90-Second Read: How to arm yourself against Hantavirus misinformation

COVID trauma and social media algorithms may be to blame The Hantavirus outbreak is reviving some of the worst COVID conspiracies Hantavirus misinformation is spreading fast. Since the first cases of Hantavirus on the MV Hondius cruise ship were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on May 2, misinformation has rapidly flooded the Internet. Though public health officials have said the Hantavirus outbreak poses a low risk to the public, fear is its own kind of contagion. Hantavirus-related misinformation is "operating not like isolated rumors but more like a standing online ecosystem," says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Many of the lessons we learned from the COVID pandemic can, perhaps surprisingly, lead us astray if we try to apply them to the current Hantavirus outbreak. Third, the Hantavirus outbreak is considered contained, unlike the early spread of COVID; the people most at risk of Hantavirus are quarantining and being monitored. Fourth, epidemiologists suspect that Hantavirus is most contagious when an infected person is showing symptoms, whereas SARS-CoV-2 can readily be transmitted by seemingly healthy people. Much of it is familiar, echoing the conspiracies of the COVID pandemic, such as false claims about the drug ivermectin being known to effectively treat the infection and vaccines causing the outbreak.

First, this strain of Hantavirus has been previously studied by epidemiologists; SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, was entirely new to science. Second, Andes Hantavirus is harder to spread from person to person and usually requires close contact to do so, although airborne spread can't be ruled out. This helps to explain why COVID-era conspiracies and distrust in medical authorities have made a forceful comeback despite the differences between SARS-CoV-2 and Hantavirus. Wallace is particularly troubled by how quickly Hantavirus was incorporated into the COVID-era health conspiracies and the distrust in public health authorities that still thrive in certain online ecosystems.

The key strategy for staying informed is to focus on what we know and not fill in uncertainties with worst-case scenarios. That's especially true now that the Hantavirus outbreak is dominating the news cycle. Although most social media apps try to remove particularly harmful misinformation, algorithms use attention to determine what content to spread.