We are beginning to understand how the monkey’s smallpox is spreading in this latest outbreak of deadly disease.
Smallpox is spread through close physical contact. Especially during sex.
Believe it or not, this is a relief. Because a possible alternative, smallpox that spreads through the air, is much, much more dangerous.
The World Health Organization recently confirmed transmission methods that drive the three-week outbreak in Europe, Australia and the United States. “Based on the information currently available, cases have been identified mainly, but not exclusively, between men who have sex with men seeking care in primary care and sexual health clinics,” the WHO said in a statement. last week.
This does not mean monkeypox, a pathogen that is endemic to rodent and monkey populations in West and Central Africa and causes flu-like symptoms and a rash in people (and can be fatal to one person). 10 percent of cases, depending on accuracy). strain) —is a sexually transmitted disease.
In fact, experts are clear that they are not. Instead, it is an opportunistic disease that prefers to jump from one infected person to another uninfected by small cuts to the skin or mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, and anus. “Any close contact will allow it to spread,” Damania University of North Carolina virologist Chapel Hill told The Daily Beast Blossom.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that men who have sex with other men are an important factor in the spread of smallpox. David Heymann, who previously headed the WHO’s emergency department, told the Associated Press that men attending radios in Spain and Belgium – and being entertained – “amplified” the outbreak.
“What has happened is that it has reached a population that is amplifying transmission because of behavior,” Heymann told The Daily Beast.
Mateo Prochazka, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the UK Health and Safety Agency, said he was concerned that these findings would be misinterpreted in a way that could be used to attack the gay community of which he is a member. .
“It doesn’t mean that gay or bisexual men are doing something inherently wrong, or that the virus has changed or is sexually transmitted, it just means that this behavior facilitates transmission on these networks,” she told PinkNews. “We wanted to make sure people understood that the broadcast is not exclusive to gay and bisexual men, it just happens that it has entered this network.”
There was widespread concern, early in the outbreak, that this smallpox strain could spread the way COVID spreads: in the air when we breathe, cough, talk, and laugh.
Therefore, the sexual aspect of viral transmission is actually a reason for relief among epidemiologists, as the number of confirmed cases, about 100 in a dozen countries outside Africa, as of Monday, is slowly increasing. . (No deaths reported.)
“We still don’t fully understand the scope of outbreaks or modes of transmission,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health expert at Georgetown University, told The Daily Beast last week.
COVID, of course, likes to travel in the very fine mist of “spray” that everyone exhales every few seconds. These sprays can travel around the room and stay in the air for minutes at a time. This is part of what makes COVID so contagious.
Experts suspected that the monkey’s smallpox tends to favor larger drops that don’t travel that far or spread that far. “The monkey’s smallpox is not transmitted through the air, but is transmitted by drops after prolonged contact,” said the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the European version of the Centers for Disease Control. and U.S. Disease Prevention, in a statement. In other words, smallpox seemed unlikely to spread like COVID and potentially trigger its own pandemic.
But viruses are unpredictable. The idea that smallpox might have mutated to go with aerosols kept many epidemiologists awake at night earlier this month, even though it’s a DNA virus, so it can’t mutate as easily as an RNA virus such as COVID. The world can barely handle a pandemic. The last thing we need is a second global disease above the first.
We can relax … a little. To the extent that smallpox spreads mainly through very close contact (kissing, stroking, sex), it is quite easy to avoid. “This disease can be contained through a change in behavior,” Heymann said.
It starts with education. Know what smallpox is like (hard, circular bottles) and do not touch anyone who shows signs of infection. But there is no need for paranoia. You probably won’t catch smallpox just by sharing air with an infected person.
And even if you take it, you have quick treatment options. Smallpox is related to smallpox and the same vaccines work against both. The CDC alone stores more than 100 million doses of smallpox vaccine.
Not only can the latest and greatest smallpox vaccine, Jynneos, prevent infection, but it also works as a post-infection therapy, Heymann said. “Change the virus”. The problem is that you have to take a dose within a few days of getting sick.
Between contact tracking, vaccinations, and therapies, we have the tools to contain monkeypox and prevent most possible deaths from the virus. And now that we are focusing on the main routes of transmission, we can begin to rule out the possibility of a smallpox pandemic. “I hope it will be contained in high-income countries,” Gostin said.
To have a good chance of spreading smallpox, you need to get up close and personal with someone else. This does not lend itself to an out-of-control spread.