Tag: hantavirus

RFK Jr. Faces Backlash After Hantavirus PREP Act Declaration

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing backlash from some in the medical freedom movement after he announced last week that he signed a “targeted PREP Act” declaration to develop and deploy medical countermeasures for hantavirus.

In a post on X, Kennedy said the declaration “helps remove barriers to research and response efforts” for the recent outbreak that has garnered significant media attention during recent weeks.

“HHS is taking this situation seriously and will continue working to protect public health and support the safe development of potential treatments and countermeasures,” he said.

Critics accused Kennedy of contradicting his previous strong stance against the use of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and betraying the values of the medical freedom movement.

Defenders argued that the declaration is narrow in scope and timing — it covers only one generic drug, favipiravir, and lasts only until July 18, 2026.

The PREP Act authorizes the health secretary to issue a declaration that exempts manufacturers and distributors of a vaccine or treatment that addresses a public health emergency from legal liability for injuries caused by those products.

The PREP Act became extremely controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic, because it granted blanket liability protection to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers — including Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax — for nearly every type of injury caused by the vaccines.

As a result, vaccine-injured people have struggled to be recognized, cared for and compensated for their injuries. Vaccine-injured people and the groups representing them have challenged the act’s constitutionality in multiple lawsuits, but have failed to get it overturned.

The Biden administration extended the COVID-19 countermeasures PREP Act declaration through the end of 2029, even though the administration declared the pandemic over.

Kennedy has not rescinded that declaration, despite calls for him to do so.

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First hantavirus, now Ebola; What happened to the 323 vials of viruses that went missing from an Australian laboratory?

This month, a hantavirus “outbreak” and an Ebola “outbreak” have been reported. 

The widely publicised hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius was managed by the widely discredited World Health Organisation (“WHO”).  And WHO has declared the Ebola “outbreak” as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (“PHEIC”).

This has reminded us of an article we published at the end of 2024 about virus samples that went missing from an Australian laboratory.  So, we are republishing it below.

In 2021, 323 vials of virus samples went missing from a government-operated laboratory in Queensland, Australia. Two of the vials contained hantavirus.

Hantavirus is one of the viruses that causes illnesses referred to as viral haemorrhagic fevers (“VHFs”).   Another virus that causes VHFs is the Ebolavirus.

Update: An investigation was carried out into the missing vials of viruses by the Queensland Ministry of Health, which determined they were likely destroyed rather than stolen or lost.  According to a “fact check” blog by Snopes, “the agency said the samples were unlikely to have been lost or stolen, and were instead unaccounted for due to incomplete lab records, adding that the breach caused ‘no risk or harm’ to staff or the broader community.”

According to the Mirror, “questions have surfaced over [the missing vials] location following the deadly virus infecting passengers aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship.”

Interestingly, 323 missing vials of “live” virus did not attract the attention of an international response that required WHO’s management, but suspected cases of hantavirus on a cruise ship did.

Just as interesting is that missing vials of “live” virus posed no risk to the public at large, but a few suspected cases of “the deadly” hantavirus on a cruise ship, which is not transmitted between people, did.

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Hantavirus: News hype does not reflect reality

There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calculated a “news-to-death ratio” of 8,176-to-1. In other words, for every death attributed to swine flu, there were over eight thousand news stories. Tuberculosis, by contrast, received less than 0.1 news stories per death over the same period.

If that sounds absurd, it is, and yet very little has changed.

Take the current hantavirus scare. A cruise ship, the MV Hondius, sits off Cape Verde. There are 7 cases in total (2 confirmed, 5 suspected) and 3 deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German national. Passengers have been confined to their cabins while evacuations and disinfection efforts are organised. It is, undeniably, a dramatic story: a floating Petri dish, a whiff of quarantine and a hint of the exotic.

In the past week alone, there have been at least 10 to 15 unique news stories, generating hundreds of articles. For a disease that, in normal times, struggles to attract even a single weekly mention, this represents a surge bordering on the hysterical.

And yet it is worth stepping back for a moment and asking, what are we actually looking at?

Hantavirus is a rare disease. In the United States, which diligently tracks such cases, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed instances since 1993. In the UK, the situation is even less clear: from 2012 to early 2025, only 11 domestically acquired symptomatic cases have been recorded. Surprisingly, nine of these cases were not linked to cruise ships or exotic travel, but rather to a more mundane source – exposure to “pet fancy rats” or rodents bred as reptile feed.

This is not a pathogen ready to spread through the Home Counties. However, the rarity is not the issue; visibility is.

Diseases that afflict the poor, quietly and persistently, rarely command attention. Tuberculosis killed 1.23 million people globally in 2024. Over a million deaths every year, largely concentrated in less affluent parts of the world. It is one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to medicine, and yet it barely registers in the Western news cycle.

Why? Because TB is familiar, it is slow; It lacks narrative flair, and it does not trap well-heeled passengers in their cabins while helicopters circle overhead.

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Hantavirus Case Reported at NY High School Not Linked to Deadly Cruise Ship Outbreak

Health officials in Ontario County, New York, are investigating a suspected case of hantavirus involving a student at Geneva High School, just after a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship sparked international concerns about a COVID-2.0 scenario.

According to health officials, the case is not connected to the rare Andes strain that killed three passengers aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship and prompted the quarantine of 18 Americans, including three New Yorkers.

Officials emphasize this is a locally acquired infection typical of the hantavirus strains already present in the United States, and there is no evidence of risk to other students, staff, or the general public.

The Ontario County Department of Health received the alert Thursday morning.

Geneva City Schools sent a letter to parents Friday afternoon confirming the investigation and reassuring families that the situation poses no threat to the school community.

“The Ontario County Department of Health is investigating a suspected case of locally acquired hantavirus involving a Geneva High School student,” the district said in the announcement. “The Department of Health has advised that there is no evidence of risk to other students or staff related to this situation. Health officials have also emphasized that this situation is not tied to the hantavirus strain currently receiving national media attention.”

Ontario County Public Health Director Kate Ott described the timing as “horrible” given the ongoing national attention to the cruise ship outbreak, but stressed that the student’s symptoms have been mild fatigue, aches, and lethargy for several weeks, according to a report from local station WHAM.

“We thought surely this can’t be Hantavirus in relation to what’s going on in the media at this time,” Ott said.

“The case is mild, and hantavirus is not always mild,” Ott added. “It can be really severe, so we’re really grateful for that.”

She noted this is only the second suspected hantavirus case in Ontario County in the past two decades.

The student is not required to quarantine.

Officials are urging residents to take standard precautions when cleaning areas that may have rodent droppings, such as attics, cabins, sheds, and garages, by wearing masks and gloves and wetting down debris before sweeping to avoid aerosolizing particles.

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Hantavirus Media Hype: The Real Lesson Is Not About Rodents — It Is About Us

Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as “deadly virus,” “mysterious outbreak,” and “health officials concerned.” Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this “new illness.”

For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.

A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.

As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.

Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential “emerging crisis.” The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.

The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.

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CNN, Network Which Stoked COVID Fears Constantly, Warns Against ‘Calm-Mongering’ on Hantavirus

CNN, the network that helped bring you the fear-mongering which prolonged the worst parts of the last pandemic, would like you to know that they’d like a sequel and would you please stop “calm-mongering” about hantavirus?

In a ludicrous story about the Andes strain of the disease — the first (and hopefully only) outbreak of which appeared on a cruise ship called the MV Hondius, which docked in the Canary Islands and transferred patients back to their country of origin — CNN noted that people were being too goshdarn normal about things while noting that “still-fresh memories of the loss and disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic” might be affecting our response.

Yes, whatever may have given you that idea, CNN?

That call for masking was in 2023, for those of you who didn’t check the date.

Anyhow, CNN bills itself as “The Most Trusted Name in News,” but its tagline really should be Rahm Emanuel’s timeless motto: “Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste.” So, even though there are three people dead out of 11 confirmed or suspected cases, according to World Health Organization data as of Wednesday, that didn’t mean it wasn’t time for a piece with a title like “Hantavirus is not Covid-19, but ‘calm-mongering’ risks triggering post-Covid anxiety.”

It’s the “calm-mongering” that poses the biggest risk to these people, with CNN averring that “some health experts say that at points, the messaging has been overly confident and too willing to dismiss the possibility of a threat.”

Ah, yes: The return of “some health experts”! I missed you, fellas. Can you get the Faucinator out of retirement to do his “I am the science!” bit?

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The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater

Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as “deadly virus,” “mysterious outbreak,” and “health officials concerned.” Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this “new illness.”

For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.

A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.

As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.

Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential “emerging crisis.” The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.

The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.

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Project ‘PROVIDENT’: NIAID Launched $70 Million Pandemic Program Targeting Hantaviruses Before Outbreak

A massive National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pandemic-preparedness program focused in part on hantaviruses was already actively underway—and had just achieved unprecedented structural and vaccine-platform mapping of Andes hantavirus—before the highly publicized 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak ordeal emerged.

The federally funded initiative, called PROVIDENT (“Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats”), officially began in September 2024 and remains active through June 2029, according to NIH RePORTER documents.

The project is run by Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.

Importantly, the project is not a small short-term grant.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine announced in September 2024 that the consortium received a:

“five-year, $14 million per year grant”

That places the total projected funding for the program at roughly $70 million over its active lifespan.

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George Bush’s 2005 Fowl Play

A leading columnist for the Washington Post just wrote: “Hantavirus has an incubation period of up to 8 weeks and kills 30-40% of people who show symptoms….It’s not pandemic yet and probably won’t be, but if it were, the rational action would be—lockdown.” She added: “If this thing goes pandemic, I personally will be hiding in my house.”

Yes, and let the workers and peasants deliver food and drink to you while you safely type and tell the rest of us what to do. We know how this works. 

Keep in mind that no one thought this way a quarter century ago. No one was pushing for society-wide lockdowns in the event of a pandemic. 

That changed in 2005. I wrote an article about it at the time. It was my first foray into commentary on pandemic planning. I can recall my shock that George W. Bush gave a presser in which he pushed for lockdowns. I was even more shocked that more people were not alarmed. 

I wrote the following article reprinted below. So far as I know, I was alone in raising protest against this insanity. Here we are 20-plus years later and “lockdown until vaccinate” is the presumed protocol. 

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Hantavirus: Have We Learned Nothing? The Fear Machine Is Starting Again. This Time, You Should Recognize It.

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 recognize more than 50 hantavirus species worldwide, with approximately two dozen known to infect humans. Most infections occur through inhalation of aerosolized rodent urine, feces, 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. 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 percent of U.S. 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 aerosolized 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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