The hantavirus outbreak is prompting COVID flashbacks — including the conspiracies
WASHINGTON — The deadly outbreak of a rare strain of hantavirus on a cruise has generated echoes of the pandemic era, includinga reprise of a familiar drumbeat ofquestionable theories from social media personalities prominent for their COVID-19 skepticism.
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At the moment, ironically, the public health establishment and the conspiracists challenging it actually seem to agree on the big picture: Hantavirus is not like the COVID-19 virus, and for now, the risk to the general public remains low.
But the speed at which a handful of people who became influential amid COVID-19 have begun recycling theories, from baseless suggestions about the origin of the current outbreakto unproven treatments, illustrates a new reality for any emerging public health threat.
It also shows the long tail of the pandemic, as backlash to the public health response continues to fuel distrust in institutions and calls for retribution.
And this time, the US officials handling the outbreak and messaging about the threat maintain close ties to the very sphere challenging it.
“This is just our future,” said Ashish Jha, a fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School who was the White House COVID response coordinator from 2022-2023. “We are going to have the wild, wild west of information, because I don’t see any movement toward doing anything else.”
Hantavirus is a dangerous but rare disease usually transmitted by rodent droppings. The outbreak on the polar cruise ship MV Hondius, however, is of a strain of the virus that has been documented to transmit between people in certain circumstances. There are no approved vaccines or proven cures other than supportive medical care. Three people have died and dozens of former passengers are being monitored and quarantined around the world after the first patients are believed to have likelycaught the virus on a pre-cruise bird-watching trip. The virus can incubate for weeks before causing symptoms, and there are limited studies of cases, leaving many questions about the full extent of this outbreak.
Still, the virus is believed to be far less transmissible and less prone to new mutations than coronavirus, reassuring scientists that the outbreak is unlikely to spread widely if the quarantine protocols hold.
In the meantime, however, many of the figures who became famous as critics of the COVID response and purveyors of fringe theories about the virus are re-upping many of those same ideas around hantavirus.
On a weekly grassroots call organized by MAHA Action, a group aligned with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the topic of the week was failings of the US response to COVID. But as Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III, mused aloud about the origins of the pandemic, he began talking about hantavirus.
“And now you look at the hantavirus on the cruise ship and you see that, you know, does Argentina have any BSL-4 labs?” Kennedy said, referencing bio-containment labs as he mimed typing an internet search. “Oh, yeah, they have one. It’s a hantavirus lab. So, I mean … it’s this massive history of viruses appearing only after they’ve been researched in these sort of labs.”
A biosafety level 4 lab did open in Buenos Aires recently, according to press reports, which say it could have the capacity to research hantaviruses among other diseases. But the lab was opened in the last few years — long after the first identification of the Andes strain of hantavirus and well after multiple documented cases of human-to-human transmission. The MV Hondius passengers had embarked from a different region of Argentina for their cruise to the Antarctic.
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COVID contrarians believe viral research may have caused that pandemic, but there is no conclusive explanation of the virus’s origins in China. Many scientists believe it jumped from animals to humans in markets; others believe it could have been contracted in a scientific lab. World Health Organization researchers recently said all hypotheses could still be valid.
Another familiar theory circulating is about treatment methods. At the height of the pandemic, many of the critics of the response who were also skeptical of vaccines promoted an anti-parasitic drug, ivermectin, as a potential treatment.
Those theories are now recirculating, this time about hantavirus.
Mary Talley Bowden, an ENT doctor who is a longtime activist against mRNA vaccines and frequent purveyor of fringe medical theories, including treating COVID with the drug, posted a message on X last week that ivermectin should work against hantavirus. The post was amplified by another promoter of conspiracy theories, former Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, in a post that got over 3 million views.
Studies have not shown the drug, which targets parasites and not viruses, to be effective against COVID, either in terms of speeding recovery or preventing hospitalization. Medical experts say there is no evidence that shows it would be effective against hantavirus and does pose risks. While it is safe for human use when prescribed correctly, doctors have warned of the dangers of overdosing or people using versions of the drug intended for animals.
And many of the figures who questioned scientists and officials during COVID are similarly casting doubt over the outbreak entirely.
“I’m not doing hantavirus. I’m not doing Ebola. I’m not doing bird flu,” wrote Toby Rogers, an anti-vaccine activist Kennedy has tapped for an advisory committee on autism. He listed other diseases and said if a number of public health advocates were “in jail … all of these fake threats to public health will suddenly disappear.”
Robert Malone, a former mRNA researcher who has become a fringe medical voice and was a onetime vice chair of a key vaccine committee appointed by Kennedy, has been posting on X that he doesn’t believe there is any human spread ofhantavirus at all, making evidence-less assertions that rats onboard the ship were the likely source of the outbreak. He has posted several statements against public health lockdowns and suggesting the discussion of the outbreak is “psychological bioterrorism.”
Public health officials are not suggesting broad lockdowns for the outbreak, and they are optimistic it will be contained by properly tracking and quarantining the passengers who were exposed. Jha is hopeful that will be enough to limit spread.
He acknowledges the public health apparatus, including himself, made mistakes during COVID. But he fears the pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction and the current US leaders, borne of that backlash, are not providing enough information to the public other than saying there’s no cause for alarm.
“The truth is that COVID was hard,” Jha said. “We should have had a very real, detailed investigation on what went right or wrong. … My view is that right now, it would be helpful to have somebody giving good public health guidance.”
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