Frankly, it really isn't a large epidemic yet - but as Ebola spreads from body fluids and contact, most likely - the case count will rise rapidly for a bit and then decline rapidly.
People aren't stupid and as soon the outbreak was known throughout the region, people probably became more careful.
Most likely - it is already mostly self-contained. Just has to burn itself out now.

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Hopefully, Dr. Redfield just didn't choose his words carefully enough. It is important not to scare people needlessly.
And mainstream media will turn anything they can into fear mongering for views, clicks and monetization.

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For context:
Even the World Health Organization (WHO) defines a pandemic as “a new disease with worldwide spread,” while the International Epidemiology Association emphasizes “an epidemic occurring worldwide.

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For most hantaviruses, the effective human-to-human R₀ is essentially 0, because they are primarily rodent-borne and do not spread efficiently between people. The major exception is the South American Andes virus strain.
For Andes virus specifically, average effective reproductive number for Andes virus in normal community conditions is well below 1, with outbreaks self-limiting unless very specific circumstances occur.

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"Over-hyped" is the right word - the fear mongering never ends.

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The Andes hantavirus (ANDV) is found primarily in southern regions of Argentina and Chile, particularly in the Patagonian Andes region where it was first identified. The rodent reservoir of the Andes strain is the long-tailed pygmy rice rat. Endemic to this region, not found elsewhere.

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There is one very flawed paper that has the RO slightly below 1 in most community conditions - above 2 in a superspreader event, but that paper had very poor methodological methods.
Over time, it has been shown to not only be flawed, but wrong. The Andes strain has a RO will below 1, if and when it is spread to humans - which is very rare. So, even where mice are infected with this strain (SA) just burns itself out quickly.

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Did some airplane travel this week- the number of people back to wearing masks over hantavirus and Ebola is truly shocking.
I feel sad for the people who live their lives in fear over over-hyped, extremely rare diseases.
People, so fearful that they can't go out in public or travel without masks...
I pity them, I worry for their mental health, I even worry for our country that has so many guillible people - but these poor fools are not my enemy.

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A claim went viral this week: that the new PREP Act declaration tied to the Andes hantavirus outbreak is secretly paving the way for a new mRNA vaccine.

I read the declaration. It does not mention vaccines. At all. What it actually does is narrower and more mundane than the meme suggests. Worth slowing down on this one.

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Full piece, with a link to the actual declaration so you can read it yourself:

https://www.malone.news/p/fearporn-and-new-prep-act-declaration


What it does: creates liability protection for the investigational use of favipiravir, an antiviral, for a specific contained outbreak. What it does NOT do: authorize a vaccine, mandate anything, declare a national emergency, or suspend any civil liberties.

The PREP Act is genuinely worth criticizing. This particular declaration is one of its more restrained uses.

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What the newest prep act declaration is and isn't and while posts stating otherwise are just wrong. Cause this PREP Act isn't about vaccines and it is very narrow in focus, naming only one drug: favipiravir.
The link to the full article is in the comments:

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This PREP Act declaration does not mention vaccines at all. What it actually does is create liability protections surrounding the investigational use of favipiravir, an antiviral drug that has shown potential activity against RNA viruses."

https://www.malone.news/p/fearporn-and-new-prep-act-declaration

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Now comes the latest source of panic from the health freedom movement: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a PREP Act declaration tied to the outbreak, and the usual suspects immediately began screaming that dictatorship is imminent.
The fear is that this PREP Act Declaration is paving the way for a new mRNA vaccine. That Secretary Kennedy has been coopted by evil forces.
Slow down.

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"Over the last several weeks, headlines and social media influencers have been whipping themselves into a frenzy over the Andes strain hantavirus outbreak tied to the M/V Hondius cruise ship. A handful of infected passengers, concerns about secondary spread, and suddenly the internet is acting like we are five minutes away from “COVID 2.0: Rodent Boogaloo.”

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Sec. Kennedy’s Press office needs to do a whole lot better. They could have saved themselves a whole lot of negative press by stating just what this declaration is and isn’t. Why wasn’t it made clear that this PREP Act Declaration was limited in scope and focus to a specific antiviral drug ? Clarity from a communications office should be a no-brainer. Isn’t this what they are trained to do?
A press office operating in 2026 should understand that an unexplained declaration doesn’t stay unexplained; the vacuum gets filled, and it gets filled by whatever is most shareable.

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Sunday Strip: Memorial Day - Another Working Holiday
Making a fortune farming <insert sarcasm>

https://www.malone.news/p/sunday-strip-memorial-day-another

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This is the biggest government scandal of my lifetime, and the legacy media refuses to cover it.

The FDA knew that COVID injections were causing severe adverse events, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, and Bell’s palsy.

Americans had the Right to Know, and those affected deserve justice.

Subscribe and share👉 @SenRonJohnsonUS

Trust is the one thing a public-health system cannot manufacture in the middle of a crisis. It can only spend the trust it has already earned.
And the fastest way to burn through that trust is to project absolute confidence, silence critics, get caught being wrong, and then issue the correction in a whisper months later or never at al.
Do that often enough, and eventually they will create exactly what we have now: a country that instinctively distrusts official certainty, even in moments when the authorities may finally be telling the truth.
That may prove to be the most damaging legacy of the entire pandemic era.

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Here is today's essay. At update to my first book "Lies My Government Told Me, and The Better Future Coming."

Lies My Government Told Me: Updated
What time has revealed about the COVID era, and why the silencing of dissent was the most consequential failure of all

https://www.malone.news/p/lies-my-government-told-me-updated

There has been a lot of water under the bridge since then, but looking back, I think that we can all clearly see and agree on the overall underpinning lie that lead to all of the others.

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We need more like Mike Lee in Congress! Who is willing to do what it takes - even fillibuster, to pass the SAVE act.

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In 1944, an economist described why bureaucracies grow regardless of whether they work. In 1945, another explained why central planners fail when knowledge is dispersed. In 1987, a third showed why emergency powers never fully recede.

None of them lived to see 2020. All of them predicted it.

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Full essay here:
https://www.malone.news/p/the-austrians-saw-it-coming


It applies the Austrian school — Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Higgs — to the pandemic record.

The Cantillon effect on the 2020 wealth transfer. The knowledge problem on one-size-fits-all mandates. The ratchet effect on emergency powers that never receded.
Not a polemic. A framework that was published decades before the events it describes. About 5,000 words, fully cited.

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