Hantavirus is a reminder we should prepare for the next pandemic

We’re going backward instead of forward

Five cases and three deaths have been confirmed in the hantavirus outbreak on board the MV Hondius cruise ship. (Photo by Arman Onal/Anadolu via Getty Images)

When I heard about human-to-human transmission of hantavirus on a cruise ship, I made sure that my household box of emergency supplies was where I thought it was. That box includes a brand of elastomeric respirator that I saw recommended by a biosecurity expert on a podcast in October. I later went online to find the link to the company so I could share it with others, only to discover that it recently went out of business.

And that I think about sums up the problem with pandemics.

I checked with knowledgeable medical professionals and none of them seem particularly worried about this particular hantavirus outbreak, which is great. But when I start to see headlines telling people not to panic, I get worried.

Not because you should panic about hantavirus, but because panicking is — by definition — not the correct response to any situation. If you’re facing an imminent threat, you still shouldn’t panic because panicking is never correct. So by the same token, while it’s good to hear that the objective threat level from this outbreak is by most accounts lower than I initially feared, just issuing instructions not to panic doesn’t add very much.

The implication is that everyone should just continue going about their day without changing anything. And it’s possible that’s correct advice for you and your family.

But my sense is that most American households have in fact under-reacted to the threat of novel virus outbreaks (which is perhaps why companies making well-reviewed respirators go out of business). And it’s definitely the case that the American government has under-reacted.

For any given novel outbreak, the initial read is almost always going to be that the odds of it becoming a deadly pandemic are low. That’s just the nature of things.

But we’re in a structural situation where, due to population growth, prosperity, and increased connectivity, the odds of new pandemic outbreaks are mechanically rising. Separately, technological improvements mean the odds of engineered pandemics are also rising. We ought to be taking aggressive countermeasures to get ahead of these risks, and we largely aren’t.

So, yes, of course don’t panic. This hantavirus outbreak will probably be fine.