An email from Dr David Berger, who is the founder of CO2 Radical. I've cut some parts for brevity.
"My take on the #hantavirus cruise ship outbreak: we have learned almost nothing
Multiple individuals, including the ship’s doctor, have been taken ill. Having been refused permission to land in Cape Verde, the ship is now going to head North to dock in the Canaries, a three day journey. Three people, of whom two are critically ill, including the doctor, will be flown to the Netherlands from Cape Verde.
[...] Instead, what I want to focus on is this outbreak viewed in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and specifically the early days of uncertainty around that pandemic, what we learned and what actions we should be taking as a result now.
Keen students will remember the cases of the Diamond and the Ruby Princess cruise ships in February-March 2020 and the Skagit choir in March 2020, which alone demonstrated, with high probability, that the virus was airborne and transmitting from pre-symptomatic individuals, which accounted for the observed extremely high transmissibility.
Nevertheless, this high certainty information about mode of transmission would be ignored and denied by the WHO for a protracted period, leading to inadequate infection control precautions being taken across the globe, accelerating spread and resulting in the unnecessary deaths of, potentially, millions, including thousands of healthcare workers.
In a bizarre coincidence, the notorious “Covid is not airborne” tweet from March 22, 2020 by Dr Maria van Kerkhove of the WHO appears to have been deleted, without any public acknowledgement, only in late April 2026. I don’t know what to make of this, especially as Dr van Kerkhove is now responsible for dealing with the current cruise ship viral outbreak.
Once again, incredibly, the WHO is ignoring the precautionary principle and not only failing to advise routine airborne precautions, but failing to advise any respiratory precautions at all in the absence of respiratory symptoms, leading strongly on hand hygiene instead:
"In the context of the current outbreak, passengers and crew members should practice frequent hand hygiene,"
"If respiratory symptoms are present to practice respiratory etiquette and wear a medical mask."
"Standard precautions combined with droplet precautions during close contact are considered sufficient. Routine airborne precautions are not typically required, except during aerosol‑generating procedures."
Meanwhile, the UK government already lists Andes virus as an airborne High Consequence Infectious Disease, last updated in January 2026:
So what do I conclude? Honestly, I am far beyond trying to find a rational explanation for this behaviour from the WHO and the medical-scientific establishment. I don't think it's actually possible to find a rational explanation, only one where competing interests result in a chaotic response.
[...] The likelihood is this will turn out to be nothing more than a noteworthy event, a tragedy and a catastrophe for some of those on board and their families, but that it will not ultimately lead to a global pandemic, either because the transmissibility characteristics of this particular strain cannot support one, or because it is effectively curtailed by quarantine measures. However, the possibility that it could lead to a deadly global pandemic, one much more deadly than the Covid-19 pandemic, is significantly non-zero and so the
Precautionary Principle dictates that the most precautionary measures should be taken. In this case, that means treat it as highly infectious and airborne, which is precisely what the WHO is not doing.
[...] This needs to be treated on board that ship as an airborne illness. Ships’ HVAC systems are highly suspect for airborne disease transmission - sorry, that is just a fact, whatever cruise ship companies might want you to believe - so that means get everyone sleeping and eating outside on their balconies. They are in the Tropics after all. Venture inside to the loo with a headstrap N95 only. A plane should be on its way to Cape Verde already with a medical team to go on the ship as it heads to the Canaries and a cargo hold full of high flow HEPA air purifiers to put in every internal space on that ship. I doubt any of this is happening.
When the ship arrives in the Canaries, get everyone off, screen them and put them into air-gapped quarantine facilities (like standalone holiday cabins), not hotels with corridors and dreadful ventilation, where contamination regularly occurs between rooms and people go bananas from being cooped up inside for weeks. Australian hotel quarantine taught us that.
This stuff isn’t complicated, but it does require the ability to think straight and act consistently and decisively in the face of dangerous threats. Clearly, our species has a long way to go in this respect, even if some of us individually have learned from experience."