{"id":11978,"date":"2026-05-13T15:12:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11978"},"modified":"2026-05-15T12:28:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T17:28:30","slug":"the-hantavirus-outbreak-is-resurrecting-covid-era-misinformation-tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/05\/13\/the-hantavirus-outbreak-is-resurrecting-covid-era-misinformation-tactics\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT: The Hantavirus Outbreak Is Resurrecting Covid-Era Misinformation Tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/12\/well\/hantavirus-covid-misinformation.html\">NYT<\/a> Experts say A.I. tools have made it even easier for influencers and others to spread false messages online. Influencers and others on social media have seized on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/03\/well\/what-is-hantavirus-cruise-ship.html\">the hantavirus outbreak<\/a>&nbsp;to revive disinformation that sowed distrust during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some users on X have called the outbreak, which began on a Dutch cruise ship and was first reported to the World Health Organization earlier this month, 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\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/09\/science\/hantavirus-vaccines-treatment.html\">no widely available shot<\/a>&nbsp;on the market. The claims have been viewed millions of times on X, TikTok and other platforms, according to researchers who track content online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe conspiracy theories from Covid-19 never really died,\u201d said Yotam Ophir, who studies misinformation and conspiracy theories at the University at Buffalo. \u201cThey lay dormant for a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/12\/well\/hantavirus-covid-misinformation.html\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT Experts say A.I. tools have made it even easier for influencers and others to spread false messages online. Influencers and others on social media have seized on&nbsp;the hantavirus outbreak&nbsp;to revive disinformation that sowed distrust during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some users on X have called the outbreak, which began on a Dutch cruise ship and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines","category-hantavirus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12041,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11978\/revisions\/12041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}