Hantavirus like "Covid 2.0": Claims are spreading about vaccines and "planned pandemic"

Multilingual misinformation, which dominated social media during the pandemic and hampered public health responses to the coronavirus, has once again spread online despite warnings from the World Health Organization that there is minimal risk of infection to the general public among passengers on the MV Hondius.

InfoWars founder Alex Jones posted an X message online claiming that “globalists are launching Covid 2.0 as hantavirus spreads across the world.”

A number of posts on social media have labeled the emergence of the virus as a “plandemic,” using a term from a discredited 2020 pseudo-documentary that spread false claims about the coronavirus pandemic.

According to available information, one passenger probably contracted a rare respiratory disease before boarding in Argentina, after which the virus was transmitted to other people on board.

An AFP analysis showed that claims of an alleged conspiracy to impose vaccines, reimpose lockdowns or influence US elections through the expansion of postal voting have spread rapidly across the internet.

– The rapid return of conspiracy theories from the Covid era is a reminder that disinformation does not disappear when the crisis is over – said Yotam Ophir, director of the Laboratory for Media Effects, Disinformation and Extremism at the University at Buffalo.

He states that during the pandemic, health misinformation became strongly associated with political identity, which is why old narratives are easier to reactivate today.

“Old Theories”

There have also been claims on social media that the hantavirus was deliberately released to reduce the world’s population or make a profit from vaccines. Some users even claimed that hantavirus was a side effect of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, misinterpreting a document that only listed the virus among health events under surveillance, rather than a confirmed consequence of the vaccination.

Ophir points out that many of these theories have a long history and rely on centuries-old fears that elites are intentionally spreading disease.

He adds that today such claims spread much faster thanks to the algorithms of social networks, but also the support of certain anti-vaccination voices connected to American politics.

Unapproved drugs

There are currently no approved vaccines or approved medications for hantavirus. The virus is most often transmitted through infected rodents and can cause serious respiratory and heart problems, as well as hemorrhagic fever.

However, some anti-government doctors and politicians immediately started promoting the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and other preparations as alleged anti-hantavirus drugs.

Former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that the virus was a “biological weapon” created so that pharmaceutical companies could profit from “poisonous vaccines”, and she also supported the announcements of Texas doctor Mary Talley Bowden, who was previously accused several times of spreading misinformation.

Bowden later announced a bid to sell ivermectin, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis again backed bills that would make the drug available over the counter.

– There is a huge amount of misinformation about ivermectin – said virologist John Lednicky from the University of Florida.

– Apart from laboratory tests, ivermectin has not been proven to be effective in the treatment of infections – he emphasized.

Ophir believes that the resurgence of conspiracy theories from the pandemic period may have a political as well as a financial background.

– In moments of fear and confusion, influencers, groups on social networks or even AI accounts can take advantage of the situation to make money – he concluded.

(Vijesti.ba)