Jornal Do Brasilia - Hantavirus scare revives Covid-era conspiracy theories

The multilingual misinformation, which dominated online discourse and disrupted public health responses to the coronavirus, resurged even as the World Health Organization insisted Friday that there remained minimal risk to the general public from passengers of the MV Hondius.

"LOCKDOWN ALERT: Globalists Launch Covid 2.0 As Hantavirus Spreads Worldwide," InfoWars founder Alex Jones said on X. "Just Like A Light Switch."

A flurry of similar posts declared the outbreak a "plandemic" -- borrowing from the title of a widely discredited pseudo-documentary from 2020 that pushed falsehoods about Covid.

A passenger is believed to have contracted the rare respiratory disease before boarding the ship in Argentina and infecting others on board.

Yet, an AFP analysis found widespread claims alleging a sinister plot to force vaccines on the masses, coerce people into lockdown, or sway America's November elections by justifying expanded use of mail-in ballots -- a voting method that election deniers have insisted without evidence is rife with fraud.

"The almost-immediate resurrection of Covid-19 era conspiracy theories is a reminder that misinformation doesn't simply disappear once the crisis that yielded them is over," said Yotam Ophir, head of the University at Buffalo's Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism lab.

During the Covid pandemic, health misinformation became more entwined with political identity, he said, so the election-rigging narrative "primes existing beliefs."

Other posts pointed to past coverage of potential vaccines for hantavirus, Covid-era comments from billionaire Bill Gates and a fictional 1990s television show as evidence the hantavirus was intentionally released to reduce the population or make money for vaccine manufacturers.

Some further claimed the hantavirus was a side effect of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccines, misrepresenting a document that showed only that it was one of many "adverse events of special interest" subjected to monitoring, not something caused by the shot.

Ophir said many of the conspiracy theories now resurfacing have a long history, tracing to centuries-old fears that diseases were manufactured by elites.

But they spread faster now, boosted by social media algorithms and sometimes entertained by anti-vaccine voices installed in high-ranking offices by President Donald Trump.

- Unproven cures -

There are no approved vaccines or known cures for the hantavirus, which is usually spread from infected rodents and can cause respiratory and cardiac distress as well as haemorrhagic fever.

But online, anti-establishment physicians and some politicians immediately touted the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and other medications as cures.

Former US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – who posted that the virus was a "bioweapon" unleashed so pharmaceutical companies could profit off "poison" vaccines -- amplified ivermectin claims from Texas otolaryngologist Mary Talley Bowden, whom AFP has fact-checked for spreading misinformation.

Bowden later posted an offer to sell ivermectin, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reupped support for failed legislation aimed at making ivermectin available without prescription.

"There is extreme misinformation about ivermectin," John Lednicky, a virologist at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, told AFP.

"Outside of laboratory tests, ivermectin has not proven effective in treating infections."

Ophir, from Buffalo, said the promotion of Covid-era conspiracy theories could be an effort to curry political favor -- and may also be financially motivated.

Amid anxiety and confusion over the outbreak, he told AFP that "online influencers, social media groups, or AI-operated users, may seize the chance to make some money."

N. Gonçalves--JDB