They have repeated this since the start of the Covid pandemic: “We are entering an ‘era of pandemics’, this is just the beginning”. And they’ve been true to their word: As soon as the threat of Covid began to subside and most people had begun to put the nightmare of the past two years behind them, we were told that another dangerous virus had begun to shoot quickly spread across continents: monkeypox, a rare disease usually confined to West and Central Africa, where it is endemic.
Since May 2022, a number of outbreaks have been reported in the US, UK, Australia, continental Europe and Canada. On July 23, with more than 16,000 reported cases (and five deaths, all in Africa) in 75 countries and territories, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, its higher alert for a disease, increasing status. of the outbreak to a global health emergency, although the WHO advisory group opposed the declaration nine to six. The last time the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern was in February 2020 for Covid, so people naturally drew parallels.
These comparisons are completely unfounded. And yet, as the outbreak continues to make headlines around the world, panic sets in again. A recent survey revealed that one in five Americans fear contracting monkey pox. This is especially true for young people, many of whom now say they fear monkey pox more than Covid. “I had finally gotten to the point with Covid where I was starting to relax,” Lisa, a 30-year-old mother from Chicago, told Slate. “But when I heard about monkey pox, it was like a big pit in my stomach. I open Twitter and see people telling me you need a full suit of PPE to go out. I can’t stand living in fear for two more years and I want to let my son have a normal life.”
Meanwhile, three US states, including California, have declared states of emergency for the monkeypox outbreak, just as they did for Covid-19, allowing them to enact mask mandates, lockdown orders and other restrictions . And two weeks ago, a south London school sent reception classes home until the end of term after a child came into contact with a case of monkeypox, sparking fears of an outbreak. The school said it was acting on advice from the UK Health Safety Agency (UKHSA) and was “required to follow these precautionary guidelines”. Authorities also advised parents to avoid hugging their child.
It is simply baffling that anyone is willing to go back down this path: closing schools; denying children physical contact, with all we now know about the devastating effects of such measures on children’s mental and physical well-being during the Covid pandemic. But that doesn’t seem to register. Today, we are seeing the first stirrings of another bout of mass hysteria, with politicians, the media and public health officials (including the WHO) repeating the same mistakes they made with Covid-19: spreading information wrong about the nature of the disease. , and sow unnecessary panic and fear among those who take little or no risk with it, while denying those who are truly at risk the kind of targeted messaging and protection they deserve.
With Covid, it was known early on that the disease was highly selective: the vast majority of people, especially children, never faced any significant risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from it. Yet public health officials systematically framed Covid as a lethal and indiscriminate threat to all human beings. The consequences were devastating: on the one hand, it fueled terror and panic in the population; on the other, it abandoned those who really needed protection from the virus, primarily nursing home residents, who account for a staggering 40% of all Covid deaths in Western countries.
The same inaccurate message is being delivered regarding monkey pox. For example, the media has given extensive coverage to the fact that monkeypox has been detected in some children in the United States, making the disease a growing concern for parents, who are now worried about the safety which is back to school. Others worry that a large-scale pediatric outbreak could ignite a full-blown pandemic or lead to staff shortages.
These concerns were heightened by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who stated: “I am concerned about sustained transmission because it would suggest that the virus is becoming established and could move to high-risk groups such as children, immunocompromised and pregnant women. We’re starting to see this with several children already infected.” More recently, Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical lead on monkeypox, in another statement that received a lot of attention on social media, went on to say that children in particular “are at a higher risk of severe disease ” and that “all children who contract a serious illness”. Infection with the monkeypox virus will develop severe disease.”
The danger of monkeypox to pregnant women has also been receiving a lot of media attention. The WHO has warned that monkeypox during pregnancy could lead to the fetus becoming infected with the virus or, worst of all, a dead fetus. Jennifer McQuiston, who leads the CDC’s monkeypox response, said there are “a lot of concerns” about smallpox and pregnancy, and that pregnant women should take extra precautions to protect themselves. Overall, the message is the same as with Covid: anyone can get it, including children, so everyone should be concerned, especially parents and pregnant women.
It is very misleading, and even worse because it comes from the world’s leading public health organizations. While it is technically true that anyone can catch monkeypox, most people can catch most diseases, the reality is that according to WHO data, 97.5% of cases are between gay or bisexual men, almost all (91.5%) have contracted. the disease through a sexual encounter. The average age is 37 years.
As the WHO writes: “The ongoing outbreak of monkeypox continues to primarily affect men who have sex with men (MSM) who have recently reported having sex with one or more partners. There is currently no evidence to suggest sustained transmission beyond these networks.” So far, there have been a relatively small number of cases outside this group: health officials have reported about 100 cases of smallpox among women worldwide, about 1% of the global total, while cases among children are even rarer.
These facts are confirmed by the UK Health Safety Agency, in the most comprehensive study to date of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NJEM) and by a study by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) based on 197 cases. in British men. Furthermore, despite widespread speculation to the contrary, monkeypox occurring primarily among gay men is not driven by sampling bias. According to the UKHSA, we can see that the positivity rate among men is considerably high compared to women and children. It is not entirely clear why monkeypox is so much more common among gay men and why we are not seeing a greater number of sexually transmitted cases among heterosexuals, although it is likely that the number and overlap of sexual partners play an important role.
Despite this, health authorities and the media have been wary of labeling monkeypox as a sexually transmitted disease (STD), in part because researchers were unsure whether the disease is transmitted through semen or vaginal fluids A new Lancet study, however, concludes that monkeypox could be an STD, as the data already suggests.
Fortunately, the data also show that those most at risk of contracting monkeypox (adult males) usually have non-life-threatening (though certainly painful and distressing) symptoms. Also, vaccines developed for smallpox are said to be very effective against smallpox. And while it’s true that previous outbreaks of monkeypox have proven especially dangerous for children and pregnant women, the strain involved in the current outbreak appears to pose less of a threat to those groups: the first two U.S. pediatric cases reported by The CDC is said to have been relatively mild, with more or less the same symptoms as adults, while the newborn baby of the first mother positive for monkeypox in the United States also appears to be fine so far.
The data also indicate that, while it is technically true that monkeypox can be transmitted through close (skin-to-skin) contact with an infected person, and even through exposure to items and surfaces that have touched the ‘rash from an infectious person, such as clothing or bedding, non-sexual transmission is very low, although it is likely to increase with prolonged close contact. There is no evidence of airborne transmission.
So overall, there seems to be little justification for the growing monkeypox hysteria. A responsible public health approach would ensure that high-risk individuals (gay men) are aware of the risks and are offered reasonable recommendations (such as safe sex) and access to vaccines, while reassuring all others that there is no reason to panic. at least based on current data. Instead, a confusing and imprecise message once again sows unnecessary panic among the general population, while potentially failing to protect those at risk.
One reason for this is the assumption that emphasizing the disproportionate effect of monkeypox on gay men could lead to ostracism and anti-gay stigma, as during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As best-selling author Xiran Jay Zhao wrote in a tweet that’s been liked nearly 60,000 times: “I’m SO TIRED of the monkey pox misinformation: It’s NOT limited to gay men. It’s NOT an STD. ANY YOU CAN ACHIEVE IT…