In February 2025, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa died in her New Mexico home from a virus most people had never heard of. Her husband, the actor Gene Hackman, died a week later of heart disease. The pathogen that killed her was hantavirus, almost certainly picked up from deer mouse droppings on the property.
Fourteen months later, 11 people on the Dutch cruise ship Hondius have been infected with a different hantavirus strain. Three have died, and passengers from more than 20 countries, including several Canadians, are being monitored across four continents.
This is not the next pandemic. But it is a stress test, and a reminder of something we keep relearning the hard way. When humans push into ecosystems they don’t normally inhabit, they are exposed to viruses. Ebola in West Africa in 2014 followed deforestation and closer contact with bats; by the time the outbreak began, more than 80 per cent of the surrounding forest had been cleared.
