I mean -- I don't know what the timeline tells us, if anything. But you notice it.
You notice it.
I think the honest thing -- and maybe this is just me finding a way to let myself enjoy it -- is that the sessions happened. SOPHIE and Freedia were actually in a room together making something. That part existed before any estate decision. The collaboration was real.
The question is just whether what comes out is what they made, or what someone decided they made.
Which we can't answer yet. Maybe not ever.
So we listen and we hold the question.
We listen and we hold the question. Don't let the estate framing determine whether you're allowed to feel something. The music exists. That part's real.
There's a version of this control question that isn't about music. It's about maps.
Redistricting.
Eight states have redrawn congressional maps since Trump encouraged Texas to do it last year. And before the numbers land, let me explain what's actually happening -- because the numbers only make sense if you understand the mechanism.
Mm-hmm.
Gerrymandering. Plain language: you draw the lines of who votes where so your party wins more seats than your actual share of votes would predict. Two methods. You pack your opponents into one district where their votes pile up uselessly. Or you crack them -- split a concentrated community across several districts so they become a minority everywhere and a majority nowhere. The votes still get cast. They just stop mattering.
What's the specific play in Tennessee?
Cracking. There's a majority-Black congressional district -- the only Democratic-controlled seat in the state. The plan carves it up and distributes the pieces into surrounding districts where that community becomes a minority. The people are still there. Their political voice gets dissolved.
And the coverage is running it as a projection story. Like a point spread.
Republicans think they could gain as many as thirteen seats. Democrats think up to ten. That's how it's framed -- a fantasy football spread. Not a community losing its representation.
Because the Lula-Trump meeting has a bilateral structure. Two leaders, one handshake, a number for the chyron. 'Economic and security matters of shared importance' -- that's a photograph. Redistricting is lines on a map being redrawn quietly in a state legislature somewhere, deferred consequences, nothing to point a camera at.
Right. And I'm not saying covering the Lula meeting is wrong -- tariff negotiations affect real workers, real supply chains. But the coverage isn't choosing between two stories of equal weight. One story has a photo. One story has a mechanism. Mechanisms don't photograph.
Sure.
Okay. Here's the number. The Republican projection is thirteen seats. Just from where the lines get drawn. No election, no persuasion, not a single voter changing their mind. Now -- do you know what the current House majority margin actually is?
Single digits? Somewhere in there?
Fewer than ten seats. So the projected swing from redistricting would be larger than the margin that currently determines which party controls the House.
Wait. Say that again.
The maps -- not the votes -- could determine who runs the House. The lines, not the people casting ballots.
Nobody had to win a single argument. Nobody changed a single mind.
Just redraw the lines.
How does a journalist look at both stories and decide the handshake is the one that moves? I'm genuinely asking.
I think -- and I'm trying not to be too harsh -- I think it's structural, not bad faith. A bilateral meeting produces footage, quotes, a reaction shot. Redistricting produces a vote in a state legislature that might get twelve seconds on the evening news if someone's paying attention. The incentive runs toward the thing that looks like news is happening.
While the actual news happens quietly in the other room.
Yeah. And nobody is quoting a single person who lives inside that majority-Black district in Tennessee. Not one. They're a data point in a seat-count projection. That's -- I mean, that bothers me more than the coverage gap, honestly. The seat count is the noise. The people losing their representation are the story.
Huh.
You know what this is? It's the Lula meeting is the chandelier. The redistricting is the plumbing. Everybody's looking at the chandelier while someone rewires who gets water for the next decade.
The photo op is the noise. The map is the load-bearing wall.
You're using my words.
They were the right words.
Yeah. Yeah, they were.
I don't have a clean exit from that one. Let's let it breathe for a second.
Yeah. I know.
Okay. I have something that is -- it's not light exactly, but it's absurd in a way that I think we need right now. Have you been following the EU Entry-Exit System situation?
The biometric border checks. I skimmed it.
Okay so -- the EES, the Entry-Exit System, is the EU's new biometric border check for non-EU travelers entering the Schengen zone. Fingerprints, facial scans, the whole thing. Post-Brexit, British nationals are now third-country visitors, so they go through it too. Every time. Every single crossing.
Every time?
Every time. Portugal is enforcing it. Italy is enforcing it. Last month, more than a hundred people missed their EasyJet flight to Manchester from Milan's Linate airport. One flight. A hundred people. Because the passport queue backed up.
A hundred people on one flight.
One flight. And the facial scanners are glitchy. I've been in the travel forums -- don't judge me -- and the energy is very specifically the energy of someone who booked this trip six months ago and is now doing biometrics at 5am in Terminal 2 and the machine is rejecting their face.
The machine is rejecting their face.
The machine has standards, Cleo.
Okay, so where does Greece come in.
Greece looked at the EES spec document, looked at their beach economy, looked at what uniform enforcement would do to their summer tourism numbers, and made a choice. They've effectively suspended the biometric checks for British nationals.
Just... decided not to.
Greece looked at the blueprint and said 'yes, but have you considered: Santorini.'
And the Commission's response?
The Commission confirmed that rules allow temporary suspensions at specific crossings in exceptional circumstances -- but not, and I'm reading this directly -- 'blanket exemptions for nationals of specific third countries and for an extended period of time.' Portugal and Italy confirmed they do not intend to exempt any nationality. So: two countries enforcing, one country quietly not, and Brussels sending a memo about the rules while a hundred people miss flights in Milan.
So the system is-- I mean, this is the thing. The Commission is saying it's 'mainly working well.' And maybe by some metrics it is. But 'mainly working well' and 'a hundred people missed one flight from one airport in one month' are not actually in tension with each other as far as Brussels is concerned, because Brussels is measuring compliance, not queue times.
The building inspector says the code is being followed. The family says there's water coming through the ceiling. Those are compatible statements from the inspector's perspective.
Right. And Greece isn't defying the system because they're rogue. Greece is telling you the blueprint was wrong.
Yeah. And this actually rhymes with something from earlier -- the ship still sailing. The gap between the institutional decision and the downstream consequence. Brussels specifies the system, the system can't handle the actual flow, Greece bypasses the valve because families need to get to the beach. Same structure.
The proximate fix is 'enforce uniformly.' The downstream consequence of that fix is 'nobody goes to Santorini.' Greece made the calculation.
And honestly I don't think Greece is wrong. I think Greece is the only country in this story that stress-tested the system against reality before deciding how to treat it.
I want to push on that slightly -- because there's a version of 'Greece decided the rules don't apply to them' that's also true, and the EU framework kind of depends on not having every member state making individual calls about which rules to run. But...
But.
But a hundred people missed a flight. The blueprint was wrong.
The blueprint was wrong.
The thirteen-seat thing is still sitting with me. I keep trying to find the counter-argument and I can't.
Yeah.
Maps, not votes. I want someone to tell me I'm wrong about what that means.
I'm going to watch whether Tennessee actually votes on the plan this week. That's concrete -- it either happens or it doesn't.
I'm watching the contact tracing numbers on the hantavirus story. Whether the count stays at twenty-nine or starts moving. Because if it moves, the incubation window math gets a lot less comfortable.
And on a completely different note, I'm going to listen to the SOPHIE record tonight. I decided. I'm going to try to just let it be the record -- not the estate question, not the word 'official.' Just the music.
I might do the same.
Also I'm now slightly worried about every cruise ship I've ever been on.
Wait. You've been on a cruise ship?
Once. College. Don't.
I have so many questions.
All of them are wrong. Good talk?
Good talk.