Donald Trump gave a less-than-reassuring response when asked how concerned the public should be about the deadly rat virus outbreak on a cruise ship.
While speaking to reporters at the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, the 79-year-old president was pressed on whether he had been briefed on hantavirus.
“It’s very much, we hope, under control. It was the ship, and I think we’re going to make a full report about it tomorrow. We have a lot of people, it’s a lot of great people that are studying it, and it should be fine. We hope,” Trump said.
When asked if Americans should be worried that the hantavirus could spread further, the president could only offer, “I hope not, I mean I hope not. We’ll do the best we can.”
Several concerned social media users noted that Trump was similarly dismissive in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.
In February 2020, the president claimed the virus was “very much under control,” and there would soon be zero cases in the U.S. because it would “go away” in the heat. Trump also claimed on March 10, 2020, that COVID would “go away,” nine days before the White House declared the pandemic a national emergency.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. alone would go on to reach more than 1.2 million people.
“I mean, what could possibly go wrong?” progressive political commentator and podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen posted on X while sharing a clip of Trump’s remarks on the hantavirus.
Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding added, “This is the same thing Trump said about COVID-19. Even better this time, our health secretary is a quack named RFK Jr., we don’t have a standing CDC director, and Trump eliminated the pandemic office (again).”
The hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius has killed three people, with more confirmed infections expected as dozens of passengers disembarked on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic on April 24.
There were 149 people from 23 countries on board the ship, most of them nature enthusiasts hoping to see migratory birds and seals. They each paid up to $29,000 for the cruise, with some sharing cabins with strangers. Among the passengers was a doctor who fell ill with hantavirus symptoms.
The virus is typically transmitted by rodents, but it can spread to humans if they inhale air contaminated with the virus from rodent urine, droppings, or saliva. While there is a possibility of a human-to-human strain of the virus, experts remain confident that any outbreak will not be highly contagious and easy to contain.
“This is not COVID, this is not influenza, it spreads very, very differently,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove from the World Health Organization said while stressing the hantavirus outbreak is not the start of a pandemic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has classified the hantavirus outbreak as “Level 3,” sources told ABC News.
This is the lowest level of emergency activation, and signifies that the threat to the public remains low, but the situation is being closely monitored.
The Daily Beast has contacted the CDC for comment.
