Four Italians in quarantine. Four regions involved: Calabria, Campania, Tuscany, Veneto. No symptoms, they say. The risk is extremely low, they repeat. Contacts with the woman who died on the KLM flight were “not close and not prolonged.”
Yet the four are segregated at home, monitored, awaiting swabs. The Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan explains that “what may seem like excessive caution is nevertheless justified by the severity of the symptoms.” Translation: the virus is not very contagious, but if you catch it, you die.
So here we go with “trust-based isolation,” health departments making calls, doctors knocking on doors on Mondays. Nice this new normality. It looks like 2020, but with a different name.
The fear machine has started moving slowly, quietly, almost with modesty. First, the news from the Hondius ship, a few lines at the bottom of homepages. Then the WHO reassuring: “It is not like the coronavirus.” Then the three deaths, then the twelve countries involved, then the tests sent from Argentina, then the expert dispatched on board.
Today, the news that in Italy there are four people under observation. The Ministry of Health speaks of “surveillance,” “coordination,” “risk assessment.” Meanwhile, news agencies relay it, TV news talks about it, newspapers headline it. All while it is Sunday outside. Mother’s Day. The perfect day to slip an unsettling story into the flow of sugary emotions and bouquets of flowers. Coincidence? Maybe. But the timing is, at the very least, curious.
Federico, the twenty-five-year-old Calabrian who worked as a sailor and is now in quarantine, says: “I am not worried.” They told him: low risk of infection. But if the risk is so low, why lock four people in their homes? Why activate “maximum attention” procedures? Why is the President of the Veneto Region, Alberto Stefani, monitoring the situation “closely”? The answer, which no one pronounces aloud, is that the risk is not low for those in charge. It is low only on paper, in press releases, in the reassurances of professors. In the reality of things, the protocols are the same as in 2020: trace, isolate, test. And, if necessary, close. Only this time they don’t say “close.” They say “monitor.” But the substance is identical.
Meanwhile, the Hondius has dropped anchor in Tenerife. Passengers will be repatriated to the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Another map of potential infections, another puzzle of flights and contacts. Spain coordinates with the Dutch shipowner, the insurance company, and the various governments. Everything very orderly, everything very reassuring. But the feeling that remains is that of a script already seen, where the actors change the name of the virus but recite the same lines. “There is no alarm,” they say. Meanwhile, the alarm grows on its own, like a shadow lengthening without anyone turning on a light.
The question, at this point, is obligatory: why today? Why precisely while millions of Italians are distracted by hugs, lunches, and gifts for their mothers, does the hantavirus news choose to peek out with this insistence? Perhaps it is just chance, the inevitable concatenation of events. Perhaps the technical times of tests and quarantines coincided with the second Sunday of May. Or, a more unpleasant hypothesis, the consensus machine calculated that a vague scent of danger, trivialized as “low risk,” never hurts. It keeps the population in a state of soft vigilance, accustoms them to the idea that the enemy is always around the corner, legitimizes control measures that would be unacceptable in peacetime. It is not a conspiracy; it is sociology. Fear sells, fear governs. And Mother’s Day is the ideal moment to sell it quietly, almost like an annoying thought that slips in between a cake and a phone call.
Italy, for now, is out of the direct loop of the ship. The four monitored passengers have no symptoms. Professor Rezza speaks of “justified excessive caution.” But excessive caution, in recent years, has become the rule. We have learned at our own expense that once the Pandora’s box of health surveillance is opened, it is never closed again. Quarantines remain, swabs remain, fear remains. The virus, maybe, passes. The machine does not.
And while TV news talks about distant outbreaks and suspicious flights, outside our windows life pretends to flow normally. Restaurants are full for Mother’s Day lunch, shops give away mimosa and roses, families gather. But beneath the surface, something stirs. A tingling of unease, a new word buzzing in WhatsApp messages: hantavirus. We don’t quite know what it is, but we know it has already killed three people, and that now it is a step away from our living room. Or almost.
Happy Mother’s Day, Italy. The virus makes no allowances, not even today. Fortunately, they say, it is just a low risk. Just as it was, six years ago, with the coronavirus. Until it became extremely high. But this, I admit, is just a provocation. Or maybe not.
RVSCB
Bibliography
- Italian Ministry of Health, Information Note on KLM Flight Passengers Monitored for Hantavirus, May 10, 2026.
- Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), Epidemiological Update on the Andes Strain, May 10, 2026.
- Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Statement by Prof. Gianni Rezza to Adnkronos, May 10, 2026.
- Spanish Ministry of Interior, Press Conference on the Landing of the MV Hondius in Tenerife, May 10, 2026.
- World Health Organization (WHO), Briefing on the Spread of Hantavirus in Europe, May 9, 2026.
- Adnkronos, “Hantavirus, 4 people monitored in Italy: ‘They have no symptoms’,” May 10, 2026.
- Il Fatto Quotidiano, “Four Italians in quarantine, but the risk is low. Meanwhile…” May 10, 2026.
Archive Note: RVSCB – Archive of Uncomfortable Truths, May 10, 2026 “I am not interested in being loved. I am interested in being read after they have hated me.”
