Hantavirus and the Return of Pandemic-Era Fear Mongering

Unfortunately, living through a pandemic is nothing new to this generation. Six years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic effectively shut down the world. April 2020 saw half of the global population under some form of government-mandated lockdown, where commerce, travel and public life were brought to a standstill. I am sure you don’t need me to rehash the experience, so let me fast-forward to today, where the world seemingly faces another threat: hantavirus. The cruise ship, having set sail from Argentina and traversed the Atlantic, witnessed a British man fall ill and die under two weeks. A month later, South African health authorities confirmed a positive case of hantavirus. As of 8 May, there have been a total of seven reported cases, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring this as an outbreak. So, is it a global threat? Or has COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the poor, anxious minds of today’s generation? 

The internet is no stranger to speculation, conspiracy theories, and misinformation, fostering a toxic bubble of hostility and worry, in which people find themselves believing in the wrong things. What can this be traced back to? Covid, of course. We simultaneously live in a world riddled with anxiety, whilst cosplaying as the most unserious generation. In the age of the media, people claimed the virus could be spread through your 5G networks, or could be treated with industrial chemicals that could do more harm than coronavirus itself. The problem, however, is that people genuinely believed these ideas, jumping to all the wrong conclusions that caused widespread fear and hysteria across the internet during the Covid era. As a result of these past events, myths are spreading like wildfire as misconceptions about the recent hantavirus outbreak run rampant across social media.  

We simultaneously live in a world riddled with anxiety, whilst cosplaying as the most unserious generation

Firstly, hantavirus isn’t brand-new, and outbreaks of the virus occur every year. Whilst COVID-19 was caused by a new strain of coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, hantaviruses were first identified in 1978 in South Korea. In 1993, surveillance for the disease began in the United States under the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), where the Four Corners region (where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet) witnessed a cluster of the virus. Following this outbreak, only 890 cases have been reported in America over the past thirty-three years. To put this into context, over 350 million people have lived in the United States since then. Health officials have emphasised the unlikelihood that the most recent outbreak will escalate into the widespread nature that coronavirus did.  

This is further supported by the fact hantavirus is primarily a rodent-borne disease. The anxieties surrounding COVID-19 have certainly manifested themselves in the quick conclusions people have jumped to about how the virus can be contracted. Coronavirus is entirely airborne, where infectious particles and droplets transmitted through the air can cause quick contagion. Hantavirus typically requires close contact with rodent urine or droppings, causing the virus to then become airborne and enter the body. Although officials have confirmed the strain to be Andes virus, where it is passed via human transmission, individuals who were on board the cruise ship, and those who had contracted the virus, are being closely monitored and are currently in quarantine. This strain of the virus requires close, prolonged contact with an infected person, whereas COVID-19, as we all know, could be transmitted through casual interactions, such as simply being in the same room as someone with the virus. 

So, why has hantavirus caused such widespread hysteria? In the age of social media, the internet can serve as a powerful tool in blurring the lines between localised cases and possible pandemics, as algorithms and the collective trauma of COVID-19 have intensified the spread of misinformation. Rumours circulating regarding the virus are reflective of the ones during Covid, claiming it to be a manufactured biological weapon, or advocating unverified treatments. Furthermore, the rise of AI has resulted in fabricated images, pinpointing cases of the virus across the globe that simply do not exist. If you are worried about the virus, I implore you to stick to trusted sources of information, such as CDC or WHO – do not make your health anxiety worse by trusting the fearmongers on social media.  

To try and lift your spirits, however, we are certainly a generation that uses humour to cope with things we would rather not deal with, and hantavirus is no exception to this. I have seen Instagram posts of the accused rat carrying the virus being hung in Spain, TikToks suggesting Sombr is the cause of the outbreak, girls claiming they are immune to the virus because of all the previous ‘rats’ they have dated, and six-seven jokes galore. 

So, all those misconceptions about hantavirus? It seems you were myth-taken. It will always be a cause for concern when the WHO establishes an outbreak of something potentially harmful to human life. However, social media has greatly misconstrued something that health officials have already stressed is highly unlikely to be the start of a new COVID-19 style global pandemic, due to the zoonotic nature of the virus. Look after yourselves, keep your rooms clean, and do not go near any rodents!