The Minister of Health is calm, and he says it in every way possible: “Today there is no danger in Italy for Hantavirus. It is a virus different from COVID, with low contagiousness. We are calm.” And while he says this, his ministry signs and disseminates a circular imposing 42-day quarantines, two-meter distancing, dedicated dishes, surgical masks for going outside, a ban on public transport and commercial flights, and an obligation for airlines to report every suspected case.
The calm is the kind that requires 72 pages of protocols. A paradox worthy of the best theater of the absurd.
The four isolated Italians are fine, they are asymptomatic. The tests are not ready yet, but they are asymptomatic anyway. The contacts with the deceased woman were distant and brief. The rodent that transmits the virus, the Oligoryzomys Longicaudatus, lives only in South America. In Italy, there are other strains of hantavirus, but human cases are “rare.” Yet the Ministry of Health has decided that for high-risk contacts – those who shared a room or bathroom with a suspected case, those who had direct physical contact, those who stayed for more than fifteen minutes in enclosed spaces with an infected person – a trust-based quarantine of 42 days is triggered. A month and a half locked at home, with rules worthy of a maximum-security laboratory. For a virus that is not there.
The circular is a masterpiece of bureaucracy that bites its own tail. On one hand, it reassures: the risk is low, the virus is not present in our country, the reservoir rodents are elsewhere. On the other, it lists measures that would only be justified by a declared health emergency.
If the risk is really so low, why all this apparatus? If the virus is not here, who are the quarantines and masks for? The answer is simple: the apparatus does not serve to protect citizens; it serves to show that the State is doing something. Even when there is nothing to do. Even when the measures are disproportionate and illogical.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world offers examples of equally paradoxical management. A Dutch hospital in Nijmegen put twelve staff members in quarantine for “errors in blood sampling and urine disposal procedures” of a positive patient. The hospital specifies that the risk of infection is low. But the quarantine remains. In Spain, a passenger evacuated from the Hondius ship tested positive on a first test, but is asymptomatic and in good condition. The other thirteen Spaniards are negative. All in quarantine, naturally. The WHO recommends a 42-day quarantine for all passengers and crew members, because the ship was “a favorable environment for transmission.” Too bad that most infections, as they tirelessly repeat, occur through contact with rodents, not between humans. But the narrative wants us to fear the neighbor, not the mouse.
The Minister declares himself calm. Perhaps he should worry more about coherence. Because one cannot be calm and simultaneously sign circulars that transform asymptomatic citizens into domestic prisoners. One cannot repeat that the virus has low contagiousness and then impose pandemic-level quarantines. This institutional schizophrenia reassures no one; it only fuels the sensation that those who govern us do not know what to do, and so they do everything, hoping that something will work. Even if nothing is necessary.
Hantavirus will probably not become another COVID. But the fear machine has already been restarted, and its gears are running at full speed. The quarantines, the swabs, the masks, the circulars, the ministries meeting, the experts alternating on TV. All seen before. Only this time the enemy is weaker, and the farce more evident. We only hope that the audience, after six years, has learned to distinguish real danger from choreography.
But knowing our love for the little theater, I wouldn’t bet on it.
RVSCB
Bibliography
- Italian Ministry of Health, Circular of the Prevention Department No. 001234, “Prevention and Control Measures for Hantavirus Risk”, May 12, 2026.
- Schillaci, O., Statements to the Press on the Hantavirus Situation in Italy, May 12, 2026.
- World Health Organization (WHO), Update on the Andes Hantavirus Outbreak and Recommendations for Quarantine, May 12, 2026.
- Radboud University Medical Center, Press Release on Procedural Errors and Staff Quarantine, Nijmegen, May 12, 2026.
- Spanish Ministry of Health, Information Note on the Positive Passenger and Management of Evacuees, May 12, 2026.
- Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), Technical Sheet on Hantavirus in Italy and Presence of Carrier Rodents, May 12, 2026.
- Adnkronos, “Hantavirus, the Ministry of Health Circular: Quarantine, Infections, and Masks. Here is What it Provides,” May 12, 2026.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Factsheet on Andes Virus Transmission and Incubation Period, May 11, 2026.
Archive Note: RVSCB – Archive of Uncomfortable Truths, May 12, 2026 “I am not interested in being loved. I am interested in being read after they have hated me.”
