OMAHA, Neb. — A strain of hantavirus erupted on the Hondius cruise, infecting somewhere between 3 and 97,000 people, confirmed sources who didn’t realize there were that few or that many cases.
“There is a high variance in numbers, because hantavirus isn’t a disease that spreads extremely rapidly…except for all the times that it does,” said CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya. “Unlike the highly contagious coronavirus, hantavirus can only be spread through direct contact with rodents. Or by touching an object contaminated with the virus. Or a person contaminated with the virus. Or inhaling virus particles through the air, kind of like COVID. Or not at all like COVID.”
The affected passengers have been incubating at a medical facility in Nebraska since early May and should be able to return home sometime between early June 2026 and November 2036.
“I don’t love being quarantined, but I’d rather be safe than sorry,” said one patient, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons and because he’s scared his mother-in-law will find out then she’ll call him to talk about “NCIS: New Orleans.” “They say, because hantavirus is so rare, even minor cases can be fatal. Luckily I’m asymptomatic—which means I’m either not in danger, or extremely in danger depending on which doctor talks to me. Although, I’m higher-risk because apparently I touched a mouse—or shook hands with a birdwatcher? Or both?”
Experts were quickly working to create a cure or vaccine, whichever they came across first.
“There’s a lot of confusion about this virus, so we’re trying to reverse-engineer a cure using spatio-temporal patterns,” said Tandin Wangchuk, Chair of the WHO Executive Board. “Unfortunately, mathematics and physics aren’t exact sciences, so even our top researchers are struggling. Luckily, AI has been a huge asset in advancing healthcare. We’ve put all of our data on hantavirus into Claude, and it’s saying we’re actually inventing a whole new kind of medicine altogether. We can’t share what that medicine is just yet, because it says there’s a risk Gargumel might hear, which would undo all our progress, but stay tuned!”
At press time, a new international health committee has been created to investigate hantavirus and AI psychosis as co-morbidities.
