Are we sitting ducks for a Hantavirus epidemic? (POLL)

[orangecrush]

I just read that a case has now been found in Switzerland.

With the present freak show responsible for the nations health, are we seeing a rerun of the first Trump death march?

79 votes, 3 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes it has begun
	20 (25%)
	No this is different
	17 (22%)
	Stock up on Ivermectin and anal flashlights
	0 (0%)
	Yes they want us dead and believe they can run everything with AI
	4 (5%)
	Say your pwayers, Wabbit
	2 (3%)
	Stocking up on masks and sanitizer already
	1 (1%)
	Yes he is literally the Antichrist
	7 (9%)
	Fetal position
	0 (0%)
	Don't worry be happy
	1 (1%)
	Too early to tell
	27 (34%)
	3 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[ZDU]

1. Let the Games Begin!

[orangecrush]

2. God help us

[FSogol]

3. Last night my Maine Coon cat woke me up by laying on his back beside my bed & tossing a dead mouse from paw to paw.

When he got bored he chomped the entire mouse down, leaving no trace.
I think my house is protected.

[orangecrush]

4. Good Kitty!

[womanofthehills]

12. My dogs caught a gopher two nights ago -then one buried it

When I woke up in the morning, of course they were chewing on the dead gopher on their bed next to mine. First thing I thought of was plague flees - but oh well! They have a doggie door out to a huge run so they made a midnight trip as I was sleeping.

[FSogol]

14. Yuck! We have to lock out cat door. Our house would be full of raccoons and possums. n/t

[irisblue]

5. I'm not getting on any cruise ships & I have 2 cats

I heard about the hanta virus cruise ship on the BBC overnight to the US a few nights ago.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/g-s1-120234/cruise-ship-hantavirus


https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/two-cases-hantavirus-which-spreads-human-to-human-linked-ship-south-africa-says-2026-05-06/



Also it turns out I am very very very afraid of being on a ship on an ocean

[orangecrush]

6. Good luck!

[edhopper]

22. It is most likely

they did not contract the virus on the ship.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I Thought It Was Spread By Rodents

Can't envision how they would be as pernicious as a virus shared person to person just by our breathing.
Seems like a radically different situation.
Has there been evidence of P2P transmission. I don't recall hearing about that, but doesn't mean anything more than I may have missed it

[orangecrush]

8. Check this out

Yes, as of May 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health authorities suspect that human-to-human transmission of a rare strain of hantavirus occurred on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

NPR
+4
While hantavirus typically spreads from rodents to humans, this specific outbreak involves the Andes virus strain, which is known to be capable of passing directly between people, often through close contact.

NPR
+1

[ProfessorGAC]

9. Son Of A Gun!

Well, that's not good.

[orangecrush]

10. Not at all.

Not with the present den of grifters and sociopaths.

And you can bet there will be no vaccine developed.

[edhopper]

23. So it was brought on the ship

not contracted on board.

[appalachiablue]

27. Thanks, here we go again.

[orangecrush]

31. You betcha!

[John Farmer]

35. This particular Hantavirus

is supposed to be able to be able to be transmitted human to human as well as mouse/rat to human.

[womanofthehills]

11. Ten yrs ago, a young college girl a town over in NM died of Hanta virus

She got a job at an Apple ranch retreat that had her sweeping up mice feces from cabins that were vacant over the summer. She was given no respirators or anything to spray down mouse droppings. It was sad, as her mom was the teller in the bank in our small town. The mom would often be seen at the tiny local cemetery lying on her daughter’s grave. Beyond sad!

Grok- “ In 2016, 20-year-old Shawnee Romero from Moriarty/Torrance County, New Mexico, died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome on June 9 after cleaning up large amounts of rodent feces and urine at her job at the Manzano Mountain Retreat and Apple Ranch (also referred to as Apple Ranch in some coverage). She was exposed while disturbing mouse droppings (likely from deer mice, the primary carrier of Sin Nombre virus in the region), which can aerosolize the virus for inhalation. pressreader.com pressreader.com
• Hantavirus vs. plague: New Mexico sees occasional plague cases (bacterial, from fleas on rodents), but this was confirmed as hantavirus, a viral illness. State health officials noted it as one of the hantavirus deaths that year. ksl.com
• Symptoms typically start flu-like and can rapidly progress to severe respiratory distress.”

[orangecrush]

15. Very sad

Thanks for sharing.

[Arthur_Frain]

13. Not necessarily hantavirus.

Not even measles, although because we’re stupid it’s making a resurgence, we possess the tools to beat it back into nothing if only the adults would ever get elected to office again.

It’s the next “unknown unknown” to quote a conservative vocabularic miscreant. The administration in its ultimate wisdom decided to replace career diplomats, virologists, scientists, generals, et al with fox news hosts, charlatans, and yes men cultists. If they’re lucky, nothing arises in the next 3 years. If we’re all unlucky, there’s a new pandemic that requires everyone’s best and brightest…and we’re going to gum up the works.

I have no predictive powers, but it seems to me this is what they usually think up to make the really scary big disaster movies. I don’t have a lot of optimism these days.

[LeftInTX]

16. That's how Gene Hackman's wife died. He died from other causes.

It is not contagious from person to person. You get it from rodent feces and only from specific rodents. Rodents were in their New Mexico house.

It is already endemic to the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/28/gene-hackman-betsy-arakawa-final-autopsy-results-complex-health-issues

[orangecrush]

19. Check this out

"Yes, as of May 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health authorities suspect that human-to-human transmission of a rare strain of hantavirus occurred on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

NPR
+4
While hantavirus typically spreads from rodents to humans, this specific outbreak involves the Andes virus strain, which is known to be capable of passing directly between people, often through close contact."

NPR

[LeftInTX]

21. Yes, but this hantavirus is also endemic to Argentina.

Yet, it's not considered an epidemic in Argentina.

I believe Argentina has the highest rate of hantavirus in the Americas. I think they lose about 100 people a year.

I don't think a person to person case will result in the virus becoming endemic in the US.

When they say close contact, I'm not quite sure what they mean.

So far, they are allowing passengers to stay on the boat until they reach the Canary Islands. (Unless they are sick) Everyone could have disembarked at Cape Verde, but they didn't. So, I don't know how concerned they are about the disease spreading. I'm thinking there are rats on the ship, but they are saying there isn't.

I went on my first and hopefully last cruise this past January. (Family imposed thing). We disembarked at Progresso, Yucatan which is the longest pier in the world. We took a bus on the four mile pier to get to town. There were bait boxes every 50 feet or so. It was kinda crazy. But the bait boxes indicated that rats are a huge problem on ships.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/06/health/andes-strain-hantavirus-explained

I really didn't enjoy being on a ship for four days, but it was a Disney cruise with the grandkids and an in-law works for Disney. Yesterday I told hubby, "No more cruises: Hantavirus". Being on a ship, just isn't my thing. I wanted to get off and "go the the store" and felt confined. I also didn't like the "dress up" stuff. And I really didn't like the Disney shows. I did enjoy disembarking at Progesso and enjoyed the sites within the Chicxulub crater, including the cenotes and Mayan ruins.

[orangecrush]

32. Thanks

Land Lubber here too!

[Beringia]

17. No cruise ships for me, I can't believe they had it happen on the cruise ship MV Hondius

The outbreak was reported on the MV (Motor Vessel) Hondius, which was travelling between Argentina and Cape Verde

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/03/three-passengers-dead-after-suspected-hantavirus-outbreak-on-cruise-ship

[Initech]

18. Who the hell takes a 35 day cruise?

[orangecrush]

20. I can't even afford a 3 hour tour!

[LeftInTX]

25. I'm pretty sure it's one of those eco-cruises. Ship only has capacity for 196 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Hondius

Most of the passengers were birders.

The ship even stopped in Antarctica.

It was probably a very expensive cruise. Not my thing.

The ship departed Ushuaia on April 1, embarking on a polar expedition that included stops in Antarctica, South Georgia, Saint Helena and Ascension Island, before arriving off the coast of Cape Verde in early May. Foster Mohale, a spokesperson for the National Department of Health in South Africa, said the ship also stopped at Nightingale Island and Tristan da Cunha.

Here is the route. It was a one-way cruise that started at the southern tip of Argentina.

[orangecrush]

29. Thanks

Interesting.

[edhopper]

24. So it was brought on board

by a passenger and not originally contracted on the ship.
How is that different from getting sick from someone while flying.

[Traildogbob]

26. East to answer

Is Trump in charge again? Count on it with the same response to the dying victims.

[Sympthsical]

28. Not nearly as transmissable as Covid

While it's an interesting enough story, it's unlikely to go very far.

Let's rephrase this in mediaese: "Virus hits a few Westerners who were told they were not supposed to be subjected to this sort of thing."

And panic sells clicks and eyeballs.

Not even in the top fifty of things I'm worried about this week.

[orangecrush]

30. I seem to remember hearing something similar

When COVID first got rolling.

If it's not as transmissible as COVID, how did it spread on the ship?

The variant that spread was human to human.

[Sympthsical]

33. Because cruises are human sardine cans

Where close contact and cross-contamination in spaces where people are eating together in large numbers is a thing.

I'm sorry. I can't be anxious about everything just because the media screams jump. And I certainly am not about to join in on Instant Internet Experts who are putting their Social Media University degrees in epidemiology in the microwave as we speak.

It would be a mentally exhausting way to live. I have shit to do.

[EdmondDantes_]

34. Not as easy to transmit and not transmissible aren't the same

Ebola is transmissible human to human and yet it's rare there's a case outside of Africa. A handful of cases of a disease doesn't mean a pandemic is happening. Bird flu variants for example.

[Vinca]

36. It all depends on how communicable it is human to human. In any case, in this country we'd know where

the rats came from: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We can quarantine them for at least 2 years.