Covid and the Public Health Establishment are Working Together to Make the Next Pandemic More Likely

Public health officials keep giving reasons that Hantavirus has historically been “more forgiving” than Covid.

Yes, I saw it. Covid is mild and Hantavirus is forgiving. So everything is good.

– Dana Ludwig (@danaludwig) May 15, 2026

But these same officials, many of whom were involved in the Let rip of Covid programs, are also lying or ignorant of the basic facts about Hantavirus. For example, the CDC says it needs personal contact for a long time (whatever that actually is). But that is not true. There is evidence of human-to-human transmission in the past between people attending social gatherings and an infected person. And there are strong arguments that the current outbreak does not require prolonged human contact to spread:

Earlier today I spoke to the doctor on board and he confirmed something. CDC messages keep saying “long, close contact” but that contradicts: 1) what’s on the books, and 2) what’s happening on this ship.

-> the doctor told me a few infected/died DID…

— Joseph Allen (@j_g_allen) May 9, 2026

Most confirmations are about the fact that Hantavirus is not a novel virus as it dates back to 1993. Although that may be true and it plays in a completely new field created by Covid-19 and how Hantavirus behaved in the past does not predict how it will be now or in the future. Because of that uncertainty, many advise public health departments to operate under the precautionary principle, which justifies the expected action to prevent the occurrence of harm in the face of incomplete scientific evidence.

So far the good tests have been limited to those on board, but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way:

Not yet, but it’s still early days, given the long incubation period – it can take up to 8 weeks for symptoms to appear.

It is also noteworthy that one of the passengers who left the ship early (before the disease was revealed) tested positive for the virus.

— Cat in the Hat 🐈‍⬛ 🎩 🇬🇧 (@_CatintheHat) May 17, 2026

As we wait to see if other cases come from contact with cruise passengers, among the uncertainties that require a precautionary measure is the question of whether Covid-19 has made the Hantavirus more transmissible:

The question is whether hentavirus is more infectious not because the virus has changed but because we have. This and covid both attack the endothelial layers of the blood system. So are people who get covid antibodies vulnerable / vulnerable to hantavirus?

– J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) May 16, 2026

The argument is that people with repeated infections of COVID have damaged immune systems, making it much easier for them to pick up the virus at a lower rate than those without COVID infections. Here is a long list of studies that find that COVID damages the immune system, leading some to the following conclusions:

Repeated covid infections damage people’s lungs and immune responses.
This is true *.

That damage makes people more vulnerable to more diseases.
This is true *.

In these cases, other viruses, such as hantavirus, have a better chance of sustaining transmission.

— tern (@1gootern) May 8, 2026

Also:

If you’ve had the first, you’ve likely been at risk, and been hurt, by the second.

— tern (@1gootern) May 8, 2026

A 2012 paper in Advances in Virology found that Hantavirus shuts down your immune system by preventing it from making interferon: COVID, of course, controls the interferon response.

The interferon connection, if any, is beyond my pay grade. But what is clear is that basing predictions of how Hantavirus will behave on the previous experience of Covid is planning a best case scenario when the situation calls for the opposite.

For example, the reproduction number (R0) of Hantavirus is about two, meaning that one infected person can be expected to transmit it to two other people. Some argue that it is higher:

That’s right, but we know from the most widespread events of 2018 in Argentina that the Andes Virus spreads H2H almost via the aerosol route with an R0 of 2.12, the same as the Wuhan COVID strain. If you don’t put strong precautions in the air now, which you don’t have right now, there is a big risk…

— Dr David Berger BSc MBBS MRCP(UK) FRACGP-RG DTM+H (@YouAreLobbyLud) May 6, 2026

R0 depends on a variety of conditions. First, it is based on previous outbreaks of Covid that control the world’s immune system. Even if we work under the assumption that Hantavirus will behave in the same way as before, the R0 number from the 2018 outbreak in Argentina was reduced to zero by strict safety measures:

What I keep trying to say! There IS a REASON why the 2018 ANDV (Andes Hantavirus) outbreak in Argentina was limited to 34 people and 11 deaths. It is because Argentina imposed a MANDATORY quarantine on exposed people. Doing the right thing = put in a bud.

— Ellen Brockaway (@happyhexer) May 15, 2026

So any public health official or infectious disease expert who advises calm should in theory be advocating similar measures. However, it would appear that instead they expect R0 to drop to zero without the tough measures put in place in Argentina in 2018.

So not only does it refuse to take proper precautions, the health establishment still has trouble accepting inspiration:

It is widely accepted that hantavirus spreads from rat feces to humans by inhalation of aerosolized virus, so I do not understand why we are reluctant to accept the inhalation route of human-to-human transmission.

– Linsey Marr linseymarr.bsky.social (@linseymarr) May 14, 2026

And there is an inability to understand/refusal to publicly admit that the world has changed, especially in relation to the effects of Covid on the world’s immune system, but also in other ways:

Good choice / can’t believe your world has changed. It is a killer in medicine.👇 pic.twitter.com/evLBMBGiu7

— Dr David Berger BSc MBBS MRCP(UK) FRACGP-RG DTM+H (@YouAreLobbyLud) May 11, 2026

***

Even though Hantavirus, aided by Covid, is going through a pandemic, Covid itself continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people a year and help other viruses do more damage.

The truth is, it is getting harder and harder to ignore this worrying increase in infectious diseases since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Even the UKHSA is sounding the alarm

Lockdowns ended almost 5 years ago now – we can’t blame them forever. pic.twitter.com/fa6UYgJ945

— Cat in the Hat 🐈‍⬛ 🎩 🇬🇧 (@_CatintheHat) May 15, 2026

Even the Daily Mail (!) last week admitted that Covid is helping to cause a resurgence of meningitis:

When people usually catch the meningitis B virus, it usually lives harmlessly in the nose – about 25 percent of teenagers and young adults host the virus.

The problem, Dr Edwards says, is that Covid may have made our cells more susceptible to infection.

‘The Covid virus enters cells by binding to its receptors,’ he explained.

‘When this happens, this gives the bacteria a chance to enter the cells – which is why many Covid patients get viral infections like pneumonia.

‘It is possible that many of these young people with meningitis now may have had Covid, and this has left their cells vulnerable to infection.’