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We’re asking the wrong question about the hantavirus outbreak

The problem with hantavirus coverage isn’t the alarmism.

Should you be worried about the hantavirus outbreak? Should you be afraid? Should you be panicking? Should you start freaking out?

If you’ve been following the coverage of the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, these are the questions you’ve seen posed in headlines. And a small tip from inside the media: If a question is posed in a headline, the answer is almost always “no.” (It’s such a common trope that there’s even an informal law about it.)

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So, unless you’re a passenger or close contact of someone on the Hondius, you shouldn’t really worry about the hantavirus outbreak. You shouldn’t really fear it. You definitely shouldn’t panic. And do I really need to tell you that freaking out generally stops being acceptable behavior after the age of 15?

As my colleague Dylan Scott has reported, by far the most likely outcome is that the hantavirus outbreak will ultimately be controlled and won’t become something that will disturb the general public. As of May 12, there were 11 confirmed or probable cases and three deaths. While a hantavirus outbreak in a tightly packed cruise ship is new and certainly suboptimal — not to mention bringing back unsettling memories of early Covid — experience with the deadly virus strongly suggests it probably doesn’t have the transmissibility required to become a larger pandemic threat.

America — and the media — needs a Covid reckoning

After some initial dysfunction that was itself partially explainable by just how unusual a seaborne hantavirus outbreak was, the response system appears to be working relatively well. Citing moral and legal obligations, Spain accepted the passengers at Tenerife in the Canary Islands over the objections of some officials there; they were met on the dock by hazmat suited workers. Eighteen US-bound passengers from the cruise are being kept in quarantine units where they can be........

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