I wrote an entire post on the hantavirus cases that have been identified on the Dutch cruise ship, and then I erased it because it scared even me. Let’s just say that this virus may turn out to be more contagious than we are now being told it is, that over 20 passengers exposed to the disease (and a few who had, and/or died from the disease) have already left the ship and that most of them have not been accounted for. And that the remaining 140 on the ship, which is docking in the Canary Islands, are going to be flown on special charters, for the most part, to their home countries (including the U.S.), rather than being quarantined for the up to 8 week incubation period in a controlled location in one place. The Americans are going to be quarantined for a period of time somewhere in Nebraska, but we don’t know where all of the others will be held, or if they will be, or if the quarantines will also affect airline crews and others who will interface without facing possible infection. What else we know is that this is a very serious virus, with a high fatality potential, and with no known vaccine or cure.

The potential is clear, even though we are now being told that the danger of pandemic is low. But we just got through one pandemic – the COVID-19 pandemic. The official death toll from COVID-19 is a bit over 7 million, with the World Health Organization saying that in fact it could be as many as 20 million. In the United States, the death toll approached 1.25 million. We saw what that did to individuals, to families, to health care workers, and of course to the world economy and to the day to day habits and activities of almost everyone. COVID-19 changed our world.

We have pretty much left a dangerous COVID-19 pandemic behind, but we have gone straight into a different kind of pandemic, which I will call TRUMP-25. With the inauguration of Donald Trump for a second, four year term, we have found ourselves in another situation, where the death toll may be much smaller, but the impact on world-wide civilization is probably at least as significant as that which arose from COVID-19. I would hate to see us become entrapped by HANTA-26, while we are still struggling from TRUMP-25, which has at least another 2.5 years to run.

But our future may be pandemic after pandemic, of one or another kind. Transportation from place to place is to easy, and too many people are taking advantage of the possibility of being on the Equator today and in Antarctica tomorrow. And the rise of instant communication, with uncontrollable participants, and now the rise of Artificial Intelligence, give us the potential for Trump-25-like pandemics, one after another.

And, yes, the canaries in the coal mines. The Canary Islands may become the symbol of HANTA-26, just as coal mines are one of the symbols of TRUMP-25.

In the meantime, what happens? Society gets divided into four main segments. First, there are the victims, both the direct victims and those close to them, family and friends. Then, there are the empathizers, those who devote their times to caring for the victims, making their lives as comfortable as possible under bad circumstances. Third, there are the me-firsters, those who are out only for themselves, out to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the world. We know them only too well these days. And fourth, there are the escapists. The escapists encompass a number of different types, but their common characteristic is their need to separate themselves from the greater world. They may be orthodox religious mystics or followers, or they may be hedonists, just out for a good time.

It’s a volatile mix of people, and none of it (either because of motive or circumstance) leads to advance human civilization.

Ten years ago, the world and human society had so much promise. Big differences of the past had receded, prosperity was spreading, as was education and human understanding. Science was showing extraordinary promise. Sure, there were problems, but it looked like they could be largely overcome over a period of time, with human progress the result.

But we were fooling ourselves. We have not really changed since the stone age, since the time we wiped out the neanderthals (if that is what we did). What goes up must come down. And we are on a downward track as we fight the recurrent pandemics we face.