The Efforts To Create A Hantavirus Firestorm.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

They played politics with covid and things got expensive, inflationary and stupid.  But Trump was not reelected, so the Trump-hating-obsessed thought it worth the price.  (Is it any wonder that increasingly people on the far left think political violence is justified?)  Hantavirus is not covid, by any stretch of the imagination.  So says Dr, Jay Bhattacharya, acting head of the CDC, and head of the NIH, and one of the few people to make sense during covid – much to the chagrin of the people then in charge.  And yet, people were starting to question his credibility over this past weekend.

He is in a difficult situation.  Neither the NIH or the CDC have any real credibility left after covid.  Hopefully he has reoriented and reorganized those institutions and they are operating far better than they did during covid, but he has not been there very long and the necessary reform efforts are very large.  Also completely devoid of credibility is the World Health Organization (WHO), that has been the lead organization in this hantavirus mess.  Of course, the US withdrew from WHO in the wake of covid, something ignored by those seeking to criticize the CDC.

The lack of credibility all these agencies suffer under was born of being too heavily politicized.  So, hantavirus seems to have turned immediately political.  Thus proving the media does not learn well.  Over the weekend the questioning on the matter turned to Trump.  Trump did his best to be strong, assertive and to calm fears.  But he also used the phrase “I hope” several times giving critics an opportunity to pounce.  I saw at least a dozen headlines yesterday with the words “I hope” in scare quotes – sowing fear where reassurance should reside.

Certainty is impossible in situations like this – impossible.  The president’s comments reflect that, and that is all they do.  His experts cannot give him certainty, no expert can give him certainty, and so his comment reflects their expertise – confident, but not certain.  That was the biggest error in covid – trying to create certainty where certainty was impossible.  Combine that with bureaucratic egos and the politics of the day and we got what we got – a couple of generations very poorly educated and a non-functioning Joe Biden as president.

I think the American people have learned their lesson and are willing to take the risk.  But the Trump hating media (meaning most of media) has a different agenda.  The mid-terms approach and anything they can do to shift Congress blue as a check against a president they see in demonic terms is justified.  Sometimes I think they’d run a turnip for a congressional seat if they thought it had a chance.

By all accounts the handling of those known to have contracted or carry hantavirus is smart and what one would expect.  Unless, of course, your agenda is beyond limiting the spread of the disease as much as possible.  If your agenda is to hamstring the president, well then you are going to take every advantage of the unavoidable uncertainties in this situation.  Look for the fearmongering coverage to continue.

It used to be that some things in this world rose above politics.  This ought to be one of them.  You would think we would have learned that lesson in covid.  But apparently a significant number of us are extraordinarily thick-headed.