90-Second Read: Opinion | We Should Be Taking Hantavirus More Seriously

Consider the history of the Andes strain of the Hantavirus. According to a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, in 2018, a Hantavirus outbreak with this strain, the same strain linked to the Hondius cruise, began in Epuyén, Argentina. Yet in recent days, the World Health Organization has reassured the public that Hantavirus can be transmitted only through "close and prolonged contact" and that, as a result, it is unlikely to spread widely among the population at large?

There's no question that another pandemic will strike, but no one knows when or which virus will be the cause. It started after one infected person attended a birthday party with about 100 guests. One of those five partygoers most likely went on to infect six more people, including his spouse, and died 16 days after he became ill.

During his wake, 10 more people became infected, from the spouse. How could that assertion about its not being easy to spread be true given what we know about the 2018 superspreading event? What we can determine with pretty good clarity is how ready we'll be, how well we're constructing obstacles to slow the path of emerging threats and how fast we're learning lessons from painful experience.