Quick Take…Hantavirus Cruise Ship Weirdness
Kit Knightly
On May 2nd it was reported to the World Health Organization that a “cluster” of passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius had fallen ill with “severe respiratory illness”.
As of May 4th, seven passengers had fallen ill, resulting in three deaths. Lab testing “confirmed” Hantavirus infection in two of the cases, the other five remained “suspected”.
As of this morning, an eighth case – and third “confirmed” – has been reported.
“Confirmed” is a tricky word here, because we’re talking PCR tests. We’re all painfully familiar with those.
Hantaviruses allegedly asymptomatically infect rodents, and can spread disease in people via aerosolized saliva, urine or excrement. The early symptoms are “similar to flu – a fever, fatigue, muscle aches. They may also get shortness of breath, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting or diarrhoea”, according to the BBC.
Person-to-person transmission is occasionally anecdotally reported, but a recent 2022 study concluded there was no evidence to support this..
That’s why it was noteworthy that the WHO reported there were no rats on board the cruise ship, something that is a) very unlikely to be true and b) they couldn’t possibly know at this stage, since the ship is isolating off the Canary Islands.
They were clearly prepping the ground for a “it’s mutated to infect person to person” narrative.
But, at the same time, WHO officials have been downplaying the pandemic potential. Earlier today, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management, gave a press conference outlining that this is “not like coronavirus”, and that the pandemic threat is extremely low.
Five of the eight suspected cases of hantavirus linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship have now been confirmed.
“This is not coronavirus, this is a very different virus,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management said “This is not the same situation we… pic.twitter.com/yTZkN6mQtG
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 7, 2026
Eight people sick, pandemic threat low. Doesn’t sound like big news…and yet the media won’t stop talking about it.
It already has its own WikiPedia entry.
The whole thing feels very odd in a very familiar way.
Just a few hours ago, and totally unrelatedly, the Jerusalem Post published this story:
First case of hantavirus diagnosed in Israel after patient’s visit to Eastern Europe
It’s a very strange headline.
What do they mean by “first”? Are they just being click-baity? Or do they know there will be more? And yes, it was “after a visit to Eastern Europe”…several months after.
[EDIT: They don’t mean “first ever in Israel”, either. The article explicity says otherise:“this is not the first time Israelis have been diagnosed with hantavirus”]The title implies a link to the cruise ship, but the body of the article details this is a totally different strain of Hantavirus than the Andes strain, and can’t infect person to person. So why are they mentioning it?
Oh, and this “case” was again confirmed by PCR testing:
A later PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test was conducted to detect the virus’s genetic material, confirming the infection.
So what’s going on here? Why?
I guess we’ll see.
Perhaps the most interesting discussion about this issue has been the “ethical dilemma” of countries like Cabo Verde refusing to let the ship dock.
So, are they trying to normalize this utilitarian calculus using a relatively small-scale example? Or is it about studying responses?
It has been suggested it may be suspicious that Hantavirus was touted as a potential “next pandemic” by GAVI back in 2021, but GAVI published a whole series of “next pandemic” articles around that time, on everything from Ebola to Nipah virus.
Just in case you were wondering, as yet only one vaccine has ever been produced for any of the hantaviruses – and that was never approved for use anywhere but China and South Korea.
But the good news is that Moderna have been working with the Vaccine Innovation Center at Korea University College of Medicine on an MRNA Hanta vaccine since late 2024.
Going by the Covid vax timeline, it should basically be done any time now.
Oh, and Moderna’s stock value jumped 10% when the Hantavirus hit the headlines.
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“It so happens that long-tailed mice, which spread the hantavirus, are found in the southern cone of South America, but they haven’t been detected in Tierra del Fuego, where the ship departed from. It’s too cold for them. Nor have any cases of hantavirus been recorded in its epidemiological history”.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-07/cruise-ship-passengers-trace-the-origin-of-the-hantavirus-outbreak-its-being-said-here-that-it-may-have-been-the-dutch-couple.html
They’ve even made a Lego Hantavirus clip – that was quick.
https://nitter.poast.org/drew_ponder/status/2052413268199932189#m
Quick lock everyone down till the vax is released, We are dooomed, dooomed. 😄
“Hanta” is apparently Hungarian slang for “Nonsense”.
I refuse to get Hantavirus just because some anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists wont pay attention to a Green Sustainable World Community!
At a minimum this one is being run up the flagpole to gauge public reaction. Thousands of algorithms will be working overtime scouring the internet for SM comments, monitoring emails and listening to phone calls.
Monkeypox was a no, no. Just the name alone doomed it to failure.
This ratty thing, unless they name it Roland Rat lurgy, has better foundations. A 40 percent death toll has scare potential. It was always clear that Plandemic 2.0 would have to up the death rate or at least the perceived one to fulfill Billy Goat’s prophecy of “the next one will get their attention”.
It is still very early days to see if this one has legs and if they can run with it, but a fraudulent disease would not kill people. So, even though they could publish fake inflated death statistics and get away with it for so many weeks, afterwards it would quickly become apparent in the real world – because the public would not personally know anyone dying of it – that it was nonsense and it would lose plausibility.
Of course, they could be planning to have the gunk in a syringe ready to inject everyone within just a few short weeks from the initial manufactured panic phase. Therefore, not allowing enough time for the population to discover it is a scam.
It’s a bit of a head scratcher as to the gameplan here.
Funny how all these newly-discovered/mutated “viruses” have flu-like symptoms.
“Fear not! We’ll protect you.”