A wave of concern about hantavirus is triggering anxiety in young adults still processing the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brooke Loughman, a first-year student at DePaul University, represents a generation wary of another large-scale health crisis, scrolling past hantavirus posts on social media while trying to maintain normalcy.
College students are relying on social media to learn about hantavirus much as they did during COVID, despite skepticism about the accuracy of what they find. The fresh mix of news and misinformation about the virus on social media is stirring negative emotions, according to Tara Leytham Powell, an associate professor of social work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The anxiety lingers over a decade after the pandemic ended, as people’s memories of economic loss, isolation, and fear remain “in people’s minds,” Powell noted.
Experts stress that hantavirus and COVID-19 are fundamentally different diseases. Dr. Abdullah Chahin, who specializes in infectious diseases at Loyola Medicine, said the chance of a hantavirus outbreak becoming a pandemic is “really, really low.” The two viruses spread through different mechanisms: COVID-19 is transmitted via airborne droplets, while hantavirus requires more intimate or prolonged exposure. Even then, an infected person can spread hantavirus to at most one other person. Hantaviruses are a group of viruses carried by rodents that can make people severely ill through contact with infected rodents or their droppings, saliva or urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is no antiviral treatment or vaccine for hantavirus. In Illinois, the risk remains very low. As of May 13, at least three people had died from the rare virus, marking 11 cases total, according to the World Health Organization.
Addressing anxiety without doomscrolling is key, experts suggest. Dana Rose Garfin, an associate professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, called social media “a perfect storm of people’s fears and anxieties,” noting that “the more people are exposed to confusing or conflicting information, the more distressed they are.” Young adults can build resilience by reflecting on their own strategies for staying safe during COVID-19 and how they grew during that time, rather than fixating on unknowns. Loughman sums up the challenge: “I just don’t want it to take over my life.”
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.arcamax.com/healthtips/s-4202070