The recent attention surrounding hantavirus has understandably unsettled people. A virus associated with rodents, severe respiratory illness, and mortality rates that can exceed 35% is going to generate concern whenever new cases appear or unusual transmission questions arise.
But the larger issue is likely being missed.
Hantavirus itself may or may not become a major public health event in the United States. Most outbreaks do not spiral into global emergencies. But what is most concerning is that the renewed focus on hantavirus once again exposes how reactive America’s broader preparedness posture has become.
We still tend to approach emerging infectious diseases as isolated events instead of recurring strategic realities.
Over the last several years alone, the world has moved from Covid-19 to mpox to avian influenza concerns to recurring Ebola outbreaks, and now renewed hantavirus discussions. At a minimum, this pattern should force an uncomfortable question:
“Are we genuinely building long-term preparedness infrastructure, or are we repeatedly improvising our way from one outbreak cycle to the next?”
From where I sit, too much of the system still functions episodically.
During emergencies, funding accelerates, manufacturing expands, policymakers mobilize, and preparedness becomes a national priority. Then the crisis fades, headlines move on, and much of the urgency fades away. Unfortunately, pathogens are indifferent to election cycles, budget debates, procurement timelines, or quarterly earnings pressure.
That mismatch matters. A great deal.
The United States still possesses extraordinary scientific capability. American universities, biotechnology companies, federal laboratories, and public health institutions remain world leaders in vaccine science, immunology, genomics, and biodefense research. Innovation is not the problem. Operational continuity and resilience are.
Sustaining preparedness infrastructure during quieter periods has proven much harder than building it during emergencies. Manufacturing capability becomes concentrated among too few suppliers. Platform technologies capable of rapid adaptation struggle to maintain long-term support absent an active outbreak. Programs surge forward during crises and then stall once immediate pressure subsides.
I also worry that we have become conditioned to viewing preparedness as temporary emergency spending instead of long-term infrastructure investment. Every outbreak creates urgency. Then attention fades, priorities shift, and much of the preparedness conversation resets until the next crisis arrives. That cycle is not sustainable. Nor should it be accepted.
In the biotechnology sector, these challenges become very tangible.
Multiple biotechnology companies, government agencies, and academic groups are continuing to invest in vaccine platforms intended to address emerging infectious disease threats, including orthopoxviruses, hemorrhagic fevers, and other high-consequence pathogens. Recent global mpox events have reinforced the strategic importance of maintaining reliable countermeasure capacity, while also exposing the broader challenge of establishing diversified domestic vaccine manufacturing capability in the United States.
That issue extends well beyond any single company.
The reality is that America still relies heavily on a concentrated non-domestic manufacturing and supply structure for an important biodefense category. During the mpox outbreak responses in 2022, 2024 and the current outbreaks, the world saw how quickly vaccine demand could outpace available manufacturing capacity. Expanding supply is not as simple as flipping a switch. Manufacturing infrastructure, trained personnel, regulatory familiarity, fill-finish capacity, and supply chains all take time to build.
And once those capabilities disappear, rebuilding them under crisis conditions becomes far more expensive and far less efficient.
One lesson from the last several years should be obvious by now: flexible vaccine platforms matter. Preparedness cannot depend entirely on designing bespoke solutions after threats have already escalated. Response speed increasingly depends on having adaptable technologies, manufacturing infrastructure, and regulatory experience already in place before emergencies occur.
Modified Vaccinia Ankara, or MVA, is one example of that broader concept. Originally developed in the “smallpox setting”, MVA technologies have also been studied across multiple infectious disease categories, including hemorrhagic fever viruses (Ebola, Marburg), and other emerging pathogens. That does not mean one platform solves every problem. It does not. But flexible platforms can create important advantages when rapid response becomes necessary.
That becomes especially relevant for pathogens like hantavirus, where the threat has been recognized for years, but commercial incentives for vaccine development remain limited. Some of the pathogens most relevant to national preparedness are not necessarily the ones that produce large, predictable commercial markets.
Preparedness, therefore, cannot be entirely market-driven.
And increasingly, preparedness should be viewed not only as a public health issue, but also as a national security issue.
Covid exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains that many policymakers had underestimated for years. Dependence on overseas manufacturing, limited surge capacity, and concentrated production networks created real operational challenges during a crisis. Those lessons extend well beyond pandemics.
Whether the next major threat involves poxviruses, hemorrhagic fever viruses, influenza, hantavirus, or something not yet widely recognized, the United States benefits from having diversified domestic manufacturing capability that can be mobilized quickly and scaled responsibly.
This is not an argument against international collaboration. Global partnerships remain essential. But strategic redundancy matters too. Relying excessively on a single supplier, a single geography, or a single manufacturing pathway is simply not a resilient long-term preparedness strategy.
In conversations across the preparedness community, one theme comes up repeatedly: during a crisis, everyone recognizes the importance of readiness, but sustaining momentum between crises remains extraordinarily difficult. That may be the single biggest structural weakness in modern biodefense/biosecurity preparedness.
By the time a threat becomes obvious to everyone, valuable response time is often already gone.
Maintaining preparedness infrastructure during relatively calm periods is not wasteful. It is insurance. No one questions maintaining military readiness during peacetime. Biosecurity deserves similar strategic treatment.
The next major infectious disease threat may not resemble Covid-19. It may emerge from a poxvirus, an influenza strain, a hemorrhagic fever virus, or a pathogen most people have never heard of yet. We simply do not know.
But every outbreak over the last several years has exposed another layer of vulnerability:
- insufficient manufacturing redundancy,
- fragmented preparedness coordination,
- inconsistent long-term investment,
- limited surge capacity,
- or gaps in countermeasure availability.
That pattern should concern all of us.
Hantavirus should not simply become another fleeting news cycle. It should serve as another reminder that preparedness is not a temporary project that can be activated only when headlines demand it. It is infrastructure. And infrastructure only works if you invest in it before you desperately need it.
Photo: Warchi, Getty Images
David A. Dodd is Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of GeoVax Labs, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer. He brings more than four decades of leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including corporate strategy, commercialization, and global product development. At GeoVax, he leads the company’s efforts to advance novel vaccine and immuno-oncology platforms addressing significant unmet medical needs.
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