Viruses: In Your Computer And Ships (Hour 2)

Transcript

Viruses: In Your Computer And Ships (Hour 2)

Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Fri May 8, 2026

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.

Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.

Wisconsin wakes up here.

Back to Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.

Thank you so much and good morning.

And we appreciate you listening to the Civic Media Network on this Friday.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And good morning.

I'm Brian Noon and glad you are with us.

It's the top of the hour and that means it's time for some you need

to

know.

It's a wake-up call in more ways than one.

Time for some shit you need to know.

all right Madison police stop black drivers at higher rates and that has drawn some scrutiny officers are once again pulling over thousands of black and Hispanic drivers in the city at disproportionately high rates and issuing many of them citations for speeding failure to yield or other traffic infractions drivers of color have long been over representative than in the department's traffic enforcement according to a cap times analysis in a statement to the cap times police chief John Patterson cautioned the driving pattern

can vary by time of day, location and other conditions which can make direct comparisons among demographic groups more challenging.

In

other headlines with stuff you need to know, going over to the Middle East this morning, it turns out that Iran is trying to force shippers to comply with a new protocol for transiting the Strait of Hormuz or risk attack.

Tehran has laid out a set of new rules for vessels seeking to transit the Strait, at least according to a document that was seen by CNN.

They want pressing ahead with efforts to formalize control over the waterway in defiance of U.S.

warnings entitled Vessel Information Declaration.

That's the document and it's an application form issued by Iran's newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the PGSA, and must be completed by all transiting vessels to ensure safe passage.

It was shared with CNN by Lloyd's List and another shipping industry source who wished to remain anonymous.

All right, and another piece of s you need to know, a federal appeals court appeared ready Thursday to reject Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's effort to punish Democratic Senator Mark Kelly over his call to U.S.

service members to refuse illegal orders.

A majority of judges on a three-member panel, so that would be two, at the D.C.

U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals spent more than an hour and a half throwing cold water on arguments pushed by the Justice Department to revive Hegseth's plans, which were

shut down earlier this year by a federal judge who said they were unconstitutionally retaliatory.

Judge Florence Pan and appointee of former President Joe Biden said, these are people who serve their country.

Many put their lives on the line and you're saying that they have to give up their retired status in order to say something that is a textbook example taught at West Point and the Naval Academy that you can disobey illegal orders.

all right and then here's the big story Jamie got it you got the big the big one well s you need to know

it is and if you've been paying attention or saw some of the headlines it turns out that uh there was quite the cyber attack that shut down uh

other universities, but also affected UW of Madison.

And it was done by a group called the Shiny Hunters.

And they appear to be behind this outage of the instructional software that universities of Wisconsin uses for final exams and assignments.

It's called Canvas.

And the Shiny Hunters actually targeted this system.

And it's an online course management that is used by colleges.

It's used for course material, course work, submission, exams, and grading.

All campuses of the University of Wisconsin have been affected by this hack.

University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that Canvas became unavailable around three o'clock yesterday afternoon, disrupting finals preparations.

Not a great time for this to be happening.

Now UW-Madison issued a statement saying, quote, we are aware of the outage and multiple teams are working with the universities of Wisconsin administration.

to address this issue on behalf of our students.

Now, if Canvas prompts you to perform any action, this is for anybody listening, this is from the University.

such as clicking a link, logging in, resetting your password, or completing any tasks.

Do not proceed, says the university.

These prompts may not be legitimate while the system is down.

We will send a follow-up notification when Canvas is back online.

This sounds like an absolute nightmare.

My goodness.

Is it time for schools to scale back on technology in the classroom and go back to number two pencils and scantron tests eight five five seven five civic eight five five seven five two four eight four two.

They say that no no passwords dates of birth or government identifiers financial information etc.

are involved in the breach.

But now I am I'm too old for to have used canvas

me

too.

But

I still, we had to fill, you know, it was essay tests or it was scantron multiple choice with your number two pencil.

Parker,

first of all, Parker, for the

elders amongst us, can you give us a quick over what is what is Canvas really quick and then how much

Did you rely on it when you were in college?

So, Canvas,

essentially, every class that you are in has a Canvas page.

You can find all of your class resources on there, like everything from the syllabus to your assignments to your grades.

Basically, your lifeline to your class is Canvas, frankly.

So, it is a huge thing.

Sorry.

You're screwed.

I'm really sorry, students, my friends.

I'm sorry you are screwed because I expect that 99% of teachers only had their grades kept.

in Canvas.

So I don't

know what's going

to happen to this last semester of work.

We've got people chiming in on the text line this morning.

And if you would like to get in on this conversation, 1-855-752-4842, 1-855-755-CIVIC.

Brian, who's listening on WXCO and Wausau, says that this is affecting the Wausau School District as well.

We have Todd, who is listening on WMDX this morning.

He is from the

He's driving in Madison and he wanted to talk about the story earlier with the drivers.

He says that black and brown drivers, he notices them disproportionately and he seems to notice them driving carefully and obeying traffic laws when maybe he's gonna run a yellow light or so, or maybe going a little faster and he's trying to get around other drivers.

Back to the breach.

Yes, when we talk about...

this breach.

I actually reached out to one of the good friends of this show, Howard Schwaiber, who is

Kathryn Lake

a

professor emeritus of American politics and political theory.

As a former professor over there, I wanted to know his take on Canvas, and this is what he said to me last night.

It's become an indispensable technology, especially since in the post pandemic era, there is so much more emphasis on remote learning, blended classrooms, and the use of online platforms.

If Canvas were to be lost or become generally insecure, universities would have to make major adjustments.

And again, that is from somebody who has used Canvas to teach those classes, Professor Howard Schwaeber.

And I've taught with different, like in grade school, we didn't have Canvas, but we had Class Kick and we had other programs where all of your assignments were in there.

And it's gone down a few times.

pretty much paralyzes the school, so I can't imagine, according to this hacker, the hacker group,

They're about 9,000.

They hit about 9,000 universities across the country.

So I can't imagine what's going on.

I'd love to hear, I don't know how many students are listening.

Well, you're not studying for your finals because you can't get into your stuff.

So

Kathryn Lake

you got some

free time.

If you're still up drinking from last night, you can give us a call, 855-75-CIVIC.

How is this affecting you?

Or if you're an instructor at one of these, because as Brian said, Warsaw schools were affected by these too.

If you're a teacher, if you're a professor, if you're dealing with this, we want to hear firsthand how it is affecting you.

So back to Parker for just a minute.

So I just, so do you have to buy, do you still buy books?

Is that a dumb question?

You said

all the resources are on this

canvas or is it linked to books and everything?

It can be.

It depends on your university.

So I went to UW Whitewater where,

textbooks were actually part of your tuition.

So that

Kathryn Lake

was already

covered for me.

I don't believe that's the case at most universities.

I believe you do have to still buy your textbooks.

I'm assuming you're asking more about, like, actual book versus online book is more of the question.

Yeah, where you have to, you know,

old school books.

Like, I had a

backpack full of books that I had to carry

around on campus.

Yeah, it's a mix.

For the most part, I still had actual books.

I think I had one or two online textbooks.

Frank, I know that you probably were kind of in the age of as online textbooks were becoming more of a thing.

Did you have Canvas too, Frank?

Yeah.

I did have Canvas.

It depended on, now I graduated in 2016.

It depended on the professor of how much they wanted to lean into it.

Parker and I, we both did media.

I think most like, I think most of my classes as a upper classmen were more hands on, I don't, we don't need a book.

It's all instructional, working with equipment and editing stuff.

But before then, or your gen eds, it's canvas, man.

Like

that's your thing.

All your coursework is submitted through there.

We have John chiming in over on our YouTube chat this morning.

He says, must have been the same issue with Oshkosh schools.

He also went on to say that as a parent, I will say using canvas is quite frustrating when working normally.

Go back to email and heaven forbid sending forms home in the backpacks.

Oh

yeah, because you would send all.

the

all right yes

especially in for elementary and high school all the correspondence between the teachers go home that way yeah it's you know and if you have parents who are not and it that's becoming less and less as as younger people become parents who are not tech savvy it was

Kathryn Lake

or

in my in my district a lot of people who didn't speak English a lot of immigrants in the community it was hard to

you know, translate all that stuff and hard to use the technology.

It's amazing though.

So, so did you like, did you have to go to class if everything was on your computer?

Could you just stay

on the class?

There were as somebody who may not have been the best student sophomore year and slept through many alarms because I had an awful sleep schedule.

There were some gen ed classes like my stats class.

where I really did not need to be there cause everything was on canvas.

Cause I'm going to fail anyway.

Yeah.

On my own time, I would read the material, do my worksheet on canvas, submit my quiz on canvas.

Yeah.

And if they didn't have an attendance policy.

I'm just sticking with Canvas.

The attendance policy was

huge.

Yeah,

dude, I know.

I didn't retake a class.

You know, I

got an A plus in it,

but

anyway,

I'm still mad

about

it.

My older son graduated from Milwaukee Area Technical College last year.

Canvas is a huge part of their curriculum because that is a tech school.

Everything for their discipline is very hands-on.

All Gen Eds, though.

Anything Gen

Kathryn Lake

Ed

related was all through Canvas.

And

Kathryn Lake

in

fact, he called me about this last night.

And he's like, they are in so much trouble.

And he's got friends who are graduating, supposed to be graduating this spring.

And he's like, they can't physically get into their Gen Ed programs.

Like they can't log in.

They can't do anything.

And he's like, you have to have those grades in order to finish your discipline.

It seems like it adds another level of cost and another wall.

And I know, like to us,

Device laptops and things are just that's commonplace, but there's a lot of people who can't Laptops are expensive.

Mm-hmm.

So our textbooks

now.

Yeah

Yeah, oh no, I remember yeah, I remember the bill for those textbooks can't wait

That's why

I

had guns, man, and just from lifting

my books.

Especially when you need them for your classes, which is why I actually like that white water includes them as part of the tuition.

But just in case anybody's wondering is we talk about just the University of Madison.

And as people chime in this morning, we are hearing about other school districts, local school districts in this shiny hunter's hack.

UW Madison alone has an enrollment of around 50,000 students.

Wow, yeah, that's so big

this this is this is gonna be a problem for the next few days It

is gonna be a promo shiny hunters.

We don't like you You know what we do like we like swiping and or staying and so we're gonna do that Next it's daybreak.

I'm Brian Noonan.

I'm Jamie Martson Big Friday edition.

It is 719 on the Civic Media Network

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get

started.

and current events for just a moment or so with our senior producer, Frank, how are you today?

I'm doing good.

Also, Parker, real quick, and for everybody on the livestream as we were talking between breaks, let me tell you my story after this segment about when... Okay.

I had to use duo for the first time.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Perfect.

Anyway, swiping and staying.

We are swiping and saying here's how it's going to work.

I'm going to read some pop culture headlines and Brian and Jamie are going to have to decide whether they want to hear more of it or if they want to swipe onto the next one and Parker can be the tiebreaker if we need them.

So we're going to go on to story number one.

We have a love boat scandal.

Oh, loveboat scandal.

The loveboat.

I like a scandal.

I like a good scandal.

Stay.

All right.

So this was a trick to get Brian to agree to this story.

We have a Diana Roussini in

my Drabel update.

Oh, this will go in your permanent file.

I hope it does.

Put it in canvas, Brian.

Put the grade in canvas.

It turns out

that the two

rented a boat together in Tennessee of June, 2021.

Wow.

It

was a

two to three hour private excursion between

the two.

Now here's the

kicker.

Yes.

Roussini was about six months pregnant at the time.

Oh.

Now.

I'm not saying, but I'm just saying there's been a lot of speculation about the timeline of this relationship and affair.

Kathryn Lake

Yeah.

And there have been some rumors, some stories.

Everyone's

Kathryn Lake

like, Oh my

God, faceless, but the timeline is starting to line up a little bit.

And it's leading to a possible bombshell report.

And I did say if we get any more news, it's going to be leading towards that, or

Kathryn Lake

that

news is going to drop.

Now, I'm not going to go out and say what it is.

It's pure speculation at this point, and we can't confirm or deny any such rumors, but there could be an update in the future.

See, Brian, aren't you happy?

We can confirm that this segment is duplicitous at best and downright fraudulent at worst.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't know those big words.

Musician says to leave his kids with his fortune would be abuse.

I hate these people.

Stay.

Any guesses on which musician said this?

Uh-oh.

Oh gosh.

I want to...

No idea.

I want to say Kanye.

Think older,

older, older, older.

Mick Jagger.

It is not Mick Jagger, Jamie.

We'll just throw Bon Jovi.

It is not Bon Jovi.

So Sting has

come out

and doubled down on not leaving his massive fortune with his kids.

He said, the worst thing you can do to a kid is say, you don't have to work.

I think that's a form of abuse that I hope I'm never guilty of.

All of my kids have been blessed with this extraordinary work ethic.

Whether it's the DNA of it or whether I've said to them, guys, you've got to work.

I'm spending our money.

I'm paying for your education.

You've got shoes on your feet.

Go get to work.

You went on to say, I don't think it's cruel.

I think there's a kindness there and a trust in them that they will make their own way.

They're tough.

My kids.

Now, Sting's net worth is $500 million.

Wow.

If I'm one of his kids, I'm pissed.

Of course you are.

$500 million.

Come on.

Leave some crumbs.

I agree.

See, but I agree in part with the you want to have you want to the kids to be able to do things on their own.

You want them to.

But I also know that down the road, you know,

you leave them something

put it in a truss so they only get so much so often right

or

something like that

or and you know but you got it yeah you can't just give it all away i mean i i understand the work ethic i understand not spoiling kids i think people who earn all that money and never do anything uh look at look at some of the children of power

Kathryn Lake

we

see now or the rich kids that

have never had to work a day in their lives.

That's wrong.

That is cruel.

Agreed.

But not leaving your kids something out of your fortune.

Sit down.

Go have some more nine-hour sex.

Here's a question.

I was just going to say, that was going to be my next question.

Is he leaving it to like a Tantric yoga studio?

Is that what he's doing?

He hasn't said.

Oh, OK.

All right.

Just checking.

He's a pretentious jerk.

He really, yeah, just asked Stuart Copeland his drummer.

Story three.

Let's move on to story three.

Disney cruise ship at the center of child crime.

You broke up a little.

Will you repeat the headline, please?

Disney cruise ship at the center of child crime.

Child crime in Disney.

Oh, the mouse.

I'm

in.

Stay.

This feels like scandal again, so I'll stay.

So several Disney cruise ship staff members.

were reportedly arrested last month as part of a larger investigation into child sexual abuse material crimes.

God.

Oh, that

is not the happiest boat on the

water.

It sure isn't.

Customs and Border Protection agents boarded eight cruise ships in San Diego as part of an ongoing enforcement

operation

between April 23rd and April 27th.

One of the cruise ships belonging to Disney the California Post reported Disney went on to say they have zero tolerance for all of this yada yada

Kathryn Lake

yada Yeah, it's

still under investigation We don't know what exactly the material was where the material came from at the moment.

We just know that Wow

some members of the Disney

cruise.

Yeah

Wow Wow, that's insanity

It's

scary.

That's stunning, actually.

Yeah.

I

thought, boy, Disney is that's going to cause quite a ripple at

Disney

because they pride themselves on everything being picture perfect all the time.

What a story to

end on.

Yes.

We will go back to a cruise ship and talk.

Hunt the virus.

After this, it's daybreak on the city.

The local voices and statewide impact.

It's Daybring with Brian and

Jamie.

735 right now.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

If you are listening in Appleton and Oshkosh on WISS or in La Crosse on WXCO or in Hayward on WBZH, we're glad that you are joining us on this Friday.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And good morning.

I'm Brian Noonan.

If you've been paying attention to the news, you know that a deadly outbreak of the rare hontavirus unfolded over the course of weeks on a cruise ship that sailed from Argentina toward Antarctica and then across the Atlantic Ocean.

according to information from the cruise operator, the World Health Organization, and ship tracking data.

Now nearly a month has passed between when an elderly Dutch man fell sick and died in the South Atlantic, and laboratory tests in South Africa first confirmed hontavirus infections.

So what is hontavirus?

How does it spread?

And should there be concern outside

of the other passengers and crew on the ship.

Dr. James Conway is a pediatric infectious disease specialist with UW Health and he joins us now.

Dr. Conway, thank you for being here.

We appreciate your time.

So most of us have never heard of of Hantavirus.

What is Hantavirus and how contagious a disease is it?

Yeah, so Hunter viruses are a whole group of viruses that primarily primarily live in rodents And they're found all across the world There was a study some years ago that they're actually found in the rodents that live in every national park in the United States So these are actually ubiquitous viruses.

They're everywhere.

There's lots and lots of different versions people maybe Would remember what was called the Four Corners disease some years ago or what was later named Sonoma virus a virus of no name because Four Corners then hurt their tourism industry

But honda viruses are everywhere.

And typically, there are diseases that are caused when rodent excreta, so rodent stool, gets dried out.

And then as people go in and clean places up and aerosolize that stuff, so they're kind of sweeping, they make it into a dust storm and inhale it.

And that's typically how people

catch huntiviruses and again they've been around forever they're all over the world and there are periodic outbreaks this one's unusual because this is one of the rare versions of huntivirus that can actually be transmitted human to human.

Dr. Conway, when you say rare, does that mean that, you know, and I understand that we're on land right now for a lot of us.

We're not on these cruise ships.

But when you say rare, does that mean that people shouldn't worry?

Is this just a less common but still serious illness?

Kind of explain that to us.

Yeah, so there's two sides to that kind of discussion.

I mean, I think one thing for people to always remember is that, again, haunted viruses are everywhere.

So if you're cleaning out your cabin or doing some, you know, work where there's a lot of rodents around, we always tell people like wear a mask when you're cleaning out the cabin or cleaning out the garage where there might be rodent droppings because

as those dry out, you know, the reason we don't see major outbreaks, even though these things are everywhere is because most of the time that stuff stays kind of moist.

It's when it gets dried out and then becomes sort of dust particles.

And so like it's always a risk and we, you know, have periodic cases here in the United States.

What the rare part is, is that this particular strain, Andean, um, hantavirus is the one that actually is able to be transmitted from one human to another.

The other part of the sort of the rare part is, you know,

cruise ships are in some way is kind of the ideal place for transmission schools and and cruise ships sort of have a lot of similarities you put a bunch of people in close quarters and you know we've seen outbreaks of norovirus a bad influenza on cruise ships you know people have certainly

recognized the fact that COVID spread pretty widely.

There were a couple of cruise ship outbreaks early in the COVID pandemic.

So cruise ships do put people into these close quarters.

And so you got a couple of people with a very contagious disease and close contact with other people and they're having sustained contact with them.

And so this was sort of in some ways kind of a perfect storm of just the right virus being brought on to a cruise ship with just the right number of people that were confined for a period of time as they're crossing the Atlantic.

And so sort of everything came together to give this an opportunity to happen.

So let's go back real quick, Dr. and Dr. Jim Conway is our guest.

He's an infectious disease, pediatric infectious disease specialist with UW Health.

So the the virus, the strain of the virus that is able to be transmitted person to person rather than just from the droppings in the dust, that that's always been around.

This is not some sort of new strain that we're seeing just come out on this cruise ship.

Yeah, I mean it's been around.

I mean, we don't know exactly how long but I mean these things, you know, there's there's there's stuff in like old old Literature, you know, there's a there's a version people may have heard of the Crimean Congo fever, you know used to devastate explorers and you know during wars in the 1800s So I mean these things have been around for a while, but this particular strain we've known about it, but you know, it hasn't reared its head very often

And it's really isolated to the Andean mountain area down in South America.

So this really was sort of that combination of people that had been traveling in that area, somehow picked it up somewhere in that area, got onto this cruise ship, and then being in close contact with other people, then spread it to other people.

And I think the other piece of this, just as we kind of close the loop, is that

Part of the problem with these things and the reason I think there is such concern at the WHO level is that they have very long incubation periods.

So people can kind of get exposed and be walking around incubating this for up to a couple months.

And so that's why, you know, initially they had everybody sort of locked down on this ship and didn't know what to do.

And they were sort of just stuck there.

Anchored they're now letting people come off the ship, but they're trying to make sure that they've got a way of keeping in contact with those people There's already some of the travelers from the United States who are on that ship who have already returned to the US Are they still

contagious as they're as that's incubating or we we just don't

we don't know Yeah, I mean, so that's the thing is that while they're incubating it.

They're probably not that contagious The thought is they're mostly contagious once they develop symptoms These are typically things that cause pneumonia, you know pulmonary symptoms and so cough and sneezing

and things like that.

A lot of the haunted viruses also, secondarily, as they spread through the body, cause a lot of kidney damage.

And so that's where they got a lot of their reputation.

So that's the interesting and tricky part of this is that you can't keep these people trapped there forever on the boat, but also releasing them back into the wild does potentially raise some risk if they're out there incubating.

And so that's the reason why contact tracing, which hopefully we're good at now after

COVID, people are going to be able to, in the public health sphere, keep track of these people.

And if they get any symptoms, then immediately lock them down into a quarantine.

Now, you just mentioned some of those symptoms.

And from what I've read, I'd love for you to correct me if I'm wrong, but it starts for some people a little bit like the flu, right?

Or

some

people have the runny noses and things.

So at this stage of, if you're in Wisconsin, I'm an allergy sufferer.

I wouldn't know the difference if I'm just having an allergy or if I'm actually coming down with something more serious.

So how can people tell the difference if they are concerned or have been on a cruise ship or maybe think they've come into contact?

Yeah, no, it's a great question.

I mean, we're fortunate in some ways that this is happening in the time of the year that's happening, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, because there isn't a ton of influenza circulating, there isn't a ton of RSV circulating, there isn't a ton of COVID circulating, knock wood.

So those are the things that are more mimics of what this type of illness starts as, because it does.

You're right, starts as runny nose cough, but the fever is the critical part of it.

I mean, people have high fever as they come down with symptoms.

So fortunately, allergy sufferers

you know, it's usually a lot of annoying upper respiratory symptoms, but the fever is the part that distinguishes it.

And, you know, even though there are always going to be respiratory viruses circulating, you know, cold viruses and things like that, typically in adults, they don't cause a whole lot of fever.

So when you've got respiratory symptoms with a fever, you know, and especially in the winter months, that's RSV or COVID or influenza.

Now for this group of individuals, they're going to be watching very closely for any kind of respiratory symptoms with a fever.

I'm hopeful and I'm certain that, you know, if they develop that,

and if people are taking this seriously and being responsible, those people immediately go into isolation, you know, hopefully in a place with good air circulation, hospitals are equipped with these special rooms that have special circulation systems that keep the air circulation separate from the rest of the hospital.

So, you know, that part can be managed, but it's being vigilant and knowing that this can kind of take a while before symptoms show up.

Doctor, you mentioned the two strains, this Andy strain that's happening with the cruise ship and the hantavirus that we can get from just rodent droppings around here.

Are the results the same?

Are the effects of the virus the same from each strain?

Which is why you stressed earlier.

Make sure you're wearing a mask if you're cleaning out your cabin, if you're cleaning up mouse droppings or rodent droppings or whatever.

Yeah, no, they have subtly different symptoms depending on which strain and where you picked it up in the world.

I mean, they all have a, you know, the way you catch these is usually inhaling some of this stuff.

So all of them, you know, start out with a pulmonary, you know, respiratory types of symptoms.

Some of them as they progress are more serious and actually involve.

spread through the body and the kidneys sort of take the brunt of the hit.

And so kidney failure is sort of one version of these things.

But they're all a little bit different as they act out.

Many of the strains here in the United States don't have such a high mortality rate.

This Andean strain has a pretty high mortality rate, but I have the people to get it die from it.

So that's the reason it's such a big deal from a public health standpoint is you got all these people that have been exposed, the ideas, the people that have had the brunt of it.

You know and had a lot more exposure like the couple that were together, you

Kathryn Lake

know,

so they both died because they were in close contact with each other and then some of the people that were in close contact with them have had more serious disease, you know, there's somebody in an ICU in South Africa.

Meanwhile, there's other people that have presumed symptoms but are actually doing okay with it and probably didn't get quite as big a hit.

So there is like this dose effect inoculum that

makes it more likely you're going to get a more serious case of the disease.

We're talking with Dr. Jim Conway.

He is with UW Health.

He is a pediatric infectious disease doctor.

We're talking about the Hantavirus and all of these multiple countries that are now involved.

How coordinated does that global response to something like this get?

And what role does the US play in this?

That's a great question, Jamie.

I think we've all realized after the COVID pandemic that public health is not a particularly well-coordinated system in our country, that each state sort of had its own approach for a while.

CDC, at least for much of this, did kind of steer the ship and keep things relatively coordinated.

At the international level, WHO really has most of the responsibility for doing that.

CDC has always honestly been sort of the big dog as far as being the major advisor to WHO.

And there's clearly signals the Infectious Disease Society of America that I'm a member of issued some statements today that they're a little concerned that the CDC hasn't been quite as front and center as it normally would be in these kinds of things.

WHO to their credit I think it you know sort of new especially since the US has has withdrawn from WHO at some level

Realize that they were going to be the major player in this and so they've actually done a really very nice job so far Both being very vigilant about this but also getting information out there, you know CDC's finally updated the websites overnight And it's finally got some information out there But they've been a little slow to be honest in my opinion in making this clear and so I you know fortunately Mainstream

Kathryn Lake

media

has actually picked it up and done a pretty good job of getting the word out there But normally by now we would have had a lot more

statements and publicity from CDC directly sort of giving people a clear message about this.

You know, again, WHO has done a very nice job for most of the world in kind of coordinating this.

And I do, as I've read about it, I'm not directly involved in it.

But it does seem that the cruise ship operator has also been very responsible about this and has not tried to pull any fast ones about this that they've been very careful.

They've had some of the crew have gotten sick as well.

And so they've also taken it very seriously.

But it is a little bit

of a challenge and certainly an eye-opening thing every time one of these happens when we realize how fragmented public health is around the world still to this day.

Dr. But we've got about a minute left before we let you go and not to not to sound hysterical and definitely not to cause any panic but you talked about some of the people in the U.S.

who were on the ship who are in their incubation periods being let in your words out into the wild.

Do we need to start

worrying about a possible pandemic again if people are getting off the boat and they're incubated and we are relying on that contact tracing that may or may not be as good as we hope.

Should we start to be concerned?

Yeah, I don't think I would put this into that category at this point.

I mean, this has to be a really concerted

time in contact.

So it's not something like COVID or flu or more casual contact, coughing and sneezing.

You really have to be in sustained contact with people to have this spread.

So at this point, the way the virus acts, I wouldn't call this a pandemic risk, but you know, you always worry as these things get reintroduced, they're introduced into new areas.

Well, Dr. Conway, we appreciate your time today.

Thanks for being here.

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

Local voices and statewide impact.

It's Daybring with Brian and Jamie.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

It is 7.52 right now.

You're listening to the Civic Media Network.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And good morning, I'm Brian Noonan.

You may not know this, but this is National Travel and Tourism Week.

Everybody in Wisconsin knows how much tourism adds to the state's economy.

Well, the governor is traveling all across Wisconsin to highlight the importance of tourism.

And on Tuesday, the governor's tour took him to Cable Natural History Museum, Civic Media's reporter for WZB, BZH and WHSM.

Maddie Schaefer joins us now.

She was there.

She saw the governor.

Welcome, Maddie.

We're glad you're here.

Very exciting.

So give us a little background on the Cable History Museum and what the governor was doing up there.

Yeah, so the Cable Natural History Museum is a great place.

I've actually known it for a while, but it was nice to be back.

They are a little museum tucked away in Cable, Wisconsin.

They're the only accredited museum in the North Woods, pretty much.

Wow.

Yeah, and they get about 10,000 visitors a year.

So they're a big part of what brings tourism to this area.

And this year they were doing a very cool wetlands exhibit.

So they changed their exhibits every once in a while, you know, to teach children about wildlife and all of the good things around the north woods here.

And yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Maddie, for people who haven't maybe been to that part of Wisconsin, maybe not familiar with it, what makes cable such, besides the Natural History Museum, what other things in the area make cable such a good draw for tourists?

Why do they love to come to the area?

Yeah, I mean, I would say restaurants is a big thing, but they do a lot of fun activities.

I know the cable chamber works hard there to put on a lot of events.

They do like a fall festival that people love.

um yeah it's it's it's a small town but you know it brings a lot of people and in tourism is really what makes a small town like that thrive i mean they're also a part of the american berkabiner you know with the trails close by um in sealy um so i know that's a huge part for them too um along with hayward but yeah

Maggie Schaefer is our guest.

She is Civic Media's reporter in Hayward and the North Woods.

So we talk a lot about how important tourism is.

Maggie, what are the numbers coming out of the DNR about and the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, rather?

How much of an impact does tourism have here in

Wisconsin?

I can't think of an exact number, but it's huge for Northern Wisconsin right now.

How

about $25.8 billion?

Yes.

I've just pulled that from your story.

I'm

not trying to look what up yet.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I forgot I put it in there.

Sorry, it's been a while.

Yes, it's huge for this area.

And we in Northern Wisconsin contributes to a lot of that for Wisconsin as a whole.

But yeah, it's huge for this area, but it's also huge for Wisconsin economy in general.

And like I said, it's what makes the state and Northern Wisconsin thrive.

Maddie Schaefer is our guest.

She is Civic Media's reporter for WBZH and WHSM in the Northwoods, as we like to call it.

Now, when the governor was in cable and he was visiting the museum, did he lay out any specific plans, anything that he talked about specifically that would help tourism in the area grow even more, Maddie?

Yeah, we asked him a little bit, but he kind of just highlighted what he's done so far and how he

Since he's came into office, he's been very much pushing for tourism efforts in the state and a lot of his plans to keep it running for everybody.

But yeah, he just talked a lot about how great the cable area is doing for their efforts in tourism and how it draws so many people each year.

And what they're doing is amazing work.

It's a great place to visit and it's doing great things.

So the governor wasn't done, right?

He stayed in, you said he stayed in cable for about an hour and a half.

He was continuing his tour.

Where was he off to next?

He was going to Athens.

So he was there for about an hour and a half and then got on a plane and flew there.

It was a busy day for him.

Wow.

Any idea where he was going in Athens?

I can't remember where he was.

Northwood's internet broke

up

a

little bit.

Sorry about that.

That's all right.

It's not your fault.

You're good.

So obviously as we talk about the Northwoods for people listening in other parts of the state this morning, outside outdoor recreation is a huge focus.

What is the weather gets nicer, right?

What kind of activities are people going to be experiencing or what can they do?

Since I know you're so familiar with the area, Maddie, what are some things

things that people could do this summer to help boost that tourism industry in the

area.

Yeah, yeah.

So first thing is that, you know, trails are starting to open up.

So people are biking.

People are getting on the ATV and UTVs out here.

A huge one is fishing, you know.

Fishing has a huge impact to our state's economy, but also, you know, funding the DNR and what they do.

And if you haven't heard, you know, they've been struggling a little bit with their funds.

So fishing is a huge one.

You know, getting on a boat, doing other activities like skiing and, you know, wakeboarding, that's a big one.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's everybody's getting a little excited up here now that it's starting to warm up a little bit.

Good deal.

Well, it's always great to talk to you, Maddie, and we will, uh, we'll try to send more people up there with their full wallets to, uh, leave, leave their money in the Northwoods.

Maddie Schaefer is Civic Media's reporter in Hayward.

You can read her work at civicmedia.us and you can always, always, uh, listen to her if you are listening to WBZH or WHH.

Mattie, always a pleasure.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Take care.

Yeah, just again, one more thing.

It's 114.4 million visits from tourists last year in Wisconsin.

So this is a huge, huge deal.

And I'm glad the governor is jetting around, spending some time in places that aren't usually in the spotlight.

in the state.

So we get them out there.

When we come back, oh my goodness, it's more as you need to know.

If you're listening on WMDX, we will talk to you later, but you can always jump over to our YouTube or Facebook streams or listen on the Civic Media app.

We'll talk to you.

It's daybreak.

This is the Civic Media

Kathryn Lake

Network.

The national news cycle never stops.

but it can be hard to find news about your local community.

Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.

With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.

Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.

0:00