Transcript of Hantavirus Ship Nears Port & Can Pratt Win Over LA? | 5.8.26 New

A deadly virus outbreak on a cruise ship leaves 3 people dead and more than 100 stranded.

Hantavirus has a high fatality rate. Up to 30% of people who acquire this infection can die.

We speak to an expert about the hantavirus and why he says this is not the next COVID.

I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, May 8th. This is Morning Wire.

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt hits the national political map with a stellar debate performance. What's been so effective about his unorthodox campaign?

They don't have to live in the mess they've created where you live.

And are we seeing a rise in religion and conservatism in young men?

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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A cruise ship with a deadly disease outbreak that began Sunday is currently en route to the Canary Islands. Previous ports have refused to allow the passengers to disembark due to concerns about the hantavirus. At least 3 of the 8 infected passengers have already died.

Joining us to discuss hantavirus and what risk it poses to the public is Vanderbilt professor of infectious disease Dr. William Schaffner. Dr. Schaffner, thanks for coming on. Good to be with you, Georgia. Now, there is a very frightening situation playing out off the coast of Africa right now. We have this cruise ship with almost 150 people that are currently stranded. At least 3 people on board have passed away from suspected hantavirus. First, can you tell us what hantavirus is and how people usually get it? Sure.

Hantavirus is a virus that lives in small rodents and usually in warmer parts of the world. For example, our southwestern United States. The rodents shed the virus through their saliva, their urine, and their feces, and then it can dry up. If humans get into that environment and stir up the dust and create an aerosol, they can breathe in the virus and it can get down into their lungs. It can also get on their hands and then they can transmit it to themselves that way. This is an infection that can have a long incubation period, days to weeks. In other words, nothing happens, and then all of a sudden you become sick. The initial illness is rather mild. You just think you have a viral infection with some fever and headache, not feeling too well, some muscular aches and pains. That goes on for 2 or 3 days and then crash. You get seriously ill because the virus has infected your lungs and your heart, and that can result in death, as you have indicated. Now, this virus, you acquire it from the environment, and it is not usually transmissible from person to person. However, there is a strain of this hantavirus called the Andes virus in South America that is transmissible from person to person, and that's the strain on the cruise ship.

So there's more concern because this hantavirus is more transmissible than usual.

Now, when you say it's transmissible person to person, is it still contact and through aerosol, or is it airborne? How do people transmit it?

Yeah, we don't know all the details of that, except it would appear to require close contact with more prolonged contact, usually indoors. Of course, that's describing a cruise ship, right, where people have a lot of close contact for a prolonged period of time indoors.

Now, you mentioned that this is suspected to be the Andes strain. I understand these passengers came from a previous stop in Argentina. Is that suspected to be the origin of the virus?

That is expected to be the origin. It's most likely that this group of ecologically and environmentally uh, oriented passengers. It's that kind of a cruise. Uh, actually probably did some hiking and birding and the like before they got on board.

Now, I understand this is a pretty old virus. It's not like something new that's just mutated. So this is not a new COVID?

It is an old virus. This is not a mutating virus. It's a pretty stable virus, and it's a family of viruses. There were some passengers who didn't book for the whole cruise. Just part of it, and they have already disembarked. Those folks are being traced, so, so far so good. Could there be further transmission? Yes, but I think it's going to be very limited. This is not COVID once again. It's not going to run around the world and make us all sick, so folks can be at ease about that.

Well, that's a relief to hear, but still extremely frightening for those people on the boat. Dr. Schaffner, thanks for coming on. My great pleasure. Thank you.

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Spencer Pratt's performance in Wednesday's debate has turned a longshot candidacy in deep blue LA into a national story, and the former reality TV star is suddenly being talked about as far more than a celebrity novelty bid.

Joining us now is Cabot Phillips, host of Wired In Live. So Cabot, Spencer Pratt's bid began as sort of amusing for us millennials, but after Wednesday night's debate, it's really not a joke anymore. So catch us up to speed.

Yeah, the Spencer Pratt phenomenon has become far bigger than just a viral debate moment or creative campaign ad. You have a guy with zero political experience who got famous as a reality TV star in the early 2000s, who's now connecting with LA voters on a deeper level than any Republican in recent memory, to the point of becoming now a national sensation. As for that debate, Pratt was already outnumbered on the debate stage by the two Democrats running against him, Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman. But he was also scolded repeatedly by the Telemundo and NBC moderators for what they called name-calling, something that reminded many online of another reality TV star turned politician. Pratt was direct and to the point. He had clear answers to nearly every question thrown at him and also gave clear promises. To deal with problems that have crippled LA for decades, like crime, housing, and homelessness. And if you look at the polling after the debate, NBC, for example, showed that 89% of viewers said that Pratt came out as the winner. So it was a huge night for the Republican, right?

And there are some people who are calling him the MAGA Mom Donnie. Of course, there's comparisons to Trump as the former reality star. Is that accurate? Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, I don't think those are the worst comparisons. All three of these guys are media-savvy political newcomers taking on the establishment. This response here from Pratt after ramen, bizarrely accused him of colluding with Mayor Bass, did remind a lot of folks of Trump's raw, no-holds-barred type style of debating. Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning my house and my parents' house and my town and all my neighbors down. I am not working with Mayor Bass. Second off, if I wanted to run against anybody, it would be the council member who is terrible. And on the other end of that comparison, Momdani, we know, was able to connect with young voters on key issues in a way that turned what was once perceived as a longshot candidate candidacy into him becoming mayor of the most powerful city on Earth. Pratt tapped into a similar kind of energy very effectively in this debate, giving a voice to the anger that many LA residents are feeling under incumbent Karen Bass. And really what surprised a lot of people, including myself, was his fluency on the issues. It was pretty clear early on the strategy of his opponents, uh, who are both veteran politicians, was to pin Pratt down as an uneducated Hollywood buffoon, just a reality star who had no business running the city.

But Pratt really flipped the script entirely, putting Bass on the defensive. Basically, his argument was, yes, you guys have been politicians for a while, but look at the results.

So the big question: does Pratt actually have a chance with LA voters?

Yeah, that's the thing. Uh, if you base things on social media, you would view him as the front runner. His campaign ads have garnered tens of millions of views, and he's turned a local race national. But we're still talking about a Republican in Los Angeles, so there's no doubt he is still Maybe not a long shot, but it is certainly an uphill battle. There really have not been any major polls that have come out since he started gaining traction. So looking at prediction markets, which often are more accurate than polls, he's sitting at around a 25% chance of winning. Uh, those odds actually went up 10% in the hours after the debate. So it does give you an idea of how strongly voters felt he performed.

Now, a lot of Spencer's fame has come from his viral campaign ads. So tell us, why have they been so successful?

Yeah, they've certainly put him on the map, and there's no doubt they are brilliantly made, just politically speaking. The most popular one opens up with Pratt standing outside the mansions of Mayor Bass and Councilwoman Rahman. It then cuts to a downtown homeless encampment as he narrates, quote, "They don't have to live in the mess they created where you live." The next shot is Pratt himself standing outside a trailer on the ashes of his burned-down Palisades home, where he says, quote, "This is where I live. They let my home burn down." That's why I'm running for mayor.

Now, this isn't the first time we've seen Republican candidates for mayor get hyped and then things kind of fall apart. So what does his path in this primary look like?

Well, he does have a path. He'll first have to come in the top 2 in next month's primary. There's still a ways to go, but he is the only candidate you could say with any kind of real momentum at this point. Raman just had that disastrous debate, and Bass is an extremely wounded incumbent who has struggled to defend her administration's many failings. Above all else, though, Angelinos want change. He certainly has a chance, and that'll start with making it to the runoff in November at the very least.

Well, and good to remember, this is actually a nonpartisan race, so they won't have a D or an R. A jungle primary. Yeah, they won't have a D or an R next to their name. So, uh, that might make a difference for the voters. Cabot, thanks for reporting.

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New research suggests that not only is the next generation of young men more religious, they may also be more conservative.

Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now to explain. Morning, Megan. So this latest data doesn't necessarily show that all demographics are becoming becoming more religious, but one pretty big one is— tell us about that.

So the long-running narrative in American culture has been that religion, especially among younger people, is in serious decline. And overall, that trend is still somewhat true, but this new survey suggests that young men may actually be bucking that trend. So a new Gallup analysis covering 2024 and 2025 found that 42% of American men ages 18 to 29 now say that religion is very important in their lives, and that is a sharp upswing from just 28% just 2 years ago. And that's significant for several reasons. First, obviously, it represents a, a major jump in a very short period of time, but it also means that young men now surpass young women on this measure of religiosity for the first time in roughly 25 years of Gallup tracking it. This confirms some other polling data that we've seen. Barna Group also found a couple of years ago that millennials and Gen Z Christians were attending church more often than older generations. But when Barna drilled down on those numbers, it found that the change was primarily coming from men and primarily concentrated in various iterations of Christianity. That said, there was a survey from YouGov last year that also found the same surge in religiosity among young men.

It was widely hailed. But then it was found to have some pretty significant, um, errors and it had to be retracted. So that's part of why this Gallup poll is drawing so many eyes, because it's sort of settling what's been an open debate.

Right. We've reported on some of those polls in the past. What's behind this shift? Why would young men suddenly be moving toward religion?

So the researchers who are looking at this basically say that we could be seeing several cultural forces that are converging. One explanation involves the growing political divide between young men and young women, which is becoming increasingly stark. Surveys show that young women have been moving sharply toward progressive politics in recent years, while young men are drifting somewhat slower but definitely rightward. And religion in the United States still tends to correlate with conservative cultural views. Political scientist Ryan Burge, who studies these kinds of religious trends, he notes that younger Catholics, particularly men, are significantly more likely to identify as conservative than older generations. As older liberal priests retire, the younger generation replacing them tends to be much more conservative theologically, and that usually means they will also be more conservative politically.

Right, that makes sense. Some have been calling this a potential religious revival. How accurate is that?

Yeah, there has been some major debate about that, and I think it is probably still best not to overstate what we're seeing, because even those Researchers who are very clear that they do see this shift, they also say that it's not enough to call it a major resurgence. And for one reason, the broader picture still shows that young Americans right now are the least religious generation in modern history, and there are very large shares that still identify as religiously unaffiliated. And then you also have some analysts arguing that the new gender gap may be partly caused by declining religiosity among women. So they're trying to separate out what is women becoming less religious and men becoming more religious. Still, those Gallup numbers are real, and they show that something noteworthy is happening among young men specifically, right?

A jump from 28% to 42% in just 2 years is really pretty stunning. Megan, thank you so much for reporting. Yep, anytime. Another story we're tracking: the U.S. military carried out strikes on Iran's Keshem port and the port city of Bandar Bos. But US officials say this does not represent a restart of the war. This follows days of Iranian attacks on US naval assets and commercial shipping in and around the Hormuz Strait. Meanwhile, President Trump says Iranian leaders are reviewing the latest peace proposal from the US. Thanks for waking up with us.

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