Hantavirus is trending, passengers got off the quarantine boat, and I refuse to do the pandemic thing again

A nature exploration boat got stranded off the coast of Africa because passengers started dying from hantavirus, a rare disease that comes from inhaling rat excretions.

Three people are dead. One is in intensive care in South Africa. Two are being medically evacuated to the Netherlands. There are 147 passengers and crew members on the boat with three confirmed cases and five suspected ones. The WHO held a press conference about it and posted a bunch of shit on X but I don’t know man, maybe I’m just not keen on the WHO telling me anything about anything these days.

The Boat Situation Is Insane

Let’s backtrack real quick. This wasn’t a normal cruise ship. This was a nature exploration vessel where passengers were out on random islands photographing wildlife and touching figurative and literal shit.

They were exploring remote locations and getting up close with nature. Then people started getting sick from a virus that transmits through airborne rodent excretions. A rat virus. On a boat. In the middle of the ocean.

Play the tape. I SAID RATS.

The first person who died was so infected with Hantavirus they had to drop his body at St. Helena island because apparently they couldn’t ship him home to the Netherlands.

His wife got sick from close contact with him and they flew her to Johannesburg where she also died. The boat ended up quarantined off Cape Verde with passengers making videos begging to be let off, saying they were scared and lonely.

I feel for those people. Honestly.

Being stuck on a Hantavirus boat in the middle of the ocean watching people around you get sick is terrifying and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but at the same time, people are dying from a rat disease on that ship.

You have to stay put and you definitely can’t be sending those videos asking to leave when the whole point of quarantine is to keep whatever is on that boat from spreading to the rest of the world.

Welp, As Turns Out… They Weren’t Even Quarantining

For everyone who thought I was being an asshole for questioning whether people should stay on the boat, turns out the Hantavirus cruise ship passengers were getting on airplanes anyway.

One of the people who died of hantavirus was “briefly” on a KLM flight. They boarded a commercial airplane with a rat virus and were removed before takeoff.

How they got through any kind of screening and onto a flight in the first place is beyond me. People are dying from an infectious disease and the response was to let them walk through an airport and board a plane. Incredible stuff.

The Tweet That Has Me Freaked Out

Check out this tweet from 2022. An account called “iamasoothsayer” with a bio that says “reads the future” posted four times total, all in one week in 2022, and has never posted again.

One of those posts listed a timeline that included “2023: Corona Ended” and “2026: Hantavirus.” That’s it. No other predictions like it on the account.

2023: Corona ended
2026: Hantavirus

— soothsayer (@iamasoothsayer) June 11, 2022

Grok confirmed the tweet hasn’t been edited since 2022.

How does that happen?

Elon Musk better be messing with us because that is genuinely unsettling. Some anonymous account with four total posts from three years ago casually predicted a hantavirus situation in 2026 and then went silent forever.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to health stuff. Actually, scratch that, I absolutely am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to health stuff but even putting conspiracies aside, that tweet is bizarre.

People in Three U.S. States Are Being Monitored

Polymarket posted that people in at least three U.S. states are reportedly being monitored for possible hantavirus exposure. So now it’s not just a boat problem off the coast of Africa. It’s potentially on American soil and pretty much all over the world.

JUST IN: People in at least three U.S. states are reportedly being monitored for possible hantavirus exposure.

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) May 7, 2026

I’ve Seen This Movie Before

I was never a big COVID-19 guy. I would write about it not being real and how the vaccine stuff was nuts. The second I left Pennsylvania and went down to South Carolina, it became obvious that COVID was a state-by-state thing where rules applied in some places but not others.

You could do things in Delaware but not in Pennsylvania. Once you passed Richmond on I-95, the world was wide open. That’s when I bailed on the whole thing because obviously, a virus that respects state borders isn’t a virus. It’s a policy.

I really don’t think anyone would be down for another pandemic but who knows? I didn’t think COVID could happen and next thing you know, people were yelling at me in Wawa for not wearing a mask and every news station in the country was blaming and shaming anyone who didn’t get the vaccine.

So yeah, here we go again. Different virus. Same press briefings. Same “we’re monitoring the situation.” The situation has been monitored continuously since 2020 and the situations keep arriving anyway.

The playbook hasn’t changed. The WHO holds a presser. The media runs the scary headlines, th monitoring begins, then the restrictions follow.

Right around then, everyone’s favorite mandates come into play and we have everyone turning on each other the second you step outside to get a breath of fresh air.

Anyways, I think its all bullshit but if this Hantavirus turns out to be legit, I’m out. Don’t come knocking on my door telling me what to do about anything. If a rat virus that has existed for decades is suddenly the next global health emergency, I’m going to need significantly more evidence than a stranded boat and a creepy tweet from 2022 before I start caring.

Praying for everyone on that ship and everyone who has been affected by this but I’m not doing the pandemic thing again.

Join The Chase