The hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to bloom into a full grown pandemic. However, as Yglesias rightly notes, we are likely living in a world where the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if. Connectivity has exploded and that allows a virus to travel around the world quickly. This hantavirus outbreak could be tricky, because it takes a while to develop symptoms.
Of course, the real issue is that literally the absolute worst people in the world are in charge of American health care right now. The anti-vax movement has largely captured American health institutions and they are actively working to undermine both pandemic response and vaccine development.
We are seeing in the Iran conflict how the idiocy of this administration can put even a military superpower into a losing situation against a third rate military power. It's bad, but it's not pandemic bad.
So much of modern life has coasted along on expertise that has largely been operating outside of the public eye. Trump's wholesale assault on competent governance, very much including DOGE, has led to some seriously bad results, but if we get to pandemic territory again...
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