The signs now are that the hantavirus is not the next pandemic. But with 2026 predicted to be the hottest year on record, the hantavirus outbreak is a warning of what public health experts have long said: A hotter planet is a deadlier planet. Rising global temperatures and the impacts they trigger—harsher heat waves, stronger storms, and wider spread of infectious diseases—endanger human health in myriad ways. The world’s top medical societies have been sounding the alarm since 2009, when the