90-Second Read: Opinion | Why are we repeating the same mistakes with Hantavirus that we made with COVID-19?

When a Hantavirus outbreak struck a Dutch cruise ship earlier this month, human transmission was confidently downplayed based on scant knowledge and a prayer that the virus isn't airborne. In other words, the response created multiple preventable opportunities for Hantavirus to evolve and spread, just as COVID-19 once did. But the question remains: Why is public health repeating its mistakes? Physicians in public health often repeat mistakes that, ironically, might've seemed obvious to non-experts.

And while severe Hantavirus cases have been studied, we really know nothing about the capacity of mild or symptomless cases to spread disease and death. In 2020, early field evidence indicated COVID-19 could spread easily via symptomless cases, while some in the medical community continued to insist taking people's temperatures at the airport would be enough to keep everyone safe. These misbeliefs were debunked during the pandemic, yet they've been evident in the public health response to Hantavirus. Based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events Workers in protective gear remove waste from the cruise ship MV Hondius at the Port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, on May 18, 2026.

A handful of studies reflecting limited understanding of Hantavirus doesn't mean public risk is low, it means ignorance is high. Those physicians who claimed Hantavirus isn't very contagious were effectively reading from scripture without considering plausible risks. Early field evidence also showed COVID-19 was airborne, yet respirator masks were removed from some long-term care homes experiencing active outbreaks. In public health this is called the "precautionary principle." Non-experts tend to have little difficulty embracing it, as they're not shackled by defective foundational knowledge or maladaptive professional mores.

Professional expertise is built on foundational knowledge, that which is held to be unassailable and on which other knowledge is built. Challenging foundational knowledge threatens the professional expertise that's been built upon it, like removing a piece from a Jenga tower. Physicians are socialized to defend their foundational knowledge aggressively, to project authority, to never be wrong and to protect one another.