Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under President Donald Trump’s leadership delivered a refreshing dose of common-sense science Wednesday, declaring that the Andes strain of hantavirus linked to the deadly MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak remains a low public health risk to the American people.
Trump’s CDC is encouraging the roughly 17 American passengers who were aboard the vessel to simply isolate at home, no forced quarantines, no mask mandates, and no economy-crushing lockdowns.
Stat News reported:
Two doctors with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that the risk to Americans from the deadly hantavirus outbreak remains low, saying the agency is “engaged at every step.”
In a media briefing, they described the agency’s response, which has been criticized by some infectious disease and public health experts as taking a back seat to the World Health Organization and other groups.
“I want to start by saying hantavirus is a known pathogen,” said David Fitter, the CDC’s incident manager for the hantavirus response. “At this moment, I want to emphasize that the risk to the general public is low. Our top priority is with the passengers who are on the ship and American communities.”
[…]
“CDC activated our emergency response in Atlanta immediately and has more than 100 staff actively working on this response. Operationally, we’ve been engaged at every step,” he said.
Those steps included providing information to American passengers on board the ship traveling from Argentina toward Antarctica and deploying a CDC team to the Canary Islands whose members spoke with each U.S. citizen about potential exposure. Two team members flew back with passengers, some to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit and Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“So far, our response has followed our playbook for swift action across federal, state, and local public health. The systems and partnerships that we’ve built exist precisely for situations like this,” Fitter said. “The work isn’t always visible, sharing information with state and local health departments and coordinating guidance and monitoring. But it never stops. It’s deliberate, it’s coordinated. It’s essential to keep our community safe.”
As The Gateway Pundit has reported in recent days, the hantavirus cluster aboard the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius has claimed at least three lives, with additional cases confirmed across multiple countries.
One U.S. passenger has already tested mildly positive for the Andes strain, and another is showing mild symptoms upon returning stateside.
140 passengers began disembarking in Spain’s Canary Islands, four U.S. states are now monitoring returning travelers with zero symptoms so far, and patient zero appears to be a Dutch birdwatcher who visited a rat-infested landfill in Ushuaia, Argentina, before boarding the Antarctica-bound expedition ship.
Yet instead of hyping hysteria, President Trump’s newly appointed CDC leadership is focusing on targeted monitoring, contact tracing, and voluntary home isolation for exposed Americans, a stark contrast to the Biden-era CDC’s disastrous overreach that destroyed lives, businesses, and children’s education during the COVID debacle.
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