Woman on hantavirus ship was told her hantavirus symptoms were anxiety

[PlimptonInSummertown]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/11/french-womandoctors-hantavirus-symptoms-hv-hondius

This takes the cake - a woman on the freaking hantavirus ship got told that her symptoms were due to being anxious.

Obviously there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether she’d have been taken more seriously if she’d been a man. But good grief.

JFC. When will they start listening properly to women?

A locksmith told me that my broken door lock was anxiety. FFS

My workmate was told his brain tumour was stress. He died. Obviously that's not infectious, but it's worrying (and he was a confident, middle-class, middle-aged, British man, with no communication difficulties, ignored by quite a few doctors until it was too late).

A Dr in A&E once dismissed my asthma as anxiety.
I am a diagnosed type two brittle asthmatic and my consultant is based in that very hospital.
I ended up being admitted and kept for 10 days.

Typical! Even with physical symptoms women are told it’s anxiety.

Dear god, when will it stop!

I was told my allergic reaction asthma attack during skin prick allergy tests was anxiety by the Consultant. Strange how ventolin can relieve anxiety these days. Idiot.

I was about the start a thread about this when I found this one.

I doubt a man in that situation would have been told it was just anxiety. He would have been airlifted to hospital from Cape Verde along with the others who I believe were indeed all male.

The woman is now critically ill with severe heart and lung issues, on life support including articial lung.

Absolutely horrific.

It’s been removed

Oooh - thanks for pointing that out!

It looks like the Guardian basically misunderstood the entire story?

All I can say is that I’m very glad that the situation apparently wasn’t as horribly stupid as they made it sound. Of course the poor French woman is still just as ill, but if it was unpreventable that’s a whole different story.

Thank heavens the world isn’t quite as fucking awful as I thought.

I do hope the French woman recovers.

I went to the Dr short of breath, chest pains, racing heart, extreme tiredness and was told what it was anxiety and asked very patronisingly what I was so worried about.

Dh went to the Dr with chest pains and got seen by cardiology within a week for a full work up.

No prizes for guessing which one of us had a pulled muscle and which one of us had a long term chronic condition. It took me over 2 years to be taken seriously and diagnosed.