The Hantavirus Outbreak Is Resurrecting Covid-Era Misinformation Tactics

….Some users on X have called the outbreak…a hoax designed to influence a new round of elections in the United States, or have falsely claimed that hantavirus is a side effect of the Covid vaccine. Others have warned about the possibility of lockdowns and vaccines, despite the fact that there has been no discussion of such measures and there’s no widely available shot on the market. …

“The conspiracy theories from Covid-19 never really died,” said Yotam Ophir, who studies misinformation and conspiracy theories at the University at Buffalo. “They lay dormant for a few years.”

Public health experts say the outbreak of hantavirus, which spreads rarely from person to person, poses far less of a threat than Covid, which killed more than 7 million people worldwide after it emerged in China in late 2019. But the rush to embrace a new round of conspiracy theories has them concerned.

Even if the hantavirus outbreak is quickly brought under control, they fear this is a warning sign that officials will face significant pushback should they need the nation’s cooperation in controlling the next major health threat.

“The next time when we need to face a big challenge as a society, we’re just not in a good place to cope with it,” Dr. Ophir said.

Part of the problem, he said, is that much of the misinformation and distrust generated during the Covid pandemic was never meaningfully addressed.

One 2024 survey found more than a quarter of respondents still mistakenly believed Covid vaccines caused thousands of deaths, years after Americans first started getting the shots. Another 2023 survey found that more than a third of Americans believed the virus responsible for Covid was released on purpose, a theory unsupported by any credible evidence.

Exactly.

You could already see the attempts that had the same pattern and tone of 2020.

I said it on another thread that I know people that have said,'we're not doing this again'. I'll add that it was said by normie people with a certain tone that reminded me of that anonymously authored 'The Man Who Wanted To Be Left Alone'.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝

From 1993 to 2023 (that’s 30 years to you CA public school graduates) in the US, more people were struck by lightning than contracted the hantavirus.

None, zip, nada, zero in my state of KY.

Surefire proof we are all gonna die if the healthcare bureaucrats aren’t allowed to imprison us.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4378676/posts

Moderna working on a hantavirus vaccine after global pandemic fears sparked
MSN ^ | May 8, 2026 | Alison Bloom
Posted on 5/10/2026, 11:11:01 PM by DoodleBob

The recent outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has renewed attention on the efforts to develop a vaccine for the virus.

…

Work on the vaccine began 15 years ago by the founders of EnsiliTech, a biotech company based in the U.K. “We looked at hantavirus and saw it was pretty neglected,” said Matt Slade, a company co-founder and its chief of staff. “There wasn’t really any work in the sector.”

The EnsiliTech vaccine, which is being developed to fight the virus, uses messenger RNA technology, similar to that used in COVID-19 shots. The hantaan virus, common in East Asia, is the cause of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, a condition characterized by internal bleeding and kidney damage.

…

Moderna has conducted successful trials in rodents, the animals responsible for transmitting hantavirus to humans. Slade, however, estimates it will be another three to four years before the vaccine, which has not yet begun human testing, reaches early-stage clinical trials. Slade also indicated that the company might develop a second vaccine specifically targeting the Andes strain, the one linked to the recent cruise ship outbreak.

Completing the Phase 2 and 3 trials for the vaccine will likely take an additional five years without the significant support, such as the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, which expedited the development of Covid vaccines during President Donald Trump’s first term.

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