{"id":65201,"date":"2026-05-14T09:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=65201"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:59:01","slug":"the-virus-panickers-are-at-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=65201","title":{"rendered":"The virus panickers are at it again"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alex Berensen<\/p>\n

How many times does Zeynep Tufekci have to be wrong before we all agree to ignore her?<\/h3>\n

Zeynep Tufecki \u2014 the sociologist who became famous during Covid for telling New York Times readers no more and no less than what health bureaucrats thought they should know \u2014 just warned the world about hantavirus!<\/p>\n

Years after Covid blew into our lives, the main thing standing between us and the next global pandemic is luck\u2026 [and] that luck may well be running out.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry, my mistake.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not Zeynep warning about hantavirus.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s her warning about bird flu in November 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n

This<\/em> is her warning about hantavirus!<\/p>\n

Wealthy nations must do everything possible to stop the disease\u2019s spread\u2026 [or] the United States and the rest of the world may get an unfortunate shot at a Round 2 of the virus too…<\/em><\/p>\n

Wait, dang it, wrong again.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t hantavirus either! That was Zeynep writing in August 2024<\/a> about mpox [nee monkeypox].<\/p>\n

Hold on, I know<\/em> Zeynep has screamed about hantavirus like Chicken Little after an-all night crack binge<\/s> recently offered careful, measured public health advice.<\/p>\n

Ahh, here it is:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that another pandemic will strike, but no one knows when or which virus will be the cause\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

If we\u2019re lucky, this hantavirus outbreak will peter out\u2026 if we are unlucky? It should be unthinkable, but here we are.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

(Just Zeynep being Zeynep, with apologies to Manny Ramirez)<\/em><\/p>\n

Unthinkable, indeed.<\/p>\n

Maybe let\u2019s think about it instead.<\/p>\n

To review: people generally are infected with the pulmonary variant of hantavirus after inhaling urine or feces from infected wild mice or rats. Most people do their best to avoid inhaling rat urine, so human hantavirus infections are pretty uncommon.<\/p>\n

The first two patients in this outbreak are German birdwatchers who likely contracted it after they visited a landfill in Argentina<\/a>. They then spread it to several other people aboard a cruise ship, more or less the ideal vector for passing viruses, respiratory or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Hantavirus can spread from person-to-person, according to a 2020 New England Journal article<\/a> that tracked an outbreak in Argentina in winter 2018-2019 which infected 34 people and killed 11. But doing so almost always requires prolonged and close contact with an infected person showing symptoms, often in social settings where people are likely to be talking loudly and with their mouths close together. Even hospital workers caring for patients during the Argentina outbreak faced almost no risk.<\/p>\n

And the outbreak in Argentina ended quickly once authorities isolated people with hantavirus and asked their close contacts to quarantine.<\/p>\n

In other words, hantavirus is not Covid or the flu. Though it can spread between people, its primary target is its rodent hosts and its mode of transmission zoonotic \u2014 from animals to humans. This is very typical for more lethal viruses like hantavirus, which burn through humans too fast to spread quickly.<\/p>\n

Nor is hantavirus likely to have changed much since that outbreak; it is generally very slow-mutating.<\/p>\n

In only the last two years, Zeynep Tufecki has sounded urgent warnings about three different viruses that collectively kill a couple of hundred people a year worldwide (mostly from hantavirus, mostly in Asia).<\/p>\n

By way of comparison, about 150 people die every hour of every day<\/em> from traffic accidents globally. Nor is there any evidence that hantavirus, mpox, or even bird flu are becoming or will become more dangerous in the wild.<\/p>\n

Why? Why do Tufecki and all the other panickers in the legacy media and health bureaucracies keep doing this?<\/p>\n

Three possibilities come to mind.<\/p>\n

First, health bureaucrats need to stay employed. Your fear is<\/em> their work.<\/p>\n

Second, talking up these threats is a backdoor way to lionize vaccine companies \u2014 mRNA companies in particular, which supposedly can produce vaccines against emerging threats very quickly \u2014 and thus attack Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Tufecki mocks in her hantavirus piece.<\/p>\n

And third, all this nonsense distracts from the fact that the only really serious respiratory virus epidemic in 100 years almost certainly leaked from a lab and would never have happened had virologists not caused it.<\/p>\n

Here are two predictions that are LEAD-PIPE LOCKS \u2014 as the guys advertising to gamblers on late-night sports-talk radio used to scream.<\/p>\n

First, this hantavirus outbreak will burn out quickly, with a death toll in the double digits at most. (I\u2019d say single, but I want to be conservative.)<\/p>\n

Second, Zeynep will be back in 2027 or 2028, 2029 at the latest, to warn her faithful sheep<\/s> audience at the New York Timee about pigeon flu or funkypox or Sars-Cov-6 or whatever.<\/p>\n

Why wouldn\u2019t she? Being wrong doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Fear is her business. And business is good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alex Berensen How many times does Zeynep Tufekci have to be wrong before we all agree to ignore her? Zeynep Tufecki \u2014 the sociologist who became famous during Covid for telling New York Times readers no more and no less than what health bureaucrats thought they should know \u2014 just warned the world about … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The virus panickers are at it again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-health-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65202,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65201\/revisions\/65202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}