Hanta Yo!

So, we have a new virus to contend with . . . the hantavirus.

Actually, the hantavirus isn't exactly new, like SARS-CoV-2 was in 2019.  It's a virus that's been around quite awhile, and it's gotten attention recently due to numerous passengers on a cruise ship, some of whom have died.  The bad news is that there is no vaccine for it.  The good news is that it isn't as communicable as SARS-CoV-2 - far from it - and so the risk of catching hantavirus disease, which comes from rodent feces (which may lead Fox News "personalities" to refer to it as a Mickey Mouse disease), is as low as politicians in February 2020 thought that le covíde was.  You can catch le covíde by merely breathing.  You have to go out of your way to get hantavirus disease.

But none of that means, while we shouldn't take hantavirus as seriously as le covíde, that we should take it seriously at all.  And Trump isn't taking it seriously.  I don't think he's even talked about it.  He seems to think the situation will take care of itself.  Because of all of the obvious differences between the hantavirus and le covíde, he may be right this time.  But his lackadaisical approach to the hantavirus - if it can be called an approach - revives nightmares of his similar attitude to  le covíde in early 2020.

And while all this in going on . . . Ebola is back in central Africa.

The United States ought to consult the World Health Organization for strategies on how to navigate all this.

It's too bad that the United States formally left the World Health Organization earlier this year per Trump's orders based on his racist Sinophobic attitude involving a controversy over China  - not to mention that its director is an Ethiopian.

You know, that's another reason for me to advocate secession and disunion.  Trump tried to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in 2020, but the Biden administration canceled the process of withdrawal as soon as President Biden took office. This time Trump has succeeded.  As with the Paris Agreement, the United States will not be welcome back into the World Health Organization a third time when a Democratic President tries to undo Trump's action if there's a chance that a future Republican President withdraws the U.S. a third time later on.  Better for an independent New England, a Middle Atlantic republic, or an independent California to join the World Health Organization and leave fascist American states like an independent Texas and a revived Confederacy (from which blacks will flee in another great migration northward) will stay out and fall by the wayside.