Yesterday afternoon, Iran fired missiles and drones at three U.S. Navy destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. responded with strikes on Iranian navy amenities throughout what’s supposedly a ceasefire. The president advised ABC News the U.S. response was “just a love tap” and insisted the ceasefire remains to be in impact. Brent crude is flirting with $120 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is one in all the most necessary oil chokepoints on the planet. The international economic system hangs in the steadiness on what occurs subsequent.
I used to be watching all of this unfold on my X feed yesterday afternoon, and I believed, “This is huge.” I ought to flip on the world’s premier broadcast newsgathering outlet and see how they’re protecting this.
So at 4 p.m. Pacific, I turned on NCS.
The lead story was about the hantavirus on a cruise ship.
NCS led with the MV Hondius cruise ship hantavirus outbreak over the Iran struggle. Two hours in a row
NCS spent the first quarter-hour of its 4 p.m. Pacific hour on the hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic. Went to industrial. Came again at 20 previous the hour earlier than mentioning the struggle. Then Anderson Cooper got here on at 5 p.m. and did the identical factor. Led with hantavirus. Fifteen extra minutes earlier than the taking pictures struggle.
Two consecutive hours. The community Ted Turner constructed to cowl the world’s greatest tales in actual time. Turner died on Wednesday at 87. Two days later, his community buried a struggle in the B block.
I get why they did it. Their rankings most likely spiked the second hantavirus hit the display screen. The on-line numbers have been nearly actually by way of the roof. Cable information chases the shiny object as a result of the shiny object will get clicks, and clicks pay the payments. I spent years as a music DJ. My bosses made positive we performed the hits. I perceive the intuition. But there’s a distinction between taking part in Stairway to Heaven for the fourteenth time and burying a taking pictures struggle as a result of a cruise ship is getting extra engagement.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak 2026: It could also be a horrible factor. We don’t know but
I wish to watch out right here. People have died on that cruise ship. The outbreak is actual, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating. It deserves protection, and it deserves to be taken critically.
But as of proper now, fewer than 10 individuals have been contaminated. WHO has assessed the threat to the common public as low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the threat to Americans “extremely low.” There is a lot we don’t know but, and a lot extra analysis that must be achieved earlier than anybody needs to be drawing conclusions about what that is or what it may develop into.
I’ve talked to individuals this week who’re already calling it the subsequent Black Plague. Where are they getting that? TikTok. Social media posts from individuals who weren’t virologists final week and aren’t virologists now. Last week, they have been specialists on navy technique in the Middle East. This week, they’re epidemiologists. Next week, who is aware of?
Could this flip into one thing terrible? Maybe. I hope not. But proper now, with this little info and these few circumstances, the accountable factor to do is watch, report what we all know, and resist the urge to fill the gaps with concern.
COVID public well being messaging failures ought to have taught us one thing about hantavirus protection
Remember the early months of COVID? The messaging was a catastrophe. Masks don’t work. Wait, they do. The virus lives on surfaces. Actually, it doesn’t. Fifteen days to sluggish the unfold. Avoid public gatherings. Except really, large public gatherings are effective if it’s a protest. Then two years of shifting goalposts. Public well being officers communicated with absolute certainty about issues they didn’t absolutely perceive, and once they turned out to be improper, they moved on with out acknowledging it.
The injury from that goes each methods, and we’re nonetheless residing with it. One group of individuals grew to become so afraid that they couldn’t perform. Another group determined the complete factor was overblown and stopped listening fully. Both reactions got here from the identical place: establishments that couldn’t talk uncertainty actually. The bungled rollout of COVID messaging has had profound, lasting results on how Americans understand public well being. Trust that took a long time to construct evaporated in months. It hasn’t come again.
If we overhype hantavirus and nothing occurs, we burn no matter credibility is left. And the subsequent time one thing really harmful comes alongside, and the hantavirus could or might not be that, the individuals we have to attain gained’t be listening. We may have taught them to not.
How ‘Seattle’s Morning News’ will cowl the hantavirus and the Iran struggle ceasefire
We will cowl the hantavirus on “Seattle’s Morning News.” We will cowl it in measured tones. If it wants to guide a newscast, it is going to lead a newscast.
Today is just not that day.
Today, we’re going to focus on what’s occurring right here in Western Washington. Then we’ll discuss what’s occurring in the Strait of Hormuz, what it means for the international economic system, and why you’re paying $6 a gallon. Then we’d get to the hantavirus.
A struggle. A ceasefire that apparently contains missiles. A president who calls his personal navy strikes on one other nation a “love tap.” And the greatest cable information community in America spent 20 minutes on a cruise ship earlier than it talked about any of it.
Let’s all take a step again and never wind individuals up except and till they really have to be wound up.
Charlie Harger is the host of on KIRO Newsradio. You can learn extra of his tales and commentaries . Follow Charlie and e-mail him .