Monday May 18, the cruise ship MV Hondius, on board which a deadly virus was discovered which relaunched an epidemic of psychosis on the planet – as written in a very angry post Rubén Amón in The Confidential –, arrived in Rotterdam relieved of all its passengers. Its 27 crew members and medical staff were immediately placed in isolation. And the World Health Organization (WHO) reassured everyone: “Although this is a serious incident, the risk to public health is low… explained its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Radical change of tone the next day, regarding another health crisis, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an Ebola epidemic has already killed 131 people. This time, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said to himself “deeply concerned by the scale and speed… of the epidemic in the face of which, as of Sunday, his organization declared “an international public health emergency†, its second highest alert level. A welcome initiative for The Country, who greets “the prompt reaction of the WHO, which, without further delay, dispatched experts in epidemiology to the DRC†. “Africa holds its breath†, headlines the Burkinabé daily. And the WHO with it.
The organization has found itself at the heart of all attention for several days, while the 79e World Health Assembly opened Monday in Geneva in a difficult context of austerity, writes Time. “The WHO has just gone through one of the most critical phases of its existence due to the withdrawals of the United States and Argentina as well as cuts in the budgets of the 194 member states.†In one year, recalls the Swiss daily, “2,400 employees will have left the organization which still had 9,400 employees in January 2025.”
In this context, and after two weeks of non-publication, it is precisely to the WHO’s management of the hantavirus crisis that we have chosen to devote our file. Because, in a post-Covid world, the question of the next pandemic to come and our degree of preparation (or unpreparedness) was very quickly asked in the foreign press. Too quickly, some will say. Including Rubén Amón, cited aboveÂ: “Today too, the health risk seems almost secondary next to the narrative impatience that accompanies it, he gets annoyed. It is not only the fear of biological risk that hantavirus reactivates. It’s a whole atmosphere that he brings back to life: the sticky sensation of living permanently in a news bulletin, with an epidemiologist in the dual role of priest and meteorologist of the end of the world.â€
It is quite the opposite that we wanted to do in this file, by compiling the insights of Argentine, American, Brazilian and European scientists. By analyzing everyone’s reactions once the virus was identified on the boat. Also explaining current research and the difficulty of developing treatments. “The focus of hantavirus infection which broke out on board the cruise ship Hondius shines a spotlight on a rare pathogen that typically receives little attention, even in the scientific world… écrit The New York Times. Which reminds us that there is no treatment for hantavirus. No more than vaccines against the Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, identified in the current epidemic.
Hence the importance of a coordinated global response. Faced with the hantavirus, as with Ebola, the WHO seems to have taken stock of each crisis. Hoping that member countries will follow. At the beginning of May, they had not managed to agree to finalize the annex to the agreement on pandemics concerning access to pathogenic agents, known as the “PABS annex”.
We want to believe that thanks to these crises things will evolve. “But will alone is not enough if funding does not follow…, s’inquiète The Country. There too, things could change. The United States, which has ended most of its development aid programs, has just announced the activation of an intervention plan in the DRC. At the same time, one month before the World Cup, Washington strengthened border controls for travelers coming from affected areas. The psychosis epidemic is never far away.
Also read in this issue
Why Vladimir Putin is weaker than he appears
The Russian president is losing the strategic advantage that has long ensured his domination, writes Christian Caryl, seasoned columnist, in Foreign Policy. The former head of the Moscow office of Newsweek describes an isolated Putin, obsessed with his security, as the war in Ukraine bogs down
In the United States, we sell our plasma to make ends meet
With the cost of living rising, more and more middle-class Americans are turning to plasma collection centers, which are now setting up in affluent neighborhoods, says The New York Times. If they only see this solution as temporary and it remains a little taboo, it saves them from insecurity.
Elon Musk against Sam Altman, the trial of the big beasts of tech
The outcome of the legal duel between the former shareholder of the start-up OpenAI and its co-founder is uncertain. The issue is not really whether the start-up was wrong to renounce its public interest mission to adopt the status of a for-profit company. What has been playing out in the Oakland court since April 27 is more of a major unpacking. That of a voracious ambition, in Elon Musk as in Sam Altman, tells the Financial Times.
“Tomorrow we will be forbidden, what, from breathing?†: in Russia, these readers who defy censorship
Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian publishing sector has been hit by a series of bans. Faced with the withdrawal of works and the blacklisting of authors who do not conform to the spirit of the times, certain libraries and reading clubs are becoming places of intellectual resistance, notes the independent Russian site The wind.
/2026/05/21/6a0eb38a7b8d5577354958.jpg "La Russie et les États-Unis utilisent la désinformation climatique comme une arme stratégique de guerre informationnelle")
