Brooke Loughman knows that when she opens a social media app, she’ll be flooded with posts, whether she wants to see them or not. Lately, the first-year DePaul University student has found herself scrolling quickly through her feed, trying to avoid information about hantavirus and the wave of anxiety she experiences thinking about the possibility of another pandemic like COVID-19.
“If it is going to be a really big deal, I would rather not prematurely freak out, because if it is going to be like a COVID-19 scale thing again, I’d rather have some sense of normalcy for as long as I can,” said Loughman, who is 19.
Loughman’s thoughts are echoed by students scarred by living through the coronavirus pandemic.
The fresh mix of news and misinformation about hantavirus on social media is stirring up negative emotions for some young people, carried over from living on lockdown. COVID-era anxiety can linger and resurface, even more than half a decade after the pandemic, mental health experts say. The unknowns of a new virus outbreak, coupled with an influx of sometimes unreliable information, can generate fear, dread and anxiety.
In other words, the aftereffects of COVID-19 are still present, according to Tara Leytham Powell, an associate professor of social work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “All the impacts of that, the loss of income, the social isolation, the fear of the illness, all those things still exist in people’s minds,” Powell, who is currently researching COVID’s lasting impacts on mental health.
For students whose school years were stunted by the COVID-19 pandemic, turning to social media for information can be natural.
When first-year DePaul student Cedar Johnston-Powell, 19 (no relation to the U. of I. professor), first heard about hantavirus from friends, she understood the instinct to turn to social media, even if she doesn’t fully trust all the information she sees. She remembers using social media to learn about COVID-19 as a middle schooler.
“We were heavily relying on (social media) during COVID, so it’s like we’re all just programmed to go on whatever app is easiest and get my information,” she said. “… It’s like, what else was I going to do?”
Young adults can combat and cope with those feelings by thinking less about the unknowns appearing on their feeds and instead focusing on the coronavirus pandemic in a more positive light, including their resilience in the face of COVID-19, professor Powell said.
“There’s a fine line of getting yourself too anxious about it and following social media versus reflecting on ‘What did I do to keep myself safe?’ and ‘How did I grow during that time?’” she said.
Despite the social media frenzy, hantavirus is a very different disease from COVID-19, according to Dr. Abdullah Chahin, who specializes in infectious diseases at Loyola Medicine. Hantavirus remains rare, and the chance of an outbreak that becomes a pandemic is “really, really low,” Chahin said.
The two viruses spread differently: COVID-19 is transmitted via airborne droplets, whereas hantavirus requires more intimate or prolonged exposure, according to Chahin. Even then, an infected person can spread the virus to at most one other person.
Hantaviruses are a group of viruses carried by rodents that can make people severely ill. People can contract the viruses 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 of contracting hantavirus remains very low, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. At least three people have died from the rare virus’s recent outbreak, marking a total of 11 cases as of May 13, according to the World Health Organization.
Social media can be a landscape of conflicting information during a new outbreak, which Dana Rose Garfin, an associate professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, called “a perfect storm of people’s fears and anxieties,” coming off the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The more people are exposed to confusing or conflicting information, the more distressed they are and the less people trust the media, the more distressed they are,” said Garfin, who works at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.
Using social media to do “deep dives” into topics helps Ella Williams learn, but she’s unsure if she’s getting reliable information about the hantavirus.
“I don’t feel like it will compare to COVID-19, but I also don’t know, and I feel like we don’t know enough,” Williams, another first-year student at DePaul, said, adding that she doesn’t know if she’s getting reliable information on social media or how to feel about the virus.
But amid the fear sparked by the idea of a spreading virus similar to COVID-19, it’s important to remind yourself that hantavirus is a different virus, experts say, and eliminate personal doomscrolling and avoid reading fearmongering headlines.
Avoiding posts on social media is the way DePaul student Loughman combats her health anxiety. While she might not be consuming information on her screen like other people her age, she said she understands the risks associated with hantavirus.
“I still take precautions,” Loughman said. “I just don’t want it to take over my life.”
