COVID Redux: Hantavirus Memes Are Popping up All Over Social Media
"Y'all have got to stay in the ocean."
Published May 15 2026, 9:39 a.m. ET
There's a new global plague in town that's dominating media cycles: the Hantavirus. The CDC calls the illness "a family of viruses which can cause serious illnesses and death." Furthermore, the agency reports that the "Andes virus is the only type of hantavirus that is known to spread person-to-person."
Thankfully, it's only communicable whenever a person comes into "close contact with the ill" individual.
After word spread of this disease online, the internet did what it does best: create a bunch of memes around it.
Hantavirus memes flood internet after cruise ship outbreak.
A cruise liner became "stranded off the coast of West Africa after a suspected hantavirus outbreak killed three people and made several others very sick," Harvard Health Publishing writes.
In light of this tragedy, throngs of folks began posting jokes about the sickness online, with many of them containing brutal honesty.
Here are some of the most savage ones below.
For the greater good.
This Instagram threads user quipped that he didn't want to take any chances of Hantavirus making it to the mainland.
COVID repeat?
But this X user thought that humanity had another coronavirus fiasco on our hands.
More than a few people thought so.
There were other users online who believed that Hantavirus would become a massive problem that keeps folks indoors and closes down businesses, a la 2020.
Others believe they've secured proof it's all a hoax.
Others joked about this hantavirus side effect.
A viral hoax has appeared online that states the disease reportedly shrinks men's genitals by up to three inches, leaving many people feeling like The Punisher in this scene.
Why do they rhyme with popular beverages?
Is Big toilet paper behind it?
Paydays on the horizon?
No, dude! That's not what it's called!
Maybe the guy above thought the virus had turns people in Davy Jones' crew.
Bill is at it again!
This virus, is about FAMILY.
A lot of people don't trust that passenger.
Gooooooaaaaaallll
Costco didn't even exist back then.
Fairy ratmother.
That's a mean trick to pull on your pops.
Bro, stop sending plagues. Thx.
People used to care about their jobs.
Riddle me this, Doc.
Meow, that's right.
Blown out of proportion?
The World Health Organization wrote that "a cluster of passengers with severe respiratory illness aboard a cruise ship was reported." Furthermore, the notice about the disease states that the ship visited multiple countries and was directly linked to cruise ship travel.
This PubMed article, published in November 2022, called the hantavirus "a very lethal and zoonotic virus."
Moreover, the author argues that it's much deadlier than SARS and coronavirus as it carries a much "greater mortality rate (50%) than the latter."
As many of the memes indicate, Hantavirus is spread primarily through rodents. Those who come into contact with rodent urine, feces, and saliva have a higher likelihood of contracting hantavirus. Symptoms include: "fever, generalized body and muscle ache, fatigue, headache, dizziness, chills, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea."
Hantavirus outbreaks have been monitored in the US since 1993.