When the news of the hantavirus cruise ship from hell broke last week, my two older sons — ages 19 and 16 — both texted me within a matter of minutes.
"Is there gonna be a hantavirus pandemic?" my eldest wrote.
"We are absolutely sure this hantavirus isn't gonna turn into six years ago?" asked his brother.
I reassured them both it wasn't going to be. "People will riot," I replied. And I don't think I'm wrong. I know I will not comply. I vividly remember the week COVID shut down the world. My eldest had just turned 13; we celebrated his birthday on his day off from school, with plans to go to dinner that Friday.
We did not get to go to dinner. The anxiety that filled our lives as Wisconsin went into lockdown still sits fresh in my mind. I was working in a hospital then, and we were all issued papers: documents from our employer indicating we were first responders and could travel to and from work despite the lockdown restrictions.
It never sat well with me. Papers to travel freely are things that happen in other, communist, nations. Not America. But the panic that gripped some people is real, and — six years later – I still see people masking in public.
We can never allow this to happen again, because it made people become unglued, like these parents in Spain, who are now going to prison for what they did to their children in the name of COVID safety.
Parents who refused to let their three children go outside their house for FOUR YEARS due to Covid fears, leaving them with extreme mental and physical conditions, are sentenced to prison https://t.co/3XZdGBSRLd
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 11, 2026
The parents of three children rescued from a four-year Covid 'lockdown' in a so-called Spanish 'House of Horrors' have been jailed for nearly three years.
German freelance tech recruiter Christian Steffen, 53, and his American-born wife Melissa Ann Steffen, 48, were today handed their sentences following a behind-closed-doors trial in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo, where they lived.
There, the couple kept their three young children - a then-ten-year-old and twins aged eight at the time - inside a squalid home for nearly four years between December 2021 when they arrived in Spain and April 28, 2025, claiming the kids needed to be protected from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the couple's children were left with severe mental and physical health problems after being kept from society for years on end, prosecutors said.
Police found soiled nappies and used sanitary towels and tampons dumped around the house, and worktops covered in animal excrement.
Officials said the children faced problems with bladder and bowel control, as well as bowed legs caused by years of being kept in tiny beds too small for their growing bodies.
Investigators found disturbing scrawls created by the children on the inside of their cots, showing monsters with jagged teeth in red ink.
Police said following the children's release from their years-long hell that one child knelt on the grass outside the home and, overcome with emotion, 'touched it with amazement'.
Where is the accountability? Yes, these parents are facing consequences as they rightly should, but the people who instilled in them fear and an excuse to abuse and hold their children prisoner should face consequences, too. We should not, and cannot, move on from COVID and excuse the tyrannical, hypocritical behavior of the people who wouldn't let me have a funeral for my father, but gave George Floyd three of them.
I recently started homeschooling my youngest, and — as always — was met with some flak about it. "How will he be properly socialized?" some ask. These people clearly have not met my son, who will tell you his life story if given the chance. Somewhere in Milwaukee, there's an Uber driver who knows about our deceased cat Bella, because my son entertained him with that story while riding with his father.
Socialization isn't a problem. There are, too, the faux concerns of "abuse" at the hands of homeschooling parents. Does it happen? Sometimes, but it's not as ubiquitous as the Left claims (or maybe hopes?). But I don't hear a peep out of them over this abuse. And I know these Spanish parents are not alone.
I knew parents who refused to let their son play with my boys because I didn't get them vaccinated. I stand by that decision, and given what we're learning, am glad I protected my sons from the potential complications of the COVID vaccine. I know teachers who see the long-lasting impacts of COVID lockdowns in their classrooms as kids who were forced into remote learning struggle with reading, classroom behavior, and a slew of other side effects.
And remember: kids were never high-risk, not as vectors for COVID or as patients. They were the lowest-risk group, yet they bore the brunt of the brutality of so-called COVID "safety" measures. I was only grateful my eldest was in middle school at that point. He didn't miss prom or graduation or other milestones. But a lot of kids did, and those are experiences they'll never get back.
That's why, as hantavirus dominates the news, the powers-that-be need to know we will not — to steal a phrase from Kamala Harris — go back. They blew their credibility and authority with COVID, and we all learned our lessons. My children will not be sacrificed on the altar of another pandemic, and I doubt I'm alone in feeling that way.
