August 2, 2022 - 4:00pm
Since the monkeypox outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern — the World Health Organization’s highest level of alert — on July 23rd, reactions across the world have varied in urgency.
In the wake of WHO’s announcement Australia declared monkeypox a “disease of national significance” on Thursday. This prompted a series of inter-regional coordination measures to manage the outbreak. As of 28th July, only 45 cases had been detected in Australia.
Europe’s first monkey-pox related death was reported in Spain on Friday, and the second on Saturday. There are thought to be only three deaths so far outside Africa in the current outbreak. It may mark a turning point in the trajectory of the disease containment, but so far the government has stuck with its strategy of public information campaigns, and vaccinating healthcare workers and suspected close contacts.
As of 1st August there have been a suspected 2,759 cases in the United Kingdom. But the government has to declassify monkeypox as a so-called “High Consequence Infectious Disease.” A joint statement from several UK health bodies suggests the strain of monkeypox associated with the current outbreak can be relegated to a less concerning status. It is a known quantity, there is a vaccine, and several functional treatments.
Furthermore, the statement stressed that an “overly precautionary response” might create a public health risk in itself.
To bolster the UK’s attitude of cautious optimism, just days after WHO declared a public health emergency, transmission in the UK has showed signs of plateauing.
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SubscribeThe anxiety addicts must be getting excited at another virus to scare everybody! There’ll have to be a new virus every year to keep the public in a permanent state of fear.
Exactly. With the added factor in the US of the upcoming mid-terms.
According to Jimmy Dore they were experimenting with monkey pox in the Wuhan lab, which might be why it is suddenly so much more transmittable.
What, only every year?
Lets try every month.
Covidiots would not survive without being told they need masks and stay indoors.
“the cost of acting late will always be higher. And we can’t dismiss the risk to children, given what we know.”
Given that the virus in ~ 99% of cases is restricted to men who have sex with men, I don’t believe we have to worry about children getting infected.
Some of those “men” seem to be behaving like spoilt children anyway, with the refusal to take basic, very minimal precautions such as not having sex with a busload of people you barely know.
You are not very Christian towards gay people.
We now need to spend billions to find treatment for social disease.
Why worry about real problems like breast or prostate cancer?
Everything hinges on 100 days in the future. If the Republican Party sweeps in in USA Midterms; taking both houses and a good majority in the House of Representatives, and especially if the MAGA crowd of new Congress Candidates do as well as expected……
Then the whole debacle of the covid corruption will be put into review and exposed for the crime it was – and so this Monkey-Pox thing will also suddenly be relegated back to a monor medical issue rather than a hysterical Political issue.
100 days and counting down, let us hope the Biden House does not find yet more insane ways to be wrecking USA and the World in those few months.
Cancel Pride Month and quarantine anyone who participates in a sex party. Problem solved.
Global c*ckdown for two weeks. Yes!
2 weeks to slow the spread is for the plebs. Sacred victims may not be inconvenienced.
Unherd’s usually excellent editorial team somehow missed the obvious typo of the rogue letter ‘k’ in the title, and throughout this piece.
In common with the very many narcissistic megalomaniacs who have managed to bully and lie their way to power throughout history, desperados like Tedros and whoever it is that is pulling Biden’s strings have overreached their authority and are clearly now losing control of the narrative.
Popcorn, anyone?
Almost nobody I talk to has any idea that this is almost entirely a disease of concern to gay men. The odds of it affecting you (let alone killing you) if you are not a man who has sex with other men is less than your odds of being hit by lightning.
We live in a weird world when actually pointing out risk factors or naming groups at risk is now politically incorrect. We can’t say that fat people are more at risk from COVID, that drug abuse is abhorrent and life-shortening, and now can’t point out that one’s sexual proclivities define his monkeypox risk.
It’s more precise to say it’s only a risk to highly promiscuous gay men. If you’re gay but aren’t frequenting bathhouses or circuit parties or hooking up on grindr then you aren’t at risk.
The problem is that all the gay media and activist organizations are run by bitchy queens who frame any criticism of highly promiscuous sexual behavior as homophobia. They still claim that closing the bathhouses during the 80s worsened the AIDS crisis due to stigma.
One thing I give Dr. Tedros credit for is that he actually said that gay men should temporarily limit their sexual partners. If only the CDC would say the same thing.
To be fair, Douglas Murray pointed it out in either Spe**”or or Su**ay Ti*ES article.
I am not spelling it out fully in case Disgust algorithm censors the post.
Obviously all rational and responsible persons will wish to eschew risky behaviour. Perhaps, flowing on from the Covid lockdowns, certain actions could be banned, as was particularly popular in progressive circles at the time. For the good of society of course. What could be more reasonable? No one is safe unless se all are…
Bingo.
But as we know some behaviour, like having beer with friends in the park, makes Police running at you in 2 minutes…
For the good of Society, as you said…
If Ferguson modelled the risks associated to this disease we can sleep well!
The Western public health bureaucracy simply can not bring itself to accept the fact that (for now!) monkeypox is a disease almost entirely confined to the gay, promiscuous male subculture (literally 98% of all cases). In short, if you’re not having orgies with other men, you probably don’t have to worry.
This is a huge advantage, since it makes containing the disease much easier, but to cultivate that advantage, our public health people must stop blinding themselves to this fact. If it does start moving in the general population, and 4 year old kids start getting monkeypox from sitting in the wrong shopping cart, it will be public health’s fault for not doing the one thing they are actually tasked with: containing disease!
Public Health 2020: “Stay in your home! Close all businesses! Shut down restaurants! Wear a mask outside! And don’t you dare complain you stupid bigot.”
Public Health 2022: “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, and certainly don’t stop your Pride parties, but maybe you could put some gauze on your monkeypox rash before having an orgy. Only if you really want to.”
Intersectionality is seriously going to kill us all.
One wonders why people engage in sex with a partner with lesions, except sometimes the lesions are hidden in the mouth or a**s. But generally they show up on skin as well which ought to be obvious except in very dark rooms. It seems a disease easy enough to avoid, how can it be treated as a real hazard to the population? There is no asymptomatic transmission, right?
never heard of it..