Hanta Me, Baby
"Very different presidents, very different precedents"
I guess she thought because I was a hippy and lived in an ecovillage, I naturally would be anti-vax. I said that I considered the couple’s choice not to vaccinate their children to be reckless. I said our ecovillage in Tennessee definitely did not need to acquire any child abusers. She hung up on me.
From what I’ve recently read in The Atlantic and watched on the This Week in Virology vlogcast, the CDC is being allowed to handle the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak appropriately, mostly. The zoonotic reservoir is the long-tailed pygmy rice rat, Oligoryzomys longicaudatus, that lives in Argentina at the southern edge of the Atacama Desert down through Patagonia. The cruise ship outbreak came when passengers contracted the virus at a birding outing, and 40 percent of them died. Andes hantavirus is very lethal, but it does not spread through sneezing. Those exposed and possibly incubating the virus have been quarantined or, if symptomatic, are in specialized ICUs.
Argentina recorded 101 hantavirus cases in the past year, with 32 deaths. That’s its historical average, with annual fluctuations keyed to rodent behavior, drought, and bamboo flowering cycles. Andes hantavirus has been around for a while, and in Argentina, they have learned to live with it.
In Patagonia, part of that ecology begins with caña colihue, a native bamboo that can flower massively after long cycles. When it flowers, it produces huge amounts of seed. The seeds fall. Rodents feed. Populations rise. Then, when the feast ends or density increases, animals move.
—Ricky Lanusse, Hanta-Panic
Go back 5 years
This matters because January and early February 2020 represented the golden window. The virus had a roughly 5-14 day incubation period—enough time to trace contacts before the next generation of shedding began. The R-value was still close to 1, perhaps lower. The game was winnable and incredibly inexpensive. The mortality rate would be far more costly to tame than the reproduction rate. U.S. hospitals were entirely unprepared.
A virus with a mortality rate of 0.1% might seem trivial until you realize that 0.1% of the world’s population is eight million people. A mortality rate of 1% is 80 million. Covid was 0.7 to 3.4%, depending on the country and strain. Andean hantavirus is 35-50%. These aren’t abstract numbers; they’re the difference between “endemic disease we learn to live with” and “civilization-scale catastrophe.” Early prevention is worth incalculable amounts of later treatment.
Let me spell out the mechanical truth: if a virus has a 5-14 day incubation period, and 40-50% of transmission occurs in airborne droplets from asymptomatic or presymptomatic people, then every day you delay isolation and testing is a day the disease multiplies. By March 2020, the virus was already silently spreading in the United States, and Trump’s poorly designed travel orders may have exacerbated the spread by causing residents to rush home.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s reluctance to take the pandemic seriously was compounded by “a president perpetually in denial” with a “proclivity toward magical thinking,” even after warnings in late January and throughout February, according to epidemiology journals.
The incubation period matters because it defines your containment window. Miss it, and you’ve graduated to the next phase of horror.
Ignoring the CDC and CIA warnings from Wuhan, Trump admitted more than 380,000 people to the U.S. from China in January, including around 4,000 from Wuhan. Only after China put in its own restrictions did the number drop to 40,000 in February and March.
New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, by contrast, was reading the same epidemiological data and reached a different conclusion. On March 23, 2020, New Zealand committed to an elimination strategy, and on March 26, Ardern announced a national lockdown when the country had just over 100 cases and no deaths. At the time, modeling showed that without such measures, tens of thousands of New Zealanders could die of the virus.
Viral disinformation spreads lethal viruses
Documents released in November 2021 showed that the Trump administration downplayed the pandemic’s danger, silencing top health officials who tried to warn the public, and attempted to alter CDC publications and suppress information about the pandemic. After CDC Director Nancy Messonnier warned on February 25, 2020 that community spread was likely and it was “a question of when, not if,” Trump’s anger was reported, and CDC officials felt “muzzled.”
In the US, Trump’s daily press briefings featured speculation about UV light enemas, hydroxichloroquine, and other quack cures while he himself became a superspreader, nearly killing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Advisors Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski, Republican Senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis, and his own secret service detail.
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s daily press briefings with the Director-General of Health featured open, honest and straightforward communication that built trust with the audience and framed the lockdown as an urgent, collective cause. The government communicated transparently about transmission vectors, about what they knew and what they didn’t, and about the science underlying their decisions.
One administration tried to prevent people from understanding how the virus spreads even as it actively spread it. The other helped them understand it. This is not a minor difference in management style.
By early June 2020, New Zealand had 1,154 infections and 22 deaths, and Prime Minister Ardern announced there were no more active Covid-19 cases in the country after 75 days of restrictions. Life returned to near-normal. For 102 days after the first lockdown, until a second wave in early August, New Zealand’s economy was among the most open in the world, with many sectors operating at pre-Covid levels.
The United States? The estimated cumulative Covid-19 deaths from 2020 through the date in 2025 when the incoming Trump Administration canceled reporting, are approximately 1.23 million. To put this in perspective: New Zealand, with a population of about 5 million, recorded 22 deaths by June 2020 through its rapid elimination strategy. The United States, with a population of 330 million, has accumulated 1.23 million deaths—a starkly different outcome reflecting the choices made in those critical early months.
By January 20, 2021, the last day of Trump’s presidency, the U.S. had reached 400,000 Covid-19 deaths. A Lancet report concluded that 40 percent could have been averted, and Columbia University conservatively estimated that between 130,000 and 210,000 deaths were attributable to U.S. government failures.
There’s a peculiar kind of tragedy that unfolds when intelligent people have access to perfect information and decide to ignore it.
Looking Ahead
In March, President Milei formalized Argentina’s exit from the WHO, echoing his idol Trump. Both ordered disarmament at the very moment an invader was massing outside their capitals.
Part of the reason for this outbreak may have been the winter Patagonia skipped in 2025. A study published in Nature Climate Change in 2022 reported that nearly 60% of infectious diseases are aggravated by climatic hazards, through more than 1000 unique transmission pathways. The study noted:
Human pathogenic diseases and their transmission pathways, aggravated by climatic hazards, are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptation, highlighting the urgent need to work at the source of the problem: reducing GHG emissions.
The best way to avoid a viral pandemic is absurdly simple. Don’t have a viral pandemic in the first place. I know—revolutionary stuff. Epidemiologists have been sitting on this gem for years, apparently waiting for the right moment to share it.
But since preventing zoonotic spillover requires not destroying the living world—a concept we’ve collectively decided is too radical—let’s talk about what happens when the virus arrives anyway. That depends entirely on whether your government understands exponential growth and has the spine to act while everyone thinks they’re crazy.
Imagine you could see the future. Not the whole thing—just the next 6-8 weeks. You’d see which choice kills 22 people and which kills 450,000. You’d see which economy recovers faster and which one gets flattened. You’d see which government gets re-elected by a landslide and which one gets twice impeached, stages an insurrection, and then gets re-elected four years later.
In January 2020, both the United States under Trump and New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern received the same forecast. The science was identical. The virus’s incubation period was the same: roughly 5-14 days. The transmission vectors were known. Masks worked to slow transmission—I protect you, you protect me. The models from Imperial College London, showing that mitigation would kill hundreds of thousands of people while suppression could save most of them, were circulating in both governments.
One government read the memo. The other government didn’t read memos.
On January 18, 2020, HHS Secretary Alex Azar tried to brief Trump about the outbreak for the first time. Trump’s response? He asked about whether flavored vaping products would return to the market. This is not satire. This is the actual historical record of the most powerful person on Earth, handed a pandemic warning, and choosing to discuss vape juice.
This is the thing about pandemics: they reward speed and punish hesitation. An R-value of 3.4 seems small until you do the math. After 20 generations of transmission, 3.4^20 = 42.7 billion. After 30 generations? 8,800,000,000,000,000 or 8.8 quadrillion. Exponential growth is merciless. A virus in your lungs can go through 30 generations in a few hours. Something similar can happen in the air of an airline cabin, a restaurant, or a school. Dogs and cats can sniff rat feces, then exhale the virus in your face.
Think of rodent droppings like glitter. If you sweep them dry, they turn into invisible dust that can end up in your lungs. So you open everything up first and let the place breathe, then you wet the mess down with disinfectant, wait a bit, and wipe it up instead of stirring it into the air. All with gloves and a good mask on. In plain terms, the rules are: air it out, do not sweep or vacuum, spray, wait, wipe. That is the boring routine that keeps a small animal problem from becoming a hospital problem.
—Ricky Lanusse, Hanta-Panic
New Zealand acted when cases were still countable. Three-digit case numbers. Zero deaths. The political risk was enormous—closing the entire economy while most people thought there was nothing to worry about. What if the virus didn’t spread? They’d look foolish.
But Ardern had read the Imperial College paper. She’d seen the models showing that mitigation would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Not just the weak and elderly. The young, strong, athletic, and most robust, too. Covid had nothing to do with how many hours you might spend at the gym. It got into your blood cells. Ardern had done the math and decided that looking foolish in March was a small price to pay for not having mass casualties in July.
The Trump administration, by contrast, waited. And waited. And waited. Until the curves were steep. Until hospitals were overflowing. Until the virus had infiltrated every state, every city, every neighborhood. Only then did the White House finally agree to a 15-day “shutdown” to “flatten the curve.”
Flatten the curve. That was the frame: not eliminate the virus, but slow it enough that hospitals could handle it. By then, exponential growth had already happened. The golden window was gone. You couldn’t unspread a virus that was already in thousands of people.
Trump undermined trust through denial and magical thinking. He contradicted his own health officials. He promoted unproven treatments. He held large rallies without masks. When the metrics got worse, he simply changed the metrics. When cases rose, he questioned whether testing itself was causing the problem. He created an information environment where half the country didn’t believe Covid was a serious threat.
And then 1.23 million of them died.
Historically speaking, that is only six hundredths of a Stalin. Only two hundredths of a Genghis Khan. But give the man time. He is still going.
We know that the next pandemic is coming. There’s always a next pandemic.
The question is: will we read the instruction manuals this time? Or will we once again leave them in the box while public health falls apart?
If history is any guide, I’m not optimistic. We’re a species that can’t even address climate change despite decades of warning and crystal-clear data. A pandemic that kills hundreds of thousands of people while some of them deny it’s real? That’s well within our current denial capacity.
I pray that is not what ecovillages stand for.
Breaking News: A newly surging Ebola outbreak in Central and East Africa is driven by the Bundibugyo virus, a distinct strain roughly 30% genetically different from the Zaire ebolavirus. Because this variant is new, there are currently no approved vaccines or targeted treatments for it, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency of international concern. The case-fatality rate is 25% to 50%. We’ll have more on this in future posts to The Great Change.
Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to end the war in Ukraine immediately. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years. It will continue to do so with your assistance. We have a pipeline to aid in the West Bank that may only last a short time, so we appreciate immediate donations—right now.
We support Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road, and we work to heal collective trauma worldwide through the Pocket Project. You can read about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). I appreciate your support.
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#RestorationGeneration.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize rather than destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
Thanks for reading! Everything expressed in this article is my opinion.
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