A social media user predicted the Hantavirus outbreak in 2022
Four years ago, a social media user eerily appeared to predict the recent outbreak of the Hantavirus.
On June 11th, 2022, an X user uploaded the cryptic post, which read simply, “2023: Corona ended 2026: Hantavirus.”
The upload has now gone viral in light of recent news, which has seen three people die of the virus after travelling on the cruise ship MV Hondius. The ship, full of holidaymakers, set sail from Argentina at the beginning of April.
Hantaviruses are a large group of viruses that circulate in rodents such as mice and rats; they can spread to humans through inhalation of droplets or dust contaminated by infected animals. However, it is very difficult for most viruses to spread from person to person.
As of May 7th, there are now eight suspected cases aboard the ship, three of which have been confirmed as hantavirus by lab tests.
The account from which the prediction came only uploaded four posts in 2022, before going dark. While the other three posts read as ruminations on love and romance, such as “Love is jealous with limitations. It is possessive but never greedy,” their prediction for the future was spot on.
Weirder still, the account is registered to the handle that spells out “I am a soothsayer,” a term which dates back to the 14th century, derived from the Middle English soth (truth) and say. Therefore, a soothsayer is a person who can predict the future through magical, intuitive, or spiritual means.
In light of the worrying outbreak, the World Health Organisation held a conference to shed more light on the situation, thereby quelling any fears in the post-pandemic world.
The WHO experts were clear that this is “not a pandemic”, and they expected it to be a “limited outbreak”.
Additionally, the couple who were the first to get infected, a Dutch man and woman who are now deceased, have visited places “where the species of rat known to carry the virus was present”. Investigations of the outbreak are “still underway”.