#hantavirus

[centers-for-disease-control]

Hey, y’all are going to be hearing a lot of scary information about Hantavirus due to the situation with the cruise ship with infected passengers. Here are couple facts that may help you know more about the situation.

First, what is a Hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses that is spread by rodents that cause severe respiratory disease or kidney disease. They can spread to people through urine, saliva, or droppings from an infected rat. Spread from person to person is not super common and usually involves prolonged close contact.

What is the situation?

A cruise ship left the port in Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1, 2026. The vessel carried a total of 147 individuals, including 88 passengers and 59 crew members. On April 6, a passenger reported fever, headache, and mild diarrhea. By April 11, the passenger developed severe respiratory problems and died the same day on board. On April 24, the body was transported to Saint Helena (a British overseas territory).

On April 24, another passenger, who was in close contact with the first case, went ashore at Saint Helena on with gastrointestinal symptoms. She subsequently deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 25. This passenger later died upon arrival at the emergency department on April 26. On May 4, the case was subsequently confirmed by PCR with hantavirus infection.

Another passenger presented to the ship's doctor on 24 April 2026 with febrile illness, shortness of breath and signs of pneumonia. On 26 April, their condition worsened. He was medically evacuated from Ascension to South Africa on 27 April, where they are currently hospitalised in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Laboratory testing on an extensive respiratory pathogen panel was negative; however, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing confirmed hantavirus infection on 2 May 2026.

So far there have been three deaths and seven cases (two confirmed, five suspected) have been reported.

Is this going to be the next pandemic?

Most likely, no. Even with this specific variant spreading from person to person, this disease is not well suited to cause a pandemic level outbreak due to the low level of transmission. This is a terrible outbreak, and people in affected areas should listen to their local health authorities for specific instructions to stay safe, but there is a very low chance of this going global.

If you have any specific questions, I will try to answer new asks in my inbox regarding the situation but please check with WHO for more information.

Edit: People have validly pointed out that I didn’t cite my sources so I am linking them below

About Hantavirus

An overview of hantavirus, how it's spread and how it can be treated.

Hantavirus

WHO fact sheet on hantaviruses provides key facts and information on transmission, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, prevention and control, a

On 2 May 2026, a cluster of passengers with severe respiratory illness aboard a cruise ship was reported to the World Health Organization. T

[tentypos]

“caress me down,”

a mha college au FEAT HANTA S.

“and that’s that loving sound, it went uhh”

mdni cw: m. masturbation, fantasies and such, he's actually toxic, like bro, he's toxic ANNDDDD he's a Freak! CAPITAL F!!! i do not condone his behaviour.

wc: 1.3k

for, @updownandbatty & @plutooowo

starting track…

↻ ◁ || ▷ ↺

sero is such a fucking weirdo.

it wasn’t even a real argument, small shit, minuscule shit, honestly.

the kinda of thing that could’ve been solved in like three texts max, the kind of thing that, in his opinion, you were dragging.

he thinks you enjoy being angry at him, and he doesn’t help himself, not when he lives for pushing your buttons, not when being deeply irritating is his favourite pastime.

you left your phone charger in his car by accident two nights ago, so you called him, y’know, reasonably, asking if he could drop it off at yours.

he was in the middle of a game though, and he’s not your boyfriend, was he really about to drop everything just to drive over to yours and give you a charger, if you wanted it that badly you could come and collect it yourself.

you did not like that.

he rolled his eyes when he saw it.

you were typing… and typing… and typing…

and then.

voice message, after voice message, after voice message.

he snatched his headset off with a groan, not even pressing play on the audios yet, just checking his pockets for his keys, about to drive over to your place and give you your stupid fucking charger— and maybe talk to you nicely, sit on your couch, smoke your weed, eat whatever you got in your fridge, maybe eat you, if you let him.

yeah, he had a decent gameplan.

until he accidentally clicks the play button on the first voice note.

your voice comes tumbling through his phone speaker, lazy, pissed off, carefully crafted insults.

hanta smirks.

there’s something about the way you talk down to him that always did the job.

you just sound so effortlessly sexy when you’re annoyed. hanta can imagine the way your top lip would curl in disgust, the little wrinkle that appears between your brows and, you talk with your hands.

if you were here, you would have a finger pressed into his chest, all up in his face, practically itching to bite him.

it’s always been hot.

he flops back onto his chair, phone on in one hand, the instagram chat between you two open, the 2, 3, 4, 5 voice messages from you staring down at him like a dare.

he pulls his cock out.

spits on it, a huge wad of his saliva landing directly on the tip, it makes him flinch, finger grazing his phone screen, restarting the audio as he softly starts thumbing the tip.

“don’t piss me off right now,” there’s a pause where you chuckle, sarcastically, god, it’s the hottest thing he’s ever fucking heard, straight porn crackling down the speaker, “i’m so serious, you’re such a piece of shit.”

a piece of shit? him? never….

“i can’t be fucked to deal with your shit today…., i’m so fucking serious.”

yeahhhhhh, okay, okay, you’re being overdramatic as usual, but he’s weird in the head, and his cock jumps when you—

“…y’know what…. honestly hanta, fuck you, yeah, fuck you….”

his head tilts back, he practically crumples into the chair, he loves when you say his name, especially when you spit it out like that, the same way you spit out his load when he breeds your throat, the frothy cum that bubbles over your lips, paints your face.

he can see it now, his hand moves on autopilot, his palm caressing his cock, the friction makes his eyes roll, as he imagines shutting you up like that, his cock just stuffing your mouth full, your teary eyes looking up at him, with your cheeks all puffed up, and those soft lips of yours, the way they curl, the way they sneer, the way they look so good parted in ecstasy—

“….don’t understand why you make such a big deal out of this shit….”

he nearly laughs, he’s making it a big deal? you’re getting yourself so worked up over what, a fucking cable?

“it’s not even about the charger.” of course, “it’s about you…..you just wanna drag everything out.” drag his cock across your soaked pussy lips, up and down and up and down, drag his cock in teasing circles around your clit, round and round, get you all worked up and achey and needy.

“….you always wanna piss me off…” maybe you’d wanna suck on his fingers while he plays with your nipples, soft skin bulging around his palm as his digits toy with the puffy buds, he knows you like that, like his fingers, you tell him that all the time.

“….i just don’t understand how a guy can be so fucking stupid…..that’s probably why you got that dent on the back of your head, because you were dropped as baby and it….”

mmmmmm, you love running your hands through his hair though, the dark strands bunching between your fingertips when you tug on it, like a fucking leash, like he’s a misbehaving dog, just thinking about it makes him leak.

he pumps faster, the messy, sticky, fap-fap-fap echoes around his room, mixing in with his breathy groans and cries of your name.

god, he's so fucking pathetic.

but he can't help it, you're so fucking hot, and he really does like you, your face, your eyes, your f-fucking voice--

".....don't play games with me hanta...."

there you go again, saying his name, practically spitting it out like a curse word, and he's giggling as he looks down at himself, at his throbbing erection, do you even know what you do to him?

"...you're a fucking joke, y'know that right...."

nah, what's a joke is how quick he cums when you jerk him off. you're so good at that, you know his body so well, know how much he goes crazy for a sloppppyyy handjob, the messy kind, with one of your hands placed on his chest, holding him down, as the other hand massages his balls, your nails digging into his thighs, his tip drooling at the sensation.

"....so fucking stupid.....such an idiot...can't deal with your bullshit..."

fuck yeah, yeah, he's an idiot, a nasty piece of shit, he knows, he can't help it though, it's not his fault, it's your fault really, for enabling him, for giving him a taste of you in the first place, a taste of your pussy, god, your pussy, always so slick, and warm, and inviting. she treats him better than you do, she would never say mean things to him like you do, she just takes his cock, grips him so fucking tightly, fucking milks him every time.

ohhhh, he can't help himself, bucking his hips up into his fist like a wild animal, pretending that it's you. you look so gorgeous underneath him, all fucked out and whiney. and he’d let you bite all over him, sink your teeth into his skin, leave your fucking mark on him, stake your claim, all f-fucking yours, fuck, okay, okay, okay, shit, he almost forgets to breathe, your voice just swimming in his ears, changing his brain chemistry, holy fuck.

"you can't do shit properly, always half-assing shit.... can't even fuck me properly."

he knows you said that as a last resort, the final push.

he knows you, and you know him.

and hanta, like previously mentioned, is a fucking weirdo, so, of course, that’s what pushes him over the edge, because he knows, he knows for sure, that is a big old lie.

because, that's not what you said when this whole thing started, when you were in the backseat of his car on tuesday, and you squirted all over his leather seats, and the car reeked of pussy and sweat, and he could taste you in his mouth the next morning.

he runs a tongue across his teeth, the phantom taste of your juices in his mouth, and spurts everywhere, all over his hands, all over his sweats, accompanied by sorry's and thank-you’s and holy shit’s

he doesn't even bother to send you a reply, just likes that last voice message you sent, and starts cleaning himself up, because of course he was gonna come over, probably dangle that wire out of your reach, and then let you push him against the door, hands down his pants, your mouth on his neck, yeah.

solid gameplan.

…end of playback.

↻ ◁ || ▷ ↺

@kamislop @dotalicious @lonelyfooryouonly @tsushimimi @tokkushin @realbadgyalll

this is a mixtape madness fic, drop a request and i’ll get back to you:

[halorvic]

The Close, Prolonged Contact Myth

Knowing how a virus spreads is essential to public health, but people keep getting it wrong.

A man goes to a birthday party, sits next to someone with hantavirus, catches it, gives it to his wife, and dies. His wife then infects 10 more people at his wake. Another guest at that same birthday party has no interaction with the index patient except to say “hello” as they cross paths, but that person gets sick too. One index patient, 33 subsequent infections, 11 deaths, four waves of transmission. This is from a meticulously documented hantavirus outbreak in Argentina in late 2018 and early 2019, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Nearly the exact same Andes strain of hantavirus caused the recent outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. Yet from the moment this latest outbreak hit the news last month, public-health officials have been claiming that this virus is spread through “prolonged close contact.” The evidence is not nearly so reassuring.

[...]

As an expert in what we call “exposure science,” I have spent a career conducting forensic investigations to understand how diseases spread and what we should do about it. As a member of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, I chaired the Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel task force, and was an early proponent of the theory that COVID spreads through the air. There was evidence early on of airborne transmission, which my colleagues and I tried to draw attention to. We modeled the early-2020 outbreak of the disease on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and found that 90 percent of the spread was through aerosols, not contaminated surfaces, but the CDC didn’t update its guidance until late 2020. I am alarmed to see the same pattern playing out now. Hantaviruses usually originate in rodent feces. Someone cleans a dusty area that has rodent droppings, inhales the particles, and gets sick. Only the Andes strain of hantavirus is known to be transmitted from human to human. In the outbreak documented in NEJM, the virus spreads without physical contact or prolonged exposure. One patient gets sick after simply crossing paths with someone who was ill. Two others are infected while seated at tables meters away. One person infected five others within 90 minutes at one party. The NEJM authors suggested that the virus spreads through the air. Although the NEJM evidence is clear, officials have kept repeating “prolonged, close contact,” so I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. Last week I spoke with a physician who was on the MV Hondiusas a passenger but who jumped in to help treat infected passengers after the ship’s official doctor got sick and was evacuated. He told me that the original treating doctor and staff were definitely in close contact with the first patient. But the others who got sick? They had merely shared space in the dining room and the lecture hall, and had not had close contact. We’re now at 10 confirmed cases from the ship, which aligns with the prior outbreak dynamics: one person infecting many, no close contact required.

[...]

This matters because medical teams treating patients need to know how they might be exposed. When infected passengers go home to quarantine, their households need to understand the risk. As passengers fly back to their home countries, contact tracers need to know which exposures matter. The doctor who treated patients on the cruise said on CNN that he relied on goggles, a gown, and hand-washing to protect himself. But given that this virus spreads through the air, an N95 mask and a strong ventilation and filtration system would have served him better.

[...]

This outbreak is not likely to spark a pandemic, mostly because the hantavirus is less contagious than influenza, measles, and SARS-CoV-2. But given just how little experience we have with this virus, any certainty is hubris.

May 12, 2026

[fandomsandfeminism]

Yall might have seen this news story going around- (5/5/2026)

Along with some....rather sensational fear mongering about this being a new pandemic or whatever.

Let's clear a few things up.

Person to person spread is suuuuuper rare with hantavirus. it basically requires direct contact with infected rodent urine, feces, or saliva.

Now, SOME news stories are making the claim that the Andes Variant can have person to person transmission. HOWEVER, despite these claims popping up often, evidence is limited- there's 1 paper that looked at a cluster of 3 cases of the Andes strain in 2014 which indicated that 1 of the cases might have been a person to person transmission.

HOWEVER a more recent metastudy that found no real evidence of human to human transmission in the Andes variant. So if it's happens, it's VERY rare

Hantavirus is known to be transmitted from rodents to humans. However, some reports from Argentina and Chile have claimed that the hantaviru

And for the record, this is what the WHO is officially saying:

On 2 May 2026, a cluster of passengers with severe respiratory illness aboard a cruise ship was reported to the World Health Organization. T

Further investigations are ongoing. The outbreak is being managed through coordinated international response, and includes in-depth investigations, case isolation and care, medical evacuation and laboratory investigations. Human hantavirus infection is primarily acquired through contact with the urine, faeces, or saliva of infected rodents. It is a rare but severe disease that can be deadly. Although uncommon, limited human to human transmission has been reported in previous outbreaks of Andes virus (a specific species of hantavirus). WHO currently assesses the risk to the global population from this event as low and will continue to monitor the epidemiological situation and update the risk assessment.

Now, apparently today in a press conference, someone from WHO said they are looking into whether person to person transmission is responsible, which is what's creating all these scary sounding headlines. It's a possibility, they are looking into it. Ok.

But given that the incubation period can be weeks long, only 3 cases here have been lab verified, and these folks have been on an international luxury nature cruise for 5 weeks now...I think there's a lot of possible explanations (shared exposure event, contaminated food, etc), and even IF this is a rare confirmation of actual person to person transmission, it would be one the requires prolonged and very close contact.... it's definitely not a new pandemic. It's not new covid. It's not new flu. It's just not.

So. Please. Be thoughtful if you see this story going around. Follow any updates back to the source.

And, you know, wash up if you go rooting around in any wild rodent dens in the new future.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Source

[bunnybonesstudio]

Why is everyone so ill informed about the hanta virus?

I’m not a doctor but I have a crippling fear of all illnesses, especially fatal ones, so I’m extremely well versed in them. Gotta study shit to actually understand the risks of it.

Firstly, the Hantavirus is not ‘airborne’ the virus is spread through rodent dropping and urine when they are kicked up into the air, usually by disturbing nests. Kinda like how settled dust is fine, but once it’s kicked up and you breath it in then you start to cough, for a shitty comparison.

Second, human to human spread is RARE and even then, to my understanding, only one strain of it even was shown to be spread this way. It is PRIMARILY spread through rodents. And not in a ‘this is just one way it’s spread’ no, it means basically the alternative ways are virtually unheard of.

Edit: The variant found on the ship is the Andes Virus strain, a primarily South African strain that’s been around since 1995 and is the only one that can potentially spread from human to human. While unfortunately that it had to be that strain, it is noted by the World Health Organization in multiple articles that it is still rare to pass from human to human and is NOT pandemic viable. So no, still no reason to panic.

Edit 2: Even more info! Aside from still not being airborne (human transmission is only possible through droplets like coughing or sneezing) the disease is only infectious for around 24 hours upon initial symptoms. Covid was a super-spreader by nature, dangerous viruses like this are NOT super spreaders. That’s not how viruses work. The Andes Virus is not contagious during incubation; you cannot spread it while asymptomatic. It’s only contagious when symptoms first appear. Many viruses are like this and it’s why not many virus are pandemic viable; they simply cannot infect enough people quickly to overwhelm containment procedures.

This isn’t a pandemic thing; this is a virus that’s been around for literal DECADES if not longer and it’s only being spread now because some disgusting cruise ship that most likely has rodents in the air ducts because cruise ships are fucking vile.

I normally don’t take about real world stuff on my page; I’m a fandom creator. But Everyone who is fear mongering and going ‘it’s another pandemic!’ should feel ashamed of scaring people. It takes three seconds to google it and another second to find reputable sites and scientific papers explaining it. Theres no excuse for spreading misinformation.

Jesus.

Edit 3: Since people are getting VERY hung up on me using past tense verbiage for saying COVID was a super spreader; Covid still IS a super spreader. Of course it’s still around and still an issue.

If you think me using past tense verbiage makes me a Covid denier; see this post

I don’t really appreciate people thinking that fyi.

[diseases-for-center-control]

smh. nobody understands us

[mysharona1987]