{"id":11980,"date":"2026-05-13T15:15:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11980"},"modified":"2026-05-15T12:26:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T17:26:29","slug":"were-asking-the-wrong-question-about-the-hantavirus-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/05\/13\/were-asking-the-wrong-question-about-the-hantavirus-outbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Vox: We\u2019re asking the wrong question about the hantavirus outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/488471\/hantavirus-pandemic-covid-cruise-ship-cdc-trump\">Vox<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The problem with hantavirus coverage isn\u2019t the alarmism. Should you be&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2026\/05\/11\/make-it-make-sense-should-you-be-worried-about-hantavirus\/\">worried about the hantavirus outbreak<\/a>? Should you be&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/dr-marc-siegel-hantavirus-cruise-outbreak-alarming-fear-spreading-faster-facts\">afraid<\/a>? Should you&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/05\/10\/politics\/video\/hantavirus-cdc-covid-fda-trump\">be panicking<\/a>? Should you start&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rd.com\/article\/hantavirus-outbreak\/\"><em>freaking out<\/em><\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019ve been following the coverage of the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, these are the questions you\u2019ve seen posed in headlines. And a small tip from inside the media: If a question is posed in a headline, the answer is almost always \u201cno.\u201d (It\u2019s such a common trope that there\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines\">even an informal law about it<\/a>.) So, unless you\u2019re a passenger or close contact of someone on the Hondius, you shouldn\u2019t really worry about the hantavirus outbreak. You shouldn\u2019t really fear it. You definitely shouldn\u2019t panic. And do I really need to tell you that freaking out generally stops being acceptable behavior after the age of 15? As my colleague Dylan Scott\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/health\/488101\/what-is-hantavirus-cruise-ship-outbreak\">has reported<\/a>, by far the most likely outcome is that the hantavirus outbreak will ultimately be controlled and won\u2019t become something that will disturb the general public.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2026\/05\/1167477\">As of May 12<\/a>, there were 11 confirmed or probable cases and three deaths. While a hantavirus outbreak in a tightly packed cruise ship is new and certainly suboptimal \u2014 not to mention\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/bhr\/2020\/07\/08\/the-case-of-the-diamond-princess-stranded-at-sea-in-a-pandemic\/\">bringing back unsettling memories of early Covid<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 experience with the deadly virus strongly suggests it probably\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/hantavirus-covid-infectious-disease-experts\/\">doesn\u2019t have the transmissibility<\/a>\u00a0required to become a larger pandemic threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/488471\/hantavirus-pandemic-covid-cruise-ship-cdc-trump\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vox The problem with hantavirus coverage isn\u2019t the alarmism. Should you be&nbsp;worried about the hantavirus outbreak? Should you be&nbsp;afraid? Should you&nbsp;be panicking? Should you start&nbsp;freaking out? If you\u2019ve been following the coverage of the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, these are the questions you\u2019ve seen posed in headlines. And a small tip [&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-11980","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\/11980","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=11980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12040,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11980\/revisions\/12040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}