Is ANDV hanta natural spillover or lab design?
Predicting the answer using science: hypothesize, test, conclude
Prologue
Many scientists and doctors have lost faith in the “authorities” - even data itself - as part of the COVID aftermath. The lying, the coercion, the hiding of data; it’s all ironically revealed a dark underbelly active deep within the system itself, and this revelation has rightfully made many of us very wary when we hear these same “authorities” warning of some new pending biological problem.
Perhaps less diplomatically stated: Our bullshit detectors are hyper-tuned to detect potential lies from people and organizations who have proven themselves to be untrustworthy and deceitful.
The hantavirus
A lot of people are wondering what the deal is with this new hantavirus situation. It’s all the rage in the media lately; it’s even become more popular that the UFO stuff. (Maybe I said more than I think here.) Many are wondering if this is something to worry about after seeing the same PPE suited-theatrics that we saw pre-COVID in the media. Others are wondering if this isn’t some GOFed new virus that’s going to wipe us out. Others (like me) believe that this is just the latest fad to “justify” yet another unnecessary “vaccine” getting warp speeded to authorization. To authorization… and beyond!
So what’s the truth?
Background
I have written about the sequencing data for the Swiss chap who was aboard Boaty McHantaboat (aka: MV Hondius) recently. You can read about that here.
In a nutshell, based on sequencing data of the virus from the Swiss dude on the boat that was made public on May 8, 2026, it is almost 100% identical (98.7+% across segments) to a previously sequenced version of this virus from back in 2018 when there was an outbreak in Argentina of the andes hantavirus.1 This is the only hantavirus version that can be passed from human to human. There is no current evidence of major mutations, reassortment, or enhanced transmissibility.
Let’s summarize everything that we “know” to date so that we’re on the same page according to what we’re being told.
The story
A Dutch ornithologist (Leo Schilperoord, 70) and his wife (Mirjam, 69) were the index cases → the first documented hosts of the virus. They were bird-watching in Ushuaia, Argentina at a dump where there are lots of rats. Andes virus (ADNV) (the hanta version that can be spread human to human) is endemic is Argentina. The ANDV version is passed to humans from rats primarily via oral inhalation of dried rat excretions. The rats at the dump are likely carriers.
The bird watchers probably stirred up rat excretions when walking around the dump (or maybe it was windy) and picked up the virus via inhalation of the aerosolized rat excretions. When they boarded the boat they were both unknowingly incubating the virus. Within days, he fell sick and died a few days after that. And then the same thing happened to his wife a few days later (he died on April 11; she later in Johannesburg).
N.B. You’d have to be pretty naive not to understand how easily a hantavirus outbreak could happen on a boat coming from a place with endemic Andes hantavirus. As Robert Malone posted on X, rats on boats is not a new thing. Rats carrying diseases, is not a new thing. Boats are petri dishes. You do the math.
Suite…
Then a bunch of others on the boat became ill (9 confirmed + 2 probable cases total (as of May 12)). The claim is that those people picked up the virus from bird watcher dude and his wife by close quarter routes. For example, if they were symptomatic - which they would have been following the incubation period - then they were surely shedding via sneezing, etc., and so on, all over the surfaces of the boat producing fomites.
There have been 3 deaths: two confirmed as Andes virus, one probable, and all “cases” are among the ~147 passengers and crew who were on Boaty McHantaboat which departed Ushuaia, Argentina, in early April 2026. There is no evidence of sustained community transmission outside this cluster. Cases have been identified in repatriated passengers in countries including South Africa, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, US, and others, but all trace back to the ship.
Interjection: I want to pay my respects to the fallen, if I may. Even though I might make jokes and poke verbal fun at this situation, it is not funny. I do this for levity, and a little bit to mock the people who are involved in any nefarious biohazard practices - past, present or future - and to send a clear message to them that they can’t destroy all of us. RIP to our bird-watching fellow human beings.
Since the sequenced virus from the Swiss dude shows no difference with previously sequenced virus (the sequences are nearly identical (S and M segments identical; L segment with at most 1-2 synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) per case - C2139T or G576A, both synonymous (no amino acid changes)), then it seems that according to the data that we’ve been given, the virus in all of these people is pretty much the same one from back in 2018.
Considering the tiny but observable divergence between the 2018 and 2026 versions - ~1.3% divergence over 8+ years - this fits a single (or very limited) zoonotic spillover followed by limited human-to-human transmission based on RNA virus evolution (roughly 1–12 substitutions per year observed in similar analyses for the ~12 kb genome). RNA viruses like hantaviruses generally mutate at rates of ~10⁻³ to 10⁻⁴ substitutions/site/year (typical for many RNA viruses), though they can appear more stable due to strong purifying selection (many mutations are deleterious and purged).
So is this story true?
It is well known that ANDV does not transmit from human to human easily, so why did at least 9 people pick it up so “easily” from virtual strangers? Granted these people were older (average age ~65), and perhaps a little immunocompromised from the COVID shots if they got them, and they were also stuffed away inside the boat without access to sun or fresh air for a bit, but still.
The outbreak does remain contained to this group, with ongoing monitoring of contacts due to the incubation period and the known (but limited) human-to-human transmission potential of Andes virus.
Currently, public risk is assessed as very low by WHO, ECDC, and CDC. Remember this.
There is no broader global spread beyond the cruise-linked cluster according to all data.
An alternative hypothesis
Jikkyleaks posted the following on X recently.
Jikkyleaks wrote:
This is a non-transmissible organism. 98% synonymous mutations. 1 amino acid is not going to make it transmissible and cross species. The whole story is theatre. BUT The origin of this hantavirus (assuming this is the cause of the “outbreak”) is USAMRIID not mice. These two USAMRIID samples were separated by 20 years with no mutations. Jay Hooper and Jens Kuhn are the people who have been making, oops sorry, “discovering” hantaviruses for 20 years. Without an intermediary the only explanation for the sequence conveniently dropped on http://virological.org - just like in COVID - is that this is a clone passaged from a USAMRIID sample and seeded on this boat. No mice or rats needed... Just the same kind of people that dropped monkeypox on gay festivals in Spain to try to start a war.
One (or a few) amino acid (AA) substitutions in a ~12 kb RNA virus genome is typical under purifying selection. Hantaviruses, especially in reservoir hosts, often evolve slowly. This matches observations in the 2018 Epuyén outbreak and lab passage studies (few changes even after serial passages). So it’s true that this does not confer new transmissibility or cross-species ability, but Andes virus already has documented (limited) human-to-human spread via close contact. Or maybe all the people involved were exposed to rat excretions? Who knows.
The low genetic variability observed between the 2026 Boaty McHantaboat outbreak sequences and earlier Andean strains (ie: from 2018) is consistent with the known biology of Andes hantavirus.
I would expect that if we are dealing with an infectious clone, for example, that we would see the kinds of variations and hallmarks we saw in the SARS-2 spike protein: engineered markers like codon optimization, restriction sites, etc., but according to the sequences available on NCBI, we see none of these. Not even in the patents with high sequence similarity. I checked.
Yet.
So the question becomes, and this is a big question, are all relevant sequences being made public the full and true sequences?
Let’s make a prediction (hypothesis)
If Jikkleaks is right, there will be an easy way to know. If there is suddenly divergence in the versions of the virus coming from the people on Boaty Mchantaboat, then we will know for sure that the story of natural zoonotic spillover is rubbish.
As I very clearly laid out here as intentional friendly pushback against Jikkyleaks’ points (this is what we do, I love you bru!), the sequenced Andes hantavirus (ANDV) from the 2026 MV Hondius outbreak is not significantly divergent from 2018 Argentine strains. This low divergence supports the idea of a natural zoonotic spillover from the rodent reservoir, followed by limited human-to-human transmission.
In other words: Andes hantavirus (ANDV) exhibits high genomic stability. Significant deviations from its expected low mutation rate during human transmission - exceeding patterns seen in lab passage studies or prior human outbreaks2 - would indicate the virus is not behaving like a typical naturally circulating strain from a recent rodent spillover.
In other other words, if, as time passes, we begin to see mutations within humans OUTSIDE of the expected rate then we can conclude with certainty that this is NOT originating from natural spillover and that shenanigans are at play.
If the WHO/UN and these terrible media propagandists who drove the COVID narrative are behind a new “plan” to artificially produce the “need” for a new vaccine, then we might start seeing them producing sequencing data that lies outside of the expected to “prove” that there is a “need” for a new “vaccine” against hantavirus.
The good news is that tracking mutation accumulation over time in human cases (or onward transmission) against known baselines for Andes virus (ANDV) is exactly how genomic epidemiology works - the status quo - and apparently, public sequencing efforts are already doing this. In my opinion, based on what I have seen in the past 6 years, I would appreciate it if independent labs did the sequencing so that the data could be real and transparent, instead of siloed and opaque. I just don’t trust “the experts” anymore.
The bottom line
On the off-chance that this is an infectious clone or repeatedly lab-propagated strain seeded for some agenda, then we should expect lower-than-natural diversity initially (like we do), followed by (if it spreads further in humans) potential lab-like selection artifacts: fixed mutations under artificial pressure, accelerated non-synonymous changes, or reduced natural quasispecies diversity compared to wild rodent-derived virus.
We could also expect signatures inconsistent with rodent reservoir evolution (ie: phylogenetic placement outside known South American lineages).
Conclusion
Ongoing monitoring of Andes hantavirus (ANDV) sequences from future cases is essential. An infectious clone or lab-propagated strain would likely display detectable anomalies (frozen low diversity, artificial sequence features, or atypical mutation patterns under human spread) that deviate from the virus’s documented high genomic stability. Any significant deviations would challenge the natural spillover hypothesis.
Continued open sequencing of additional cases will be the best test of this hypothesis and it is our duty to look for these in the near future. If we see weird stuff described above, then we have literal proof based on the scientific literature and mutation rate expectations baked into this virus, that something nefarious is at play.
Stay tuned…
Martínez VP, Di Paola N, Alonso DO, et al. “Super-Spreaders” and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(23):2230-2241. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2009040
Warner BM, Prévost J, Tailor N, Deschambault Y, Sloan A, Allarie J, Klassen L, Frost K, Booth S, Audet J, Soule G, Safronetz D. High genomic stability of Andes virus following successive passage in vivo in Syrian hamsters. J Virol. 2025 Aug 19;99(8):e0051225. doi: 10.1128/jvi.00512-25. Epub 2025 Jul 24. PMID: 40704892; PMCID: PMC12363185
Thank you for being a Guardian for truth! I've seen some chatter on IG about it being in Pfizer's list of their "C-shot" side effects...what say you? :)
A simple question which I have not heard expressed or answered is: Did others of this ornithological tour group go to that dump? i.e. Was it not transmitted person-to-person, but they all got it from the same primary exposure?