Watching the headlines unfold this week feels like watching a rerun of a movie we’ve seen multiple times before:
- A virus outbreak on a cruise ship.
- Emergency evacuations. Hospital escorts.
- Contact tracing across multiple countries.
- Media outlets flood the public with alarming updates before most people even know what hantavirus is.
The images, the language and the emotional conditioning are familiar because we have seen this exact pattern before. It always begins the same way: create fear first, provide context later, and by the time the facts catch up, the public has already been pushed into a state of panic and vaccinated. It seems every 2 years we get a new viral scare from the media, as the very expensive and intrusive Biosecurity Agenda gets built out. Remember this?:
- 2020: Covid
- 2022: Monkeypox
- 2024: Bird Flu
- 2026: Hantavirus
What is a Hantavirus?
Hantaviruses are a large class of enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses. Today, scientists recognise more than 50 hantavirus species worldwide, with approximately two dozen known to infect humans. Most infections occur through inhalation of aerosolised rodent urine, faeces or saliva (how unclean was that cruise ship?). Human-to-human spread is considered very rare, although the Andes virus in South America has shown limited evidence of person-to-person transmission. For the last 50 years, rodents have been the primary hosts of hantaviruses. However, recent discoveries have shown that hantaviruses also infect bats, moles and shrews.
Before the 1993 outbreak in the Four Corners region of the Southwest (where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet), only 31 hantavirus cases had ever been reported. The initial outbreak affected 24 previously healthy young adults who suddenly developed fever, muscle aches and rapidly progressive respiratory failure, and within days, there were a few deaths. US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) investigators eventually identified a previously unknown hantavirus carried by the deer mouse. It was later named Sin Nombre virus. The deaths resulted from what became known as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (“HPS”). (Do you remember hysterically hearing about this from the CDC or local public health departments? I don’t either …)
After the 1993 outbreak, the CDC began national surveillance for hantavirus infections. As of the end of 2023 (30 years), 890 confirmed hantavirus disease cases had been reported nationwide, as HPS or non-pulmonary hantavirus infections. (A non-pulmonary case is one in which patients tested positive for hantavirus infection but never developed the classic pulmonary phase. Of these, 309 cases were classified as HPS with a case-fatality rate of approximately 35%, which is about 10 deaths per year.
Historical surveillance has shown that approximately 96 per cent of US cases occurred west of the Mississippi River, reflecting the geographic range of the deer mouse and related rodent reservoirs. However, at least one case has been identified in nearly every state.
The CDC reports that hantaviruses are spread through exposure to infected rodent urine, droppings or saliva, especially when contaminated materials become aerosolised and inhaled. As previously stated, deer mice are considered the principal reservoir for Sin Nombre virus in North America. Hantaviruses found in the United States are not believed to spread from person to person.
Long-term CDC surveillance has demonstrated that hantavirus activity fluctuates with environmental conditions that influence rodent populations. Researchers studying deer mouse ecology in the Southwest have observed that fluctuations in infected rodent populations are closely linked to environmental conditions.
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