Passengers recount their experiences on cruise ships after hantavirus incident
Passengers on the MV Hondius cruise ship give an update on their journey following an outbreak of hantavirus during the voyage.
Polymarket has steadily grown in popularity in recent years, but it skyrocketed in 2024 when it became a hotbed for betting on election results.
Like other platforms like Calsi, this prediction market allows you to place odds on just about anything, including the guest list for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding, the number of tweets Elon Musk will send this week, and whether Jesus Christ will return by 2027.
But a new bet approaches the line between casual brutality and simple indifference: Will hantavirus reach pandemic status in 2026? As of 2pm ET on May 7th, this is the most trending bet on the platform, with nearly $1 million worth of shares purchased.
This is not the first time profiteers have used polymarkets to cash in on disasters. In 2023, interest in the speculative gambling market skyrocketed after the disappearance of the Titan submarine, which killed all five people on board.
So how did we get here? Is our empathy meter broken, or is this the result of economic desperation in an increasingly divided economy? While the wealthy continue to get richer, some Americans are struggling to cover the rising cost of living.
Fiscal concerns are mounting amid the Iran war, soaring gasoline prices, and the upcoming midterm elections in November. More Americans say economic conditions are worse now than at any point in the past 25 years. More than half (55%) of Americans say their financial situation is worsening, according to a new Gallup poll.
On social media platform X, users called the bet “dystopian and crazy.” “This is like betting on war, incredibly dark and morally bankrupt,” one user wrote. Some called for prediction market platforms to be “eradicated.”
Ethicists and psychologists argue that using prediction markets like Polymarket to bet on hantavirus falls into a moral gray area. It comes down to broader cultural changes, including the gamification of daily life and the desensitization of emotions through repeated exposure to stress and crisis.
“There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for better people. Rather, different people make such bets for different reasons,” explains Christian B. Miller, professor of philosophy, ethics, and religion at Wake Forest University. And betting on a terrible outcome does not mean that something better will actually happen.
“They may think there’s going to be an epidemic, and they may even want to make money, but they don’t want people to suffer,” Miller says.
Brad Fulton, an associate professor of business and social policy at Indiana University Bloomington, said betting is less like gambling and more like posting an opinion by “literally putting your money where your mouth is.”
But Fulton warns that turning world events into a gamble can undermine empathy.
“We now live in an information environment where disease outbreaks are recorded as data points before they are recorded as stories about human suffering,” he says.
What is hantavirus?
According to the World Health Organization, hantaviruses are a group of viruses that naturally infect rodents, sometimes for long periods of time without showing obvious disease, and in some cases can be transmitted to humans.
The World Health Organization says five people have been confirmed to be infected with this typical rodent-borne virus, and three others are suspected of being involved in the outbreak. Three people died. Residents of several countries, including the United States, are currently being monitored for the virus after disembarking from or coming into contact with fellow passengers on a cruise ship where multiple cases of the virus have occurred.
But Dr Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s director of disease and pandemic management, said that while this was a “major incident”, it was “not the beginning of a pandemic”.
Emotional distancing blurs moral boundaries
Stephanie Serkis, a psychotherapist who specializes in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and anxiety, says prolonged exposure to stress can lead to emotional desensitization.
“Many people are still dealing with unresolved trauma and anxiety from COVID-19, while also navigating political conflicts, wars, financial strains, climate insecurity, and a constant stream of distressing news,” she explains. “At some point, the mind can create emotional distance as a form of self-preservation.”
This can cause “emotional numbness.” However, some people use dark humor to cope with the tragedy and fear surrounding the health crisis, while also demonstrating emotional intelligence and empathy in interpersonal relationships and other areas of their lives.
But Serkis warns that the more emotionally distant people become, the more insensitive they become to human pain.
It’s cyclical, and although prediction markets rely on emotional detachment, they also contribute to the same environment of empathy depletion, or “compassion fatigue.”
“Rather than experiencing empathy, compassion, and anxiety, these gambling sites function to make everything a gamble,” said Ellen Feder, a philosophy professor at American University.
Despite debate about the ethics of betting on tragic events, Miller says it’s important to distinguish that pandemic predictions don’t carry any weight on the outcome. Fulton added that most winners don’t even care about the event they’re betting on, but are “fascinated by the bet itself,” which adjusts the odds and the reward for winning. Whether it’s a baseball game or a disease outbreak, the underlying psychology is the same.
“Empathy is being crushed by platforms designed to reward detachment,” he says. “Human interests are secondary to analytical interests.”
