The former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator who helped shape the 6-foot rule, extended lockdowns, school closures, and "15 Days to Slow the Spread" (that somehow became much longer) is once again on television recommending widespread PCR testing - this time for hantavirus.

In recent appearances on mainstream outlets, Dr. Deborah Birx discussed a hantavirus situation linked to a cruise ship. She suggested offering PCR tests to passengers who had already disembarked and were scattered around the globe, calling it "21st-century technology" and arguing it would catch early or asymptomatic cases. She referenced lessons from COVID, noting that "we're not testing populations... we don't really know whether there are subclinical cases" and that "it's never good to track viruses through symptoms; we should be tracking viruses through blood tests like PCR, we learned that with Covid."

She also pointed out that many universities and schools were able to stay open during the pandemic because of weekly testing. The clip, which has circulated widely, shows her laughing while making the case for broader availability of such testing.

This, of course, is the same Dr. Birx who, in her 2022 book Silent Invasion, described how the initial two-week shutdown was never really meant to be just two weeks. She wrote that she didn't have the numbers yet to justify extending it but had two weeks to get them - aka she pulled it out of her ass.

The 6-foot distancing rule, school closures, and other measures she defended have faced years of scrutiny. Former Trump administration health official Dr. Paul Alexander has stated publicly that certain CDC guidelines, including aspects of social distancing, were essentially "made up" with little to no science behind them at the time. Congressional testimony and reporting later revealed internal debates and evolving rationales for lockdowns and mitigation steps that went well beyond the original "flatten the curve" pitch.

Now, with a hantavirus outbreak tied to one cruise ship - a virus that has existed for decades, spreads primarily through rodent droppings, and has limited human-to-human transmission - Birx is reaching for the familiar tools: more PCR testing, population-level tracking, and references to what "worked" during COVID for schools and beyond.

Hantavirus is serious in the rare cases it occurs, but it is not a novel respiratory pathogen racing through communities the way SARS-CoV-2 did. The current context is narrow and specific. Yet the language echoes 2020: test more people, track more aggressively, make it widely available, because that's what we learned last time.

No visible course correction. No reflection on the documented limitations of PCR testing at high cycle thresholds, the collateral damage from prolonged restrictions, or the fact that many of the original rules were adjusted or walked back as more data emerged. Just the same public-health reflex applied to the next virus that makes headlines.

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