“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Scientists are worried that hantaviruses haven’t been as well studied as they ought to be, but not that the MV Hondius cruise ship is ground zero for the next pandemic.

The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius has focused the public's attention on cruise ship safety.