The world’s reaction to hantavirus is tinged by echoes of something else: COVID – CTV
May 14, 2026
NEW YORK — The lingering impact of COVID-19, a few years out from the declaration that the pandemic was over, is scattered across how we live today — the work-from-home jobs, the way some have decided wearing masks is their new normal, the hand sanitizer dispensers that remain ever present.
Some of the other ripples, though, aren’t as obvious. They’re the ones we carry inside us — grief over lost loved ones, chronic health conditions, the sense of lives interrupted. And in recent days, another one has made itself known in the wake of a rare hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship: the fear, despite official reassurances, that it might be happening again.
But the flourishing of fear, whether on a personal or societal level, can also be an indicator that something else is missing. Perhaps there’s no post-pandemic reality more entrenched than the damage done, in the U.S. and globally, to the bonds that in the before times, many would have considered secure — science, government, information itself.
