Crew from a cruise ship affected by hantavirus arrive in the Netherlands on May 12.Christoph Reichwein/dpa/Zuma
A popular social media conspiracy theory about a recent cluster of hantavirus cases claims that the word “hanta” means “scam,” “fraud,” or “nonsense” in “Hebrew slang.” That’s more or less where the theory ends and dark suggestion takes over. One is meant to conclude that the supposed Hebrew origins of the word mean that the hantavirus—a well-documented illness with outbreaks that go back several decades—is somehow a scam, perpetrated by either the Israeli government or some other undefined group of Jewish people.
None of this is true. Even the root linguistic claim is completely wrong: the word “hantavirus” comes from the Hantaan River in Korea, where the prototype virus was first identified. Nor is hantavirus, which is typically spread by close contact with infected rodents or their urine, saliva, or feces, a new illness: the virus was isolated in 1978 and cultivated in labs as far back as 1981. In New Mexico, hantavirus cases virtually occur annually; last year, Santa Fe resident Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, died from the illness.
Yet in the past two weeks, the “Hebrew” claim has spread wildly across Instagram, Threads, TikTok, X, and YouTube, through a fusillade of virtually identical posts, mostly shared by people who are neither public figures nor widely followed. The way the false notion has spread is an excellent demonstration not only of how a conspiracy theory is created and reinforced in real time, but of the ways tech platforms are either unable or unwilling to take action against coded hateful claims.
“I can’t stress enough about how this post is not a dig at Jews.”
Almost all of the social media posts making these claims follow the same format, whether presented in screenshots or a video: the words “I wonder what Hanta means in Hebrew” appear, followed by an image of a Google search for the term, with the company’s AI Overview summary at the top, which claims: “In Hebrew slang, hanta (חַנְטָה) means nonsense, a lie, a scam, or something completely fake. It is often used colloquially as the equivalent of “that’s bullshit” or “a load of garbage.” As citations, Google’s AI overview links to an answer from Grok, X’s in-house AI chatbot, and to a Reddit thread that’s since been deleted. A virtually identical AI summary also currently appears on Instagram when a user searches for the phrase “What does Hanta mean in Hebrew.”
The rumors spread so widely on X that they, as Snopes pointed out, became a trending topic on the platform. Many of the posts had impressive reach, considering the posters’ stature. One of the most successful versions on Instagram, from a New Age influencer calling herself Divinely Sierra, has garnered over two million views. (In a comment added a day after she made the video, Sierra added, “I can’t stress enough about how this post is not a dig at Jews… This post is specifically talking about how this reality and everything we see come from the world stage is scripted.”) Another version on Instagram is approaching 200,000 views, posted by a small-scale hunting and masculinity influencer whose previous videos often didn’t crack 500 views. To drive the point home, his video includes audio from the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”
Interestingly, the claims have spread widely even as very few recognizable public figures have engaged. Shock jocks Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew discussed the claim in a video that’s still up on YouTube but was removed by TikTok the day I contacted the company for comment. JP Sears, a far-right comedian, has posted versions of the claim on both X and Facebook—but at just over 200,000 views apiece, he’s done scarcely better than that hunting influencer.
Like false claims about the Talmud that circulated among some of the internet’s most unpleasant masculinity influencers in the summer of 2024, the hantavirus claims also rely on flatly wrong facts about Hebrew. Dr. Ghil’ad Zuckermann, a linguist and language revivalist, suggested to me that the claim is “based on confusing the Korean potamonym (river name) ‘hanta’ with khárta (חרטא), a common Israeli slangism meaning ‘bullshit, nonsense.’” (The Hebrew letters that make the N and R sounds, he points out, are “similar graphically.”)
Zuckermann says that another Israeli slang term, khantarísh (חנטריש) means “nonsense, worthless person, bullshitter.” “Theoretically, this term could be clipped (shortened) to khánta,” he says.
But, he adds, “I personally know hundreds of thousands speakers of the Israeli language and have never heard any of them saying khánta, whereas khárta is common.”
A TikTok spokesperson told me the company’s “Community Guidelines” disallow “misinformation that could cause significant harm to individuals or society,” including “harmful conspiracy theories, and other false information related to public safety or crises—when such content may lead to violence or cause public panic.” The spokesperson also told me that when users search for the word “hantavirus” on TikTok, they’ll now first see a link to a Mayo Clinic page.
While the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, under Elon Musk, X maintains nominal policies against “hateful conduct.” Experts have found what one study called a “consistent spike” in hate speech after Musk bought the company in 2022. In an agreement with British regulators announced Friday, the company pledged to take stronger action against both hateful content and accounts linked to terrorist groups.
YouTube—where the claims are present, but not as prevalent—has policies that forbid “certain types of misleading or deceptive content with serious risk of egregious harm,” which the hantavirus claims don’t clearly fall into. A Meta spokesperson, meanwhile, told me that the company is “reviewing the content in question and will take action against anything that violates our policies.”
But like the videos spreading false claims themselves, the spokesperson added, the responses are also expected to come from users.
“As we announced in March 2025, Meta has rolled out a Community Notes feature that lets people add more context to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts that are potentially misleading or confusing,” they told me. “Meta has always been clear that we don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth, and our approach has long been to surface information that people find helpful in deciding what to read, trust or share.”
