Scary: Even Less Prepared For A Pandemic Now Than Before COVID

Very frightening to hear, especially with Ebola and hantavirus around now. In the early 1990's, I read Richard Preston's nonfiction book about Ebola, "The Hot Zone", and I have never forgotten it.

Will the conspiracy theorists, naysayers, and deniers even pay attention? I doubt it. 

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The world is more at risk of a pandemic now than before COVID, experts say. This is why

As world health leaders face deadly outbreaks of hantavirus and Ebola, a major pandemic preparedness report finds we are less safe from viral outbreaks than before COVID

By Claire Cameron, Scientific American, 5-18-26

The world is more at risk of a pandemic and less safe from deadly viral outbreaks now than it was before COVID, a major pandemic preparedness report found.

“The evidence is clear: health, economic, social and political impacts of health emergencies have not diminished, and an in important areas are growing,” the report authors write. “In short, reforms have not kept pace with rising pandemic risk—the world is not meaningfully safer.”

The report is the final analysis by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a World Health Organization (WHO) group established in the wake of West Africa’s 2016 Ebola epidemic to assess how well countries were prepared to face a deadly pandemic. The report, which first published in 2018, has provided an annual snapshot of pandemic preparedness since—and the world is moving in the wrong direction, the authors concluded.

Just days ago, the WHO declared a global health emergency over an outbreak of a type of Ebola virus in Africa that has killed scores of people and sickened hundreds more; meanwhile, the organization and national health agencies are trying to contain a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has killed three who were onboard the cruise ship where the spread began.

“Global health security is facing a convergence of threats that place the world at a greater risk of a devastating global pandemic than it was previously,” says Jessica Justman, an epidemiologist and senior technical director of ICAP at Columbia University, a research center focused on global health emergencies and pandemics. The Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks show that “infectious disease outbreaks have not gone away.”

The report authors point to several reasons for the growing risks: these include a lack of public trust in health institutions, increased threat of climate change and armed conflict, geopolitical fragmentation, a dearth of funding for health initiatives, weakened access to medical treatment and commercial self-interest. On the latter, the authors note artificial intelligence’s potential to transform pandemic preparedness, but they argue that without guidance, it will likely exacerbate health risks.

“The threats are broad,” says Justman. Many national governments aren’t adequately funding public health infrastructure, while the scope of threats to global health has grown to include AI risks, war, accelerating climate change and antimicrobial resistance, she says.

The report warns that the future will see increasingly frequent pandemics and public health emergencies that will be harder to manage and more disruptive even than COVID.

“The world risks entering a cycle of accelerating health crises, where each new shock further erodes resilience and widens existing fractures,” the authors write.

­­“To change course, global health security needs to be financially prioritized in national budgets, especially by the countries that have the resources to do so,” Justman says. Whether the political will is there remains to be seen, however: In the U.S., the Trump administration has slashed funding to research infectious diseases such as COVID, while also cutting off support for global health initiatives by dismantling organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

The administration also pulled the U.S. out of the WHO, removing the world’s top health body’s biggest funder and cutting off crucial support for responding to emerging pandemic threats. At the same time, the WHO has for months struggled to finalize its own Pandemic Agreement, a treaty aimed at improving international pandemic preparedness and response in the wake of COVID—at issue is how countries are expected to share emerging pathogen information with one another.

That disagreement may be symptomatic of what the report authors say is a broad “democratic erosion” in the wake of successive pandemics and health emergencies through the last decade. Trust is critical to pandemic preparedness—and it is in steep decline.

“These pressures make the world not only more likely to face epidemics and pandemics going forward, but also more vulnerable to their cascading impacts,” the authors write.

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Claire Cameron is breaking news chief at Scientific American. Originally from Scotland, she moved to New York City in 2012. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Slate, Inc. Magazine, Nautilus, Semafor, and elsewhere. 

Dr Ruth Report, 5-17-26

Here's the latest informative newsletter by Dr Ruth Ann Crystal.  I've been reading these newsletters for years and always feel better knowing she's on top of things.

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Dr. Ruth Report, 5/17/26
Ruth Ann Crystal MD, May 17, 2026

Virus Summary

COVID levels are at their lowest in the last 5 years, and Influenza A and B wastewater levels are low in most parts of the country. There are still a few pockets of RSV, but RSV activity has peaked and is decreasing in most areas of the United States.

The Andes Hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship appears to be contained.

The WHO has labeled an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola in the DRC and Uganda as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. (see below)

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Regional wastewater levels for COVID, RSV, Flu A, Flu B from Wastewater SCAN:

Research on Acute COVID infection

5/15/26 BioRxiV (MIT and others): Expansion Revealing of Pathology Resolves Nanostructures Associated with Inflammatory Phenotypes in COVID-19 Decedent Human Brain Tissue https://buff.ly/ikYRPuI

“Expansion revealing of pathology” (ExRPath) is a new imaging technique that physically expands brain tissue about 20 times, allowing scientists to see structures as small as 20 nanometers and uncover details that are normally too crowded to detect. MIT researchers developed ExRPath, and a faster version of this technology called 15ExMPath, which expands tissue about 15 times in a single step instead of requiring multiple rounds.

Using ExRPath and 15ExMPath, MIT researchers examined brain tissue from 8 people who died of COVID infection and found SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins clustered with amyloid deposits in some of the brains, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The same tissue samples also showed evidence of neuroinflammation operating through molecular pathways associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Expansion revealing of pathology (ExRPath) Technique:

From: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.14.725177v1.full.pdf

5/9/26 Pathogens and Immunity: Impact of Sex on Viral Shedding and Symptom Severity During Acute COVID-19 https://buff.ly/Bez0ODy

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital tracked 668 COVID patients and found “In the first 3 days after symptom onset, female participants exhibited higher nasal SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels than males, but lower viral RNA levels thereafter… Female participants also tended to have higher symptom scores.”

Social and Advocacy

5/12/26 Bloomberg Law: Doctors Rebuffed by Courts in Long Covid and Disability Fights https://buff.ly/D7eH49L

A Bloomberg Law analysis of 130 Long Covid disability lawsuits filed in the United States found that judges frequently challenge the flawed conclusions of physicians hired by disability insurers to deny claimant benefits. The cases reveal how the private disability insurance system creates significant obstacles for Long COVID patients.

Seniors

5/8/26 PLOS One: Life lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic: A model-based cohort analysis of mortality displacement in the registered population of England https://buff.ly/8LYywNe

Analysis of 62 million registered residents of England found that a substantial portion of older adults who died of COVID had considerable remaining life expectancy prior to infection. Among individuals over age 65 who died, at least 28% were projected to survive five or more additional years had they not contracted the virus.

Pediatrics

5/11/26 BMJ Paediatrics Open: “It’s sad, and I want to go back to how things were before”: a qualitative study of young people’s experiences of living with long COVID https://buff.ly/2Zh0OM1

Swedish scientists conducted qualitative interviews with 7 young people under age 18 who are living with Long COVID. They found that “Long COVID negatively impacted the children and young people’s lives, affecting their relationships, education, leisure activities and sense of identity. Dismissive and sceptical attitudes from professionals and peers substantially increased the burden, whereas encountering acceptance and knowledgeable professionals facilitated coping with long COVID.”

Antiviral treatments

PEP for COVID

5/13/26 Nature: At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01546-0

5/13/26 NEJM: Ensitrelvir for Covid-19 Postexposure Prophylaxis in Household Contacts https://buff.ly/zWaGS6z

A clinical trial of 2,041 household contacts of COVID patients found that taking a 5 day course of the antiviral drug Ensitrelvir reduced the rate of symptomatic COVID infection from 9% down to 3% when taken after COVID exposure. This marks the first oral medication demonstrated to block COVID from developing in people who have been exposed but have not yet shown symptoms, offering particular promise for protecting vulnerable populations.

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Long COVID

May 2026 Lancet eClinical Medicine: The next phase in Long COVID research: addressing the ethical challenges in trials of disease-modifying treatments https://buff.ly/DGuTUI9

A team of bioethicists, doctors, and Long COVID patients argue in a new opinion piece that researchers should not wait for a complete mechanistic understanding of Long COVID before testing possible treatments. The authors say that the ethical hurdles created by Long COVID’s complexity, including the fact that it likely represents several distinct subtypes with different underlying causes, can be overcome with careful study design, thoughtful participant selection, and close attention to whether the benefits of any given trial outweigh the risks for all groups involved, including children. “Some treatment candidates are widely used to treat diseases other than Long COVID and are expected to be equally safe in people with Long COVID (PWLC), even if the evidence on the given agent’s potential clinical benefits for PWLC is still emerging (e.g., monoclonal antibodies, several immune modulators, GLP-1 agonists).”

5/9/26 Nature: Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation improves dysautonomia, post-traumatic stress disorder and cognitive impairment in long covid patients: a pilot study https://buff.ly/LiwoDBT

Researchers at Paris Saclay conducted a pilot study of 17 Long COVID patients and found that noninvasive electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve through the outer ear reduced autonomic nervous system dysfunction by 56% over eight weeks of treatment. The same intervention also produced measurable improvements in both cognitive function and PTSD symptoms among participants.

5/13/26 Nature: Endothelial dysfunction and metabolic biomarkers in post-COVID-19 syndrome https://buff.ly/lSTbrI3

German scientists tracked 262 adults for nearly nine months following COVID infection and documented persistent markers of blood vessel dysfunction alongside measurable metabolic disruptions. Among participants reporting severe Long COVID fatigue, elevated circulating fatty acids associated with inflammatory processes (PUFA, LA, MUFAs, OA, PA) were a distinguishing biochemical feature and may have potential utility as biomarkers.

5/12/26 GeroScience: Tissue-specific autoantibody signatures reveal immune alterations undetected by routine serology in long COVID https://buff.ly/fzOXszO

Hungarian researchers compared 114 Long COVID patients to 36 pre-pandemic controls and found autoantibodies that standard ANA screening missed. “In the majority of Long COVID patients (83% vs. 53% in controls; p < 0.05), showing a dominant cardiovascular pattern…Vascular autoreactivity was markedly elevated in Long COVID (34% vs. 8% in controls; p < 0.05).” A significant portion of longitudinally studied autoantibodies were IgM, pointing to persistent immune system disruption.

4/29/26 International Journal of Molecular Sciences: Imbalance of Excitatory and Inhibitory Neurotransmitter Systems in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome https://buff.ly/byf9y1T

A new review from Charite in Berlin looked at “neurotransmitter systems implicated in ME/CFS and Long COVID, focusing on potential mechanisms of dysregulation and their roles in disease pathology and symptom generation, as well as implications for treatment.” They found an increase in excitatory neurotransmitters like Glutamate, Noradrenaline, Histamine and Dopamine, and a decrease in inhibitory neurotransmitters (GABA, Serotonin, and Glycine). This imbalance is proposed as a mechanism underlying characteristic symptoms including post exertional malaise, disordered sleep, chronic pain, and the paradoxical state of simultaneous exhaustion and heightened neurological arousal (aka “tired but wired” state).

Proposed multifactorial model:

From: https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/27/9/4041

5/12/26 Nature: Whole-protein screening and multi-modal profiling of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells at single-cell resolution https://buff.ly/HsiYmPq

Screening for antigen-specific CD8+ T cells is well established, but profiling CD4+ helper T cells has been too difficult to do until now. The Institute for Systems Biology researchers monitored a single Long COVID patient over three years and detected virus specific CD4+ helper T cells that remained active throughout the entire observation period. The ongoing immune response to the virus may help explain why Long COVID symptoms can continue long after the initial infection has ended.

7/2026 (5/11/26): Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health: White matter microstructural abnormalities in neurological poste-acute sequelae of coronavirus (PASC) disease: Imaging signatures consistent with persistent neuroinflammation https://buff.ly/lBAdVAP

Researchers at Stony Brook University studied 80 people, including 54 with Long COVID (PASC) and neurological symptoms such as brain fog and difficulty concentrating, 10 unexposed controls and 19 recovered COVID controls. They found that patients with neurological Long COVID (N-PASC) showed changes in white matter pathways involved in memory and attention. These structural brain abnormalities were still present approximately 2.7 years after the initial infection, suggesting that the neurological effects of COVID infection can persist far longer than previously thought.

Fig. 1. Correlational tractography shows tracts with increased (red) and decreased (blue) tractography when comparing Neuro-PASC (N-PASC) to controls.

From: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354626000839#fig1

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5/9/26 Nature: One-year longitudinal cohort study of chemosensory recovery and plasma biomarker dynamics in SARS-CoV-2 survivors https://buff.ly/4NSI77x

Hong Kong Polytechnic University researchers tracked 120 COVID survivors over 12 months and found that loss of smell recovered most within the first six months, while the loss of taste improved more rapidly. Elevated plasma alpha synuclein levels were associated with poorer recovery in the sense of smell.

5/11/26 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes: Impact of post-exertional malaise frequency and fatigue in Long COVID patients on health-related quality of life https://buff.ly/CGLgoFh

German researchers studied 161 Long COVID patients and found that both the frequency of post-exertional malaise (PEM) and the severity of fatigue were strongly associated with reduced health-related quality of life. Among all measured factors, experiencing post-exertional malaise (PEM) on a daily basis carried the greatest negative impact on participants’ overall health and functional capacity.

5/9/26 Nature: Interpreting hand grip strength in hospital employees with post-COVID syndrome compared to non-infected controls: a case-control study https://buff.ly/PthgUo1

In a small study, German researchers tested 19 hospital employees with Long COVID and 23 healthy controls, finding that those with post COVID syndrome demonstrated reduced hand grip strength (HGS) and diminished muscular recovery after repeat exertion compared to uninfected colleagues. These objective findings indicate that persistent fatigue commonly reported after COVID infection may have quantifiable physical markers detectable through standardized HGS testing.

5/8/26 J of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R): Factors associated with low anaerobic threshold and its impact on sleep quality and health‐related quality of life in individuals with long COVID https://buff.ly/OcIUPSj

Researchers in Taipei enrolled 219 Long COVID patients and found that reduced anaerobic threshold was associated with younger age and lower exercise capacity (peak VO2). Participants whose endurance testing revealed impaired aerobic limits also scored significantly worse on measures of sleep quality and quality of life.

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Hantavirus

5/15/26 Reuters: WHO revises hantavirus cases lower after US passenger tests negative https://buff.ly/4TCbQBQ

There have been a total of 10 confirmed Andes hantavirus cases and 3 deaths related to the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. “The Andes virus [is] a rare hantavirus strain and the only one known to be capable of ‌limited human-to-human transmission”. The risk to the general public is low.

5/15/26 YLE: Something deeper than hantavirus https://buff.ly/2Bplon5

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina from Your Local Epidemiologist discussed that public anxiety regarding the current Andes hantavirus cruise ship outbreak reveals something more concerning than the virus itself: a society operating on unprocessed COVID trauma and deeply eroded trust in the CDC and the US Government. In addition, mistrust is pervasive, and is often fueled by social media.

Measles

CDC Measles updates (on Wed.): https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

• As of May 14, 2026, 1,893 confirmed measles cases have been reported in the United States in 2026.

At least 95% of people need to be vaccinated against measles, in order to prevent outbreaks.

MMR vaccine coverage for kindergarteners by school year:

From: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

South Carolina Department of Public Health (Measles):

• The South Carolina measles outbreak is over after 997 measles cases.

Utah Department of Public Health (Measles):

• Utah cases in 2025: 197

• Utah cases in 2026, so far: 466

• Utah cases in the last 3 weeks: 29

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NEW: Ebola (Bundibugyo) Outbreak in DRC and Uganda

5/17/26 WHO: Epidemic of Ebola Disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda determined a public health emergency of international concern https://buff.ly/MSHn9aX

The WHO has now designated the Bundibugyo virus Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), but not a pandemic emergency. As of May 16, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths have been reported in Ituri Province, with confirmed cases now reaching Kampala and Kinshasa. The outbreak is likely larger than what is being detected and reported. No approved vaccines or treatments exist for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. The WHO is calling for urgent international coordination.

UNICEF/Vincent Tremeau (2019)

U.S. Government Health News

5/13/26 Politico: White House cuts $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California https://buff.ly/53akP89

“The Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California for failing to “combat fraud”… Though the administration has repeatedly criticized California’s fraud oversight, this is the first time the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has targeted payments to the state. In recent months it has withheld more than $300 million in Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota for suspect claims.”

Other news

5/13/26 NY Times (gift link): Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline’ https://buff.ly/DfR2IFL

Stanford researchers looked at reading and math scores from 3rd grade through 8th grade across most U.S. school districts and found a troubling pattern: reading scores dropped in 83% of districts over the past decade, and math in 70% with rich districts, poor districts, urban, rural, and every racial group being affected. Experts point to the 2015 gutting of federal school accountability laws, the explosion of smartphones and social media, and the COVID pandemic. “Nearly half of American teenagers now say they are online “almost constantly,” compared with just under a quarter who said that a decade ago.”

From: NY Times https://buff.ly/DfR2IFL

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5/7/26 SciTech Daily: This Simple Movement Could Be Secretly Cleaning Your Brain https://buff.ly/aPi11ZB

4/27/26 Nature Neuroscience: Brain motion is driven by mechanical coupling with the abdomen https://buff.ly/GLzUdot

Penn State researchers have found that abdominal muscle contractions during everyday movement act like a hydraulic pump, pushing blood into the spinal canal and gently shifting the brain within the skull. Computer simulations indicate this motion boosts cerebrospinal fluid circulation, potentially clearing metabolic waste. Findings suggest routine physical activity may support brain health through a previously unrecognized daytime mechanism that drives interstitial fluid out of the brain, which is opposite to glymphatic flow during sleep.

5/15/26 Sutter Health and Santa Clara University to Launch the Mark & Mary Stevens School of Medicine https://buff.ly/dNgZRsx

A new Bay Area medical school called Mark & Mary Stevens School of Medicine is being created from a collaboration between Sutter Health and Santa Clara University. “It is being funded in part by a $175 million gift from Santa Clara 1984 alumna Mary (Mathews) Stevens and her husband, venture capitalist Mark Stevens, who, along with their children, are multi-decade Sutter Health patients.”

5/15/26 Nature: Even mild blows to the head disrupt the microbiome https://buff.ly/NpJdBYS

In a small study, Colgate University researchers found that mild, asymptomatic knocks to the head in American football players altered gut bacterial composition within just 3 days. Certain bacterial species declined in abundance as the season progressed, suggesting that repeated mild head hits may produce cumulative shifts in the gut microbiome over time. “Changes in bacterial populations have previously been seen after more severe traumatic brain injuries in mice and humans, and these variations might play a part in neurodegeneration caused by repeated injuries.”

Photo: Rich Barnes/Colgate Athletics

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5/8/26 Nature Metabolism: Metformin inhibits mitochondrial complex I in intestinal epithelium to promote glycaemic control https://buff.ly/uGlkm1k

Northwestern University scientists used transgenic mice and human metabolomic data to show that metformin works primarily by inhibiting mitochondrial complex I in intestinal epithelium, turning the gut into a glucose sink, and by increasing the conversion of glucose into lactate. They note that phenformin and berberine also block mitochondrial complex I in a similar fashion.

5/11/26 Nature Reviews Bioengineering: Organoids as platforms for infectious disease research https://buff.ly/J8fw9do

Organoids are miniature lab grown models of human organs that are emerging as powerful tools for studying how infectious diseases behave in human tissue. They mimic human biology better than animal models. A new review in nature explains how the use of organoids may accelerate the development of vaccines and antiviral treatments as well as strengthen global readiness for future pandemics.

Figure 2

From: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-026-00445-3/figures/2

5/15/26 Nature Cell Biology: Mechanisms and functions of large extracellular vesicle biogenesis https://buff.ly/32arCie

A new review published in Nature Cell Biology examines how cells produce large extracellular vesicles (EVs), bubble shaped particles that transport waste, signals, molecules, and even viruses between cells. While most research has been focused on smaller EVs (<200 nm), scientists are increasingly interested in larger EVs because of their roles in cell communication and waste removal. Researchers also believe these structures could become useful tools for disease diagnosis, laboratory testing, and targeted drug delivery.

I love these names: Blebbisome and Zombosome

From: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-026-01940-w/

5/4/26 SciTech Daily: First-of-Its-Kind Discovery: Homer’s Iliad Found Embedded in a 1,600-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy https://buff.ly/32BGAae

While excavating in Egypt, the University of Barcelona’s Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission discovered a Greek papyrus fragment placed on the abdomen of a Roman-era mummy during embalming. Analysis in early 2026 confirmed the text is from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad. It is the first instance in history of a Greek literary text deliberately incorporated into the mummification process rather than magical or ritual content.

The papyrus, placed in the mummy’s abdomen, contains a catalogue of ships.

Credit: Professor Ignasi-Xavier Adiego.

5/14/26 Guardian: How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins https://buff.ly/Lsa5c6R

Former kindergarten teacher Cecilia Durán Gafo in Chile established the world’s only continental king penguin reserve after poachers, selfie seekers, and invasive mink nearly wiped out a colony that settled on her property in 2010. Her 12-person team now protects nearly 200 penguins, with a record 23 chicks surviving last year.

Photograph: Anastasia Austin/The Guardian

Have a good week,

Ruth Ann Crystal MD

We Need To Be Prepared For The Next Pandemic

Sometimes I think I must be the only American who appreciated Dr. Fauci's efforts and who thinks he was made the scapegoat for the COVID pandemic.

We knew little else except that people were dying after coming in contact with each other. I still remember how the members of a church choir were getting COVID from one another, and dying, just from singing.

So the lockdown was the only thing that could be done until it could be figured out what caused it and how to stop it. That lockdown saved lives, even if people don't appreciate that now. Maybe because I was designated an "essential worker" and had to go to work anyway, unlike them I had no problem with mask-wearing or social distancing, which made sense at the time and still does. Being able to get vaccinated in 2021 was a gift that I'm still grateful for.

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UK Guardian, May 17, 2026

We’re not ready’: US lags on pandemic preparedness after Covid, experts say

"Experts say slashed funding and growing misinformation are some of the greatest challenges facing public health

"The hantavirus outbreak, while unlikely to spark the next big pandemic, is shining a spotlight on the ways public health has deteriorated in the US: its ability to test for rare diseases, its expertise on outbreak prevention and response, its ability to battle misinformation and restore trust.

“Assuming everything goes well in containing this outbreak, which I hope it does, the takeaway from that should not be ‘we’re fine,’” said Stephanie Psaki, former White House global health security coordinator. “We’re not ready for this type of threat.”

"Many of the people at health agencies who plan for a quick response to outbreaks, and the systems supporting them, are gone now, Psaki noted. Yet “this is just one of many, many pathogens. These types of things will continue happening.” And, she pointed out, there’s a 50/50 chance of another pandemic at least as bad as Covid in the next 25 years, according to scientific models.

"Examining the mistakes – and the progress – made during the Covid pandemic can help us prepare for the next big one, Psaki and other former top US officials said at a recent event in Washington DC.

"Misinformation is one of the greatest challenges facing public health. Conspiracy theories and rumors aren’t new; even the Milan plague around 1630 had its share.

"But “the only difference between hundreds of years ago is social media”, said Anthony Fauci, former chief medical adviser to the president and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We’re just being overwhelmed” with misinformation online, he said, calling it “a real problem which I don’t see any easy solution to”.

"People don’t often relate to rigorous studies with methods sections, statistical analyses, and 17 supplementary figures in the New England Journal of Medicine, but they frequently relate to social media influencers pushing fake cures, Fauci said.

“It’s stunning. It’s painful, but it’s true that somebody on social media who’s a trusted influencer will outflank any scientist who’s trying to show you data, so you can’t fight misinformation with data,” Fauci said. “You have to fight misinformation with figuring out a better way to communicate to people on a level that they understand.”

"That means releasing accurate information quickly – and it should involve pre-bunking myths before they have a chance to spread, Fauci said. “Otherwise you’re always playing catch-up. And when you’re playing catch-up, you’re losing.”

"Officials also need to get better at communicating uncertainty, said Nina Schwalbe, a senior scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics and former director of Covid-19 Vaccine Access and Delivery Initiative at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We say things too simply, and then people lose their trust.” But people can handle uncertainty “because the world is an uncertain place”, she said.

"The very advances to come out of the pandemic – such as mRNA vaccines, widely viewed as one of the greatest technological advances of this generation – are now at risk, with slashed funding and growing misinformation.

"The science conducted during the pandemic was “extraordinary”, but it frequently “gets lost in the somewhat muddled public health response”, said Fauci. Vaccine development began six days after publication of the Sars-CoV-2 genome, and a vaccine that was about 95% effective was going into arms 11 months later.

“That didn’t happen by accident – that happened because of the years of investment in basic and clinical research,” Fauci said. That work itself built on the response to a different epidemic, HIV. The Covid vaccine is “one of the best vaccines that was ever developed”, Fauci said, particularly because of its ability to be changed overnight as the virus evolves – and it can be produced quickly in enormous quantities.

“It saved us,” he said. “Could you imagine how many more people would have died?”

‘We have to invest in public health’

"Yet now that work is being pulled back.

"The US also failed to slow the pandemic in its flawed efforts to vaccinate the world, Fauci said, adding: “We got in our own way. We didn’t make equity our driving force.”

"When the US later offered vaccines to other countries, a lack of planning – including basic supplies like having enough syringes – stymied the effort. “Tens of millions of doses of vaccine is meaningless if there’s no way of distributing them in the country that needs it,” Fauci said.

"This delay in global access to Covid vaccines did “deep” and “long-lasting” damage to the alliances between the United States and other countries, Psaki said. “It’s being reinforced by the positions of this administration, but the damage was deep, and it’s very, very difficult to rebuild trust after that kind of betrayal.” The mpox outbreak response in 2024 was better, in part because there were already vaccines on hand – but “we were still not able to get those vaccines in arms”, Psaki said.

"It’s also important to develop and distribute tests quickly, Fauci said. “The South Koreans were putting out 20,000 tests per day, and we were playing around with five tests that didn’t work.” But the “catastrophe” extended beyond bad tests to a “refusal to believe that there are other ways of doing it”, he said.

"Pandemic preparedness is not just a domestic issue, Fauci said; it must involve working closely with international partners, and “that’s something that, unfortunately, we seem to be steering away from right now, which is very troublesome to me”.

"Donald Trump has moved to leave the World Health Organization (WHO), which Psaki calls “an absolutely essential institution.” The US contribution to WHO is $130m – roughly equivalent to the Pentagon’s recent spending on lobster and steak, she noted.

"In the absence of federal guidance, states are taking the lead by forming health alliances and working with WHO directly.

“From where I sit, the federal government is not going to play the role that is needed in the next pandemic, and so we are watching states step up,” said Matthew Kavanaugh, director of the Georgetown global health policy center.

"The basics of outbreak response and pandemic preparation haven’t changed, Psaki said: “Stop a threat from emerging, identify the threat quickly, contain the threat, have a way to respond to the threat and keep people alive and keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed.”

"Experts worry that the public, divided by politics and overwhelmed by misinformation, won’t have an appetite for public health measures. But it’s important to have “a little more space for hope and trust”, Psaki said. “Most families want to keep their family members safe” – which is different from the motivations of political leaders and others who may benefit from misinformation, she noted.

"Schwalbe’s father was one of the first victims of Covid in New York. He got sick in March 2020 as the entire system was falling apart, Schwalbe said. “It was just me and my dad in his apartment on Lexington Avenue as he died.”

"They didn’t have any oxygen or palliative care, but they did have refrigerator trucks for bodies and sirens wailing constantly in the street. She knew six people who died of Covid. The experience made her more determined to strengthen public health before the next crisis hits.

“We can’t just leave public health as the unseen thing that people complain about when it’s not working,” Schwalbe said. “We have to invest in it.”

Mamdani Celebrates Nakba Day

Yesterday, May 16, "Mayor" Mamdani actually did the following, which the Elder of Ziyon blog also discussed.

New York City has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Mamdani isn't only driving the rich away; he's also driving the Jews away. 

Let's pray this rabid antisemite is a one-term mayor.  

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Times of Israel, 5-16-26 

Mamdani posts Nakba Day video, saying the ‘catastrophe’ continues until today

Shortly before Shabbat, NYC mayor shares footage in support of Palestinian ‘right of return’ and presenting one-sided narrative of 1948 war, drawing furious backlash from leading Jewish groups

"Mamdani’s video drew furious pushback from Jewish leaders in the city, despite coming out shortly before Shabbat. Mamdani, an anti-Zionist, is a harsh critic of Israel who has often sparred with mainstream Jewish groups.

"The UJA-Federation of New York said in a statement, “Mayor Mamdani: the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel.”

“In its aftermath, 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Your post mentions none of this. And you chose 5:40 PM on Friday to post it — as Jewish New Yorkers prepare to light Shabbat candles. We noticed,” the federation said.

"Criticism also poured in from the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, city and state lawmakers, former City Hall staff and members of Congress.

"Many critics pointed to the video’s one-sidedness, while others connected the Nakba narrative to discrimination and threats against Jews.

“Still wondering why hatred against Jews is so high in NYC? We have a mayor who is using government resources to disseminate a narrative and incite hostile propaganda,” said New York State Assemblymember Simcha Eisenstein, from Brooklyn. Jews are targeted in hate crimes more than all other groups combined in New York City, according to NYPD data."

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It's not only New York. Look here at Fox News on 5-15-26. It's a coordinated effort, and it's sheer evil.

Israel, Jews targeted worldwide as well-funded leftist, Islamist groups join for ‘Nakba 78’ protests

 "Investigation found network includes communist groups, Muslim advocacy organizations and anti-Israel coalitions"

Hantavirus: A Test of Our Preparedness

This is a very well-written opinion piece that everyone should read. You would think that after COVID started in 2020, there would be more preparedness and more vigilance for every disease outbreak that occurs.

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Hantavirus Isn’t Just a Threat. It’s a Test.
David Wallace-Wells, New York Times, May 13, 2026\

"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 properly 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 forcing people who have had close encounters into quarantine, in one case removing a British tourist from an Italian bar. This is not a new or unknown disease, but just a week ago officials were reluctant to acknowledge that those who weren’t showing symptoms presented any risk of further spread.

"Over the past week, as the world began worrying over hantavirus news, officials from the W.H.O., the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other organizations spoke almost in unison to caution against public panic. In a certain sense, the message was appropriate: I don’t think there’s much chance that the outbreak is the beginning of something epochal, given its slow rate of growth and the limited spread of previous outbreaks. But there remains much we don’t know how this outbreak will unfold, even armed with knowledge of previous outbreaks, and the estimated mortality rate for this strain — 30 to 40 percent of known cases — offers a grimly worrying anchor. In that context, the most pressing question for health leaders isn’t how worried we should be, in part because the threat remains effectively zero for anyone who hasn’t come into close contact with those on board. The question is how seriously health officials are taking the disease, since they are the ones in a position to keep the outbreak small and contained.

"And in the critical first week since news of the outbreak broke, they have fumbled that responsibility, issuing an erratic and confusing series of messages that have downplayed the risk of the disease and undermined the effort to aggressively limit its spread, as though they’d prefer to err on the side of permissiveness rather than take actions that might strike an outside observer as alarming. Perhaps they intuited that the average person wasn’t as interested in “What should be done?” as in “How much should I panic?”

"Six years since the arrival of Covid-19, the panic of 2020 casts a long shadow. But the pandemic also serves a weirdly contradictory role in our collective epidemiological memory: both a perversely reassuring point of comparison for future risks, which look less alarming in contrast, and an enduring cautionary tale for those many Americans who believe that we all went a bit overboard in response to that pandemic. The experience might have been just as discombobulating for public health officials, many of whom appear still scarred by accusations of public-health overreach — or in some cases radicalized by the conviction that in 2020 the world went overboard. The result: Many of them seem to believe their main job now is to reassure the public about novel threats rather than take necessary precautions to protect them.

"What are the threats here? The most important concern is the disease’s incubation period, the time between exposure and the arrival of symptoms. As best we can tell from previous outbreaks, that period can be distressingly long: perhaps up to eight weeks. This means that the virus can lie dormant for as much as two months in people before presenting symptoms. That is an awfully long time to live in a state of nervous ignorance about how widely the disease has already spread — and makes any authoritative-seeming account of the state of the disease today, or any plan concocted on the basis of that understanding, almost certainly incomplete. We have a few weeks or so until we even get a sense of the second generation of cases; previous outbreaks suggest there may be at least several more waves to follow.

"The second thing to know is that, with this strain of the disease, human-to-human transmission is not just possible but also documented. The first case on the ship produced nine more among the passengers, suggesting that though this strain of hantavirus looks considerably less infectious than other respiratory infections, this particular case, in this particular setting, was capable of infecting a number of others. In a well-studied 2018 to ’19 outbreak in Argentina, three cases were responsible for 21 additional cases. Out of a total of 34 cases, 11 ended in death.

"The third thing to know is that asymptomatic infection is possible and sick individuals can apparently transmit the disease without showing obvious symptoms. Some reports from the outbreak in Argentina suggest that the window of peak transmission risk might be balanced equally before and after symptoms appear. This was one of the features that made Covid so difficult to contain, of course, and though the spread of hantavirus has been so far significantly slower than in those early days of Covid, this isn’t exactly the only test to apply in deciding whether something is worth worrying about or taking action on.

"The fourth thing to know is that transmission does not appear to happen as easily as with other respiratory viruses but that it also doesn’t seem to require an enormous amount of close contact. From the 2018 to ’19 outbreak, we have evidence of several cases arising when an infected partygoer merely sat a few feet away from or briefly greeted other guests, and the precise dynamics of transmission are not perfectly understood. In such situations, Paul Sax wrote this week in The New England Journal of Medicine’s Voices blog, the temptation is to be categorical and unequivocal in issuing guidance rather than acknowledge what is uncertain — and what, as a result, is possible.

"And the fifth point to emphasize is that on each of the first four points, public messaging has been at least confused, often misleading and in many ways counterproductive in this initial window. “In any outbreak, the single most important question is: How does it spread?” Harvard’s Joseph Allen wrote in The Atlantic on Tuesday. Hantavirus is not new or unknown, and neither is this strain. But the W.H.O. issued its first piece of guidance about the outbreak on May 4, three weeks after the first patient died, and was not able to offer a clear or comprehensive answer to that question.

"Over the weekend, the W.H.O. suggested that not all passengers should be treated as high-risk candidates for infection. It did not recommend that all passengers be quarantined upon leaving the ship and did not offer a strong framework for member countries, with the result that different countries have adopted markedly different protocols — and have already begun shifting them. In Britain, hospital workers don’t appear to be working with up-to-date guidance about the way the disease spreads. In the Netherlands, health care workers have made errors in protocol handling blood draws and urine disposal.

"In the United States, for instance, only two passengers have been placed in hospital biocontainment units, and asymptomatic Americans returning from the cruise ship are apparently being given the option to isolate and self-monitor at home if they remain asymptomatic. There is a kind of vacuum of public-health leadership in America at the moment, with Marty Makary resigning as the Food and Drug Administration commissioner on Tuesday and no permanent head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or surgeon general in place. And over the weekend, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — the head of the National Institutes of Health and the acting head of the C.D.C. — suggested that no new protocols were necessary to prevent the spread of the disease. Perhaps it should not surprise us. It was just this past fall that he was arguing that the country should scrap its pandemic playbook, declaring that “the best pandemic preparedness playbook for the United States is making America healthy again.”

"But it’s not just ideologically driven Americans who seem focused on downplaying risks, even at the cost of enabling further spread. In their presentations over the past week, world health leaders characterized the disease in such incomplete terms that the International Hantavirus Society was compelled to publish a corrective, challenging prevailing guidance about transmission before symptom onset, the long incubation period and the required proximity to pass the disease from one person to another. The W.H.O. has since modified some of that guidance, but on Sunday it defended passengers who had failed to properly wear masks. “Many of these passengers are elderly, and you can imagine how uncomfortable it could be,” the director general of the W.H.O. said, as though the discomfort of 150 passengers should override worries about the spread of an essentially untreatable and terrifyingly lethal disease.

"This remains a tiny outbreak, by global standards: so far, 11 cases in total. Most experts do not expect prolific spread from here, thank God. But that relatively slow growth should also make it much more easily contained. No one is proposing large-scale lockdowns or national mask mandates. But 150 people traveling on a single ship is a containment challenge of a much more manageable scale. Or should be."

Melanie Phillips on Antisemitism, 5-15-26

Rabid Jew-hatred is getting worse and more delusional by the day. The riots at the Brooklyn synagogues were despicable -- I was waiting to see if the haters would try to emulate Kristallnacht and break windows.

The Gen Z-ers either get their rabid antisemitism from their parents or else they actually think hating Jews and Israel somehow makes them more popular. Whatever the reason, it's not about to stop soon. 

The New York Times publishing that sick Nicholas Kristof column must be emulating Joseph Goebbels and his anti-Jewish propaganda. I'd like to at least see Jewish NYT readers cancel their subscriptions in response.

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The anti-Jewish fever dream of The New York Times
We’re living through a throwback to murderous beliefs from before the age of reason

Melanie Phillips, May 15, 2026

"It’s now clear that we are living through a civilisational emergency. Just as the Palestinian Arabs tried to bring about the destruction of Israel in the attacks on October 7, 2023, so the Islamic world has deployed the cultural apparatus of the West to destroy the Jews.

"The spurious distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is no longer even being deployed as a fig-leaf. Attacks on Jews are out of control in both Britain and America.

"In London, such attacks are now taking place almost daily. In New York last week, a mob of Islamists and leftists besieged Park East synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; this week, another such mob set upon Jews outside a synagogue in Brooklyn.

"Anti-Zionism, with its incendiary lies about Israel’s haviour designed to paint it as a unique menace and turn it into the pariah of the world, has been further weaponised to unleash something even darker.

"We are witnessing a reversion to primitive, pre-modern forms of Jew-hatred.

"The New York Times this week published a 4,000-word article by Nicholas Kristof headlined “The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians,” in which Kristof accused Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian Arab prisoners.

"This grotesque assertion was held to exemplify Kristof’s claim of systematic sexual violence “against men, women and even children by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards”.

"The allegation that dogs were used to rape prisoners, said by experts to be anatomically impossible, is as ridiculous as it is obscene.

"Tellingly, it combines certain hallmarks of the Palestinian Arab mindset — the belief that dogs are filthy, that Jews are also filthy, and the habitual and false projection onto the Israelis of crimes that the Palestinian Arabs themselves commit against them.

"Indeed, Kristof has drawn upon precisely this poisonous Palestinian thinking.

"The “dog rape” claim has been pushed since 2024 by the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Kristof treats this source as credible. It’s anything but.

"It’s previously claimed that the Israel Defence Forces harvested the organs of Palestinian corpses, another disgusting fantasy drawn from the depths of the deranged Palestinian mind.

"The Israelis have listed the group’s founder, Ramy Abdu, as a Hamas operative. The day after the October 7 slaughter and kidnapping of 1,200 Israeli innocents, Abdu posted on X that the perpetrators were “knightly heroes who forged for us a pure glory untainted by the mud”.

"Kristof produced not one shred of evidence for his claims. His sources were either anonymous or belonged to the echo chamber advocating the mass murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

"He quoted terrorism supporters whose own claims of abuse had changed over time. Honest Reporting noted that Sami al Sai, introduced by Kristof as a “freelance journalist,” has a long record of celebrating terrorists on social media and was jailed twice for incitement. The claims he made to Kristof about his alleged abuse differed in key details from the story he fed the Israeli “human rights” group B’Tselem last year.

"More seriously still, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accused Kristof of misrepresenting his words so that he was made to appear falsely as validating these allegations.

"In short, the article was a nauseating travesty. But this wasn’t merely recycled Hamas propaganda demonising Israel. The “dog rape” allegation was a psychotic fever dream straight out of medieval, Nazi and Soviet anti-Jewish demonology.

"Kristof wrote that some may wonder whether Palestinian witnesses might fabricate accusations to smear Israel, but this struck him as “far-fetched”.

"Just think about that. To Kristof, it wasn’t “far-fetched” that a dog could be trained to rape a man. What was instead “far-fetched” to him was the suggestion that the Palestinians might be lying to harm Israel.

"But that’s exactly what they do all the time. Kristof, his editors and other Israel-haters believe Palestinian lies — however absurd and impossible —because they want to believe them.

"They regard the Palestinians as the wretched and oppressed victims of the Israelis. That’s why it’s considered as “far-fetched” to believe that the Palestinians could do anything monstrous to the Israelis as to believe that the Israelis could be the Palestinians’ victims.

"That’s also why so many of the Israel-haters have denied the sexual violence done to the Israelis on October 7.

"The day after Kristof’s travesty, the results were published of a two-year Israeli commission of inquiry into the gender-based atrocities committed during the October 7 massacre and subsequent captivity of some 251 people, even young children, dragged that day into the Gaza Strip.

"The commission, founded by legal scholar Cochav Elkayam-Levy, drew upon more than 10,000 photographs and video segments; more than 1,800 hours of visual material; and more than 430 testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts and family members.

"Its findings are very hard to read. The victims were tortured, mutilated and decapitated; a breast was cut off and tossed around; women were shot in the course of being raped and raped after they were murdered.

"They were shot in the face to annihilate their beauty and their humanity; nails and other objects were found in their intimate areas; relatives were forced to perform sexual acts on each other. And it was all filmed by Palestinian savages who proudly carried out these depraved acts with delirious glee.

"This report constitutes meticulously sourced, authoritative research that throws an even more shocking light on Kristof’s warped and malevolently sourced message.

"The New York Times has been accused of running the Kristof article the day before in order to diminish the Israeli report. Whether or not this was so, Kristof himself suggested that his aim was to diminish, relativise and downgrade what happened on October 7.

"His article, he said, showed that “the horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on October 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day”.

"No other country is treated like this. Only Israelis are to be denied the unique reality of their suffering. Abuse happens in all prisons, and Israel is surely no different. But only Israel is subjected to psychotic lies about it.

"That’s because Israel is the world’s only Jewish country, and the way Israel is being abused is the way Jews alone have always been abused.

"The claim that dogs are trained to rape Palestinian Arab men is merely a modern version of ancient blood libels — that the Jews were poisoning the wells, or murdering Christian children to bake their blood into Passover matzah.

"Today’s starvation libel, the genocide libel, the baby-killers libel, the harvested organs libel — and now the “rape dogs” libel — all transmit the same message as the murderous blood libels of old: that the Jews are evil, demonic, inhuman. They are therefore to be excluded from the field of human empathy. They are to be branded as monsters and their suffering is to be denied.

"The combined effect of Kristof, The New York Times and all the other media outlets and red-carpet celebrities and university professors and social media influencers who present the Jews as devils incarnate is that they set the mob on them.

“You rape men, you rape children,” screamed the mob outside Park East synagogue. “You f**king sociopath, I see it in your eyes.”

"Jews are being hunted down on the streets of Western cities just as they were once hunted down in medieval Christian towns. Rampaging mobs were then driven by bloodlust, inflamed by the Catholic Church which told them that the Jews were the devil.

"Astoundingly, Jews are now facing the same kind of religious mania — this time driven by Islam and left-wing ideology.

"What we’re looking at is a throwback to a primitive set of murderous beliefs about Jews from before the Enlightenment, before modernity and before the age of reason.

"We are realising to our horror that the skin of civilisation is extremely thin, and that it’s now been torn off altogether. We’re living through a spiritual plague. Barbarism is in the ascendant, and its super-spreader is The New York Times."

Jewish News Syndicate

Your Local Epidemiologist, 5-15-26

A very important column by Dr Katelyn Jetelina:

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Something deeper than hantavirus
Katelyn Jetelina, May 15, 2026 

"Two weeks ago, my phone started lighting up before I’d had my coffee. Journalists, researchers, and neighborhood moms asking the same thing: Should we be worried about this hantavirus thing?

"First, I thought this would be an interesting, unique outbreak to “translate” to the public. But over time, public curiosity metastasized into a massive ball of anxiety in the headlines, online, and in some person-to-person conversations.

"Right now, the outbreak remains contained, and 41 people are being actively monitored in the U.S. Risk remains low for a number of reasons previously covered. We will continue to follow it.

"But when we pause from the numbers, transmission questions, and quarantine, and look up, the response to this outbreak is revealing a lot. Yes, how scary this virus is (it belongs in a thriller novel), and yes, the limits of our scientific knowledge. But also something far deeper.

"What we are seeing is the collision of five factors that highlight not only how far we’ve come, but also how deep this country’s wounds still run, and how much work lies ahead.

1. Absent leadership.

"Leadership at the federal level is nowhere to be found. Communication has been abysmal, much like it was at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. After a week of silence, an alert was finally sent to physicians and a press conference was held.

"But checking these boxes isn’t enough and has led to far too much deflection. For example, there are no numbers on the website, so no one actually knows who is being monitored, where, and how. This leaves massive information voids for falsehoods and rumors to fill.

"But also, people don’t just need data or facts; they need steady navigators, grounded in empathy and knowledge, to wade through the oversaturated information landscape.

"In crisis communication, a well-known formula is: outrage x hazard. So even if the hazard is low, if concern is great, you’d better be speaking with clarity, acknowledging uncertainty, listening to the questions, concerns, and confusion, and bringing people along for the ride.

"What could this look like? Look no further than the WHO. The WHO director-general traveled to Tenerife in person to speak with residents who were terrified that a boat carrying a highly contagious disease was docking. He led with emotion, grounded in the understanding that 2020 was resurfacing for people, and focused on compassion and solidarity, elevating what one of the passengers said: “We’re not headlines, we are human beings.” In the meantime, they’ve hosted almost numerous live briefings on top of their daily updates on social media accounts and humanized the process with pictures. They aren’t just telling; they are showing.

2. The positive and negative aspects of Covid-19.

"The hantavirus response is evidence that the learnings of Covid-19 stuck.

"The pandemic became an involuntary crash course in epidemiology for the entire country. Epi 101, taught in real time to everyone at once:

• What transmission means.

• What incubation periods and case fatality rates actually tell us.

• The difference between droplet and airborne spread.

• What an R0 is.

• What it means when scientists say they’re still learning.

• And what, as individuals, we can actually do to feel in control.

"During this time, public health was no longer invisible, which is beautiful because, after all, public health belongs to the public.

"People now bring a depth of curiosity and literacy that simply wasn’t widespread even in 2018. If Covid-19 was Epi 101, this is Epi 201: taking what we learned from one pandemic and applying it to an entirely different disease.

"The challenge with this is that we are changing lanes and, as Adam Grant said, “You don’t have to stay in your lane. You do need to check your blind spots before changing lanes.” After you’ve learned about one outbreak, you’ve learned about one outbreak. There are lessons the public can take, but it’s also easy to fall into blind spots of overconfidence. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

3. The trauma of Covid-19 has not healed. Not even close.

"It’s been six years since 2020, and life has returned to a version of normal. I think many had hoped, prayed, and assumed that the wounds of the Covid-19 pandemic had healed.

"But when trauma is swept under the rug, it will eventually show its teeth.

"A new outbreak entered the news cycle with a lot of the same themes: cruise ships, quarantine, WHO speaking up, scientists speaking up, headlines, uncertainty, and hard reminders of people saying “it’s fine, don’t panic.” So, internal threat systems went into overdrive. This is what our bodies are designed to do: respond to a new threat based on prior experience. It’s literally our survival mechanism.

"As my friend Dr. Celine Gounder said: “The intensity of the reaction [also] tells you everything about the depth of the wound.”

4. Mistrust is pervasive.

"This outbreak is showing that few people trust authorities and few trust their fellow Americans to do the right thing, like quarantine responsibly.

"We entered the pandemic with a slow erosion of trust in institutions, such as government and the mass media. And it was deserved. Many institutions were built for a different time, and when institutions fail to adapt, people are left behind, and trust erodes.

"The pandemic accelerated mistrust on one side. For them, the experience felt like an overreach. A government that moved to control behavior, restrict movement, and mandate compliance, often without consistent logic or transparency.

"But then, after the pandemic, the pendulum swung violently in the other direction. What felt like a restoration of sanity to some felt like an abandonment of truth and decency to others.

"The tribalism has become so strong that it’s not only eroded trust in the systems that are supposed to keep us safe, but also in each other.

"This is not only deeply heartbreaking for society, but also leaves us incredibly vulnerable to threats within and outside of our country.

5. Social media and the hurting media economy are fueling the embers.

"An accelerant is the information landscape. Information is spreading like wildfire on social media, adding extraordinary complexity for people earning to understand what to believe, from whom, and when.

"Social media algorithms and news headlines are built to play on emotion and engineered to surface rage and fear because rage and fear make us scroll, click and sells ads. This creates a seriously challenging echo chamber all of us can get stuck in, where we think every conversation is like the one we are in."

"At YLE, we saw this in real time. Not only do we do social listening on the backend, but we also have a weekly survey to understand things not in the media environment. Usually what we hear from these sources matches; after all, 1 in 2 Americans get their health-related information online. But this week was different: on social media, there was spiraling. In the survey? Only 20% were concerned; 60% were just curious about what was going on.

So where does this lead us?

"If you felt something or saw this beneath the surface these past two weeks, you’re not alone. What we are experiencing is a deep collision of massive forces, with all of us stuck in the middle.

"As a society, we have serious work to do. We need to reckon honestly with the trauma we never processed. And our leaders and institutions need to stop talking about rebuilding trust and actually do it.

"For individuals, I think this means:

• Keep learning Epi 201. Lead with curiosity and humility, as many people are taking the course.

• Triple-check your sources and be sure to share trusted information. Here are nine ways to spot falsehoods that I wrote about a few years ago.

• Give yourself grace—and give it to those trying to communicate in real time, in an arena where the answers aren’t always clear yet.

• Put down social media. Have conversations with people outside your bubble. Get involved in your community. This country is deeply wounded, and change and sanity start locally.

Bottom line

"Hantavirus may be contained. But the conditions that made these two weeks so destabilizing are not. The real outbreak is one of fractured trust, unhealed trauma, and absent leadership. No one is coming to fix it but us. We all have a role to play.

"Love, YLE"

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Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. YLE reaches over 425,000 people across more than 132 countries