CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, WELLNESS influencers, and grifters have already started promoting wild claims about the hantavirus outbreak that began aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship on the Atlantic.
Some conspiracy theorists compared the outbreak to the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it was another effort to control the global population, while others pushed a false narrative that the Covid-19 vaccine caused hantavirus. Many others promoted ivermectin as a treatment, using the incident as a way to sell emergency medical kits featuring the antiparasitic drug typically used as a horse dewormer.
In more recent days, many of these same people spreading conspiracy theories have promoted the baseless and antisemitic claims that the entire incident is a false flag orchestrated by Israel.
Conspiracy theories flooding social media in response to breaking news are nothing new, but what is notable about those being pushed around the hantavirus outbreak is just how closely they echo the conspiracy theories promoted during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“One of the most striking shifts since the Covid pandemic is how rapidly misinformation narratives now organize themselves around emerging outbreaks,” Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, tells WIRED.
