Hantavirus Isn’t Just a Threat. It’s a Test.

By David Wallace-Wells

If we’re lucky, it will be a while before a new pandemic arises to rival the death and disruption of Covid. But the hantavirus outbreak that began several weeks ago on a cruise ship traveling the Atlantic Ocean shows, I think, we are terribly unprepared for even a lesser public health threat.

This does not appear to be the superbug of your nightmares, capable of spreading rapidly across the world and killing far more efficiently than that pandemic ever did. But hantavirus infection does have a terrifyingly high mortality rate. It is spreading from human to human. And health officials around the world have proved terribly inept at even accurately describing the risk of transmission, let alone containing it.

There are now potential hantavirus exposures in at least 16 U.S. states. In Europe, the authorities are belatedly........

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