U.S. President Donald Trump with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 7, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Reports of three deaths from hantavirus on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean are igniting fears of another pandemic. Health experts, however, are cautioning against panic, as hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents, is much different from COVID-19 — which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) killed more than 7 million people worldwide (including 1 million in the United States alone). COVID-19, according to health experts, is spread much more quicky and easily.
Salon's Troy Farah, however, is arguing that the hantavirus deaths are a major wake-up call for President Donald Trump and his administration — and they're dropping the ball.
"The fact that the outbreak was on a cruise ship, one of the first places COVID-19 started to spread back in early 2020, is giving tons of people déjà vu," Farah explains in an article. "But besides both being viruses, the similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and hantavirus actually aren't close. They infect in different ways and are classed in entirely different phylums, meaning they are not remotely related. Furthermore, hantavirus has been around for decades, it is not spread quickly or easily between people — and those who catch it display symptoms, unlike COVID, which can spread between folks unknowingly. The WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both report that the current risk to the global population from this event is low."
Farah emphasizes, however, that the United States "will almost certainly experience another pandemic from some highly infectious pathogen in the next 10 years or less" —and MAGA Republicans are dropping the ball by not thinking about preparedness. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for example, tweeted, "Don’t comply. This time, just don't," while others are falsely claiming that ivermectin can be used to treat hantavirus.
"While hantavirus isn't a huge concern to me right now — and many public health experts seem to agree — I am worried about what comes down the line," Farah warns. " I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take basic precautions during the next pandemic. No flattening the curve, no masking in crowds, just letting some brutal disease rip through us, as if arrogance and resentment can stop infectious disease — a strategy somehow even less effective than ivermectin!"