TAOS — Mark Fratrick was cleaning out two sheds on his properties in Taos County this summer when he took a breath that nearly killed him.
Either through a surgical mask he wore as a precaution, or when he might have lapsed and taken it off, Fratrick inhaled one or more viral particles that would gradually open the capillaries surrounding his lungs, allowing them to fill with fluid.
He didn’t have COVID-19. Fratrick had contracted hantavirus, a rare and far deadlier virus that thrives in the hot, dry, dusty American Southwest.
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