If not for our COVID-19 reflexive memory would this still be a huge story or does it just get hits? I'm genuinely asking, it's good to be informed and help out those afflicted but is this just an easy way to get eyeballs?
(I just realize I may sound like a kook saying `it's the media` but I'm genuinely curious)
Even if COVID-19 did not happen, this would still get a lot of play because of the name which lends itself to sensationalism and fear. Monkeypox, flesh-eating bacteria, mad cow disease ... these are the things that get played up, while Clostridium difficile, Shigella, and other infectious diseases with obscure names mostly get a collective shrug.
Wait wait wait, are you sure it's not the other way around? That those things don't get those names because they're played up? Monkeypox, flesh-eating bacteria, mad cow disease all have boring scientific names but these are the names the media uses to play them up!
mad cow / cjd / prion disease is in a different league from all the others you mentioned; there's very little recourse and it is scary how difficult it is to sterilize anything that may have been exposed.
SARS, MERS, and Swineflu all garnered attention at the time. An outbreak of a new disease is interesting, regardless of what happened the last 2+ years.
It's noteworthy for sure, however I am more annoyed by how it is reported. It was always like that for sure, however when the same medium proclaims being the arbiter of truth (fact checkers) I get really disgusted.
Of course all diseases gain traction in the media in some way. That's normal.
I'm sure this is hyperinflated in the media due to covid however. This monkeypox news is everwhere and most countries have literally a handful of cases, most of them traced to sexual contact (which means large spread is not likely). Really, this warrants the same disinterest as we had in covid in early Feb 2020. But instead it's getting treated as if it's covid-2022. Some caution is of course warranted but I think this is really a knee-jerk reaction.
They're already talking about mandatory quarantines and reporting here (monkeypox dashboard, lol). It would probably be a postage stamp on page 10 if it hadn't been for covid, less than bird flu or swine flu was. Even though the mandatory measures are mostly gone, we still have a ways to go to be really 'back to normal' where people are not constantly worried about diseases. A pandemic is a once-in-a-century event and we shouldn't treat every disease as one until it is.
Belgium already has a compulsory 21 day quarantine for monkeypox in place after some cases were linked to two rave events, one in Spain and the other in Belgium.
People are already spreading misinformation online about the disease.
This article is from an Utah and most likely Mormon news source, so expect some bias:
Ebola was big in the 90's, even made a best-selling book and film about it (with Dustin Hoffman) but it only impacted certain African nations, and for decades. I feel the same way as you, and my gut tells me it is a little of both: an actual scary virus that probably won't explode COVID-like, but media hype worthy because every new outbreak of something awful has always been good sensationalism. I look at articles from science sources versus USA Today-like sources for my own opinion.
I have an alternative. Maybe it’s not sensationalism, maybe it’s just that journalists do not know the future, and this could potentially become a significant health issue.
So I got to spend an afternoon with one of those mad scientists from Porton Down, the UK biological and chemicals weapon testing place. The stuff they have there makes Ebola look like a walk in the park.
So there are parts of the body the immune system cant go, like the gonads, and eyes, the viruses like Ebola can get in there like toxoplasmosis (eye floaters from cat faeces) and then you become a carrier. Men can pass on Ebola through semen which was being seen in Africa not so long ago and yet still test negative for Ebola!
So with increased numbers of people travelling and the global population going up, the risks keep going up so I'm not surprised WHO want to take control of this globally. At least they issued a directorate to reduce the number of cycles a PCR test goes through. Putting aside somewhere between 80 and 85 different PCR testing machines, which are not standardised, some countries were only using a cycle threshold of 18 whilst others were using a higher cycle threshold of 45. The cycle threshold can be likened to microscope magnifications, at some point the fluorescence of past viral debris will show up like a live virus the higher the cycle threshold goes.
Now with out this WHO directorate, you would probably be seeing more lockdowns in some parts of the world and other parts spreading Covid like wildfire.
Sure its hard to argue things could have been better or worst when we cant jump into parallel universes, but COVID isnt over yet and monkeypox could trigger more lockdowns.
It also shows that countries need global guidance.
> The biggest outbreak of monkeypox in the U.S. occurred in 2003, when health authorities found 47 confirmed and probable cases in six states — Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “All people infected with monkeypox in this outbreak became ill after having contact with pet prairie dogs. The pets were infected after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana. This was the first time that human monkeypox was reported outside of Africa.” During this outbreak, 28 adults and two children were given the smallpox vaccine and “no serious adverse events were reported.” Not only did this outbreak not turn into a major public-health crisis, it barely made the national news. When the New York Times wrote about it back in June 2003, the story ran on page A20.
With some exceptions the youngest people who received the smallpox vaccine in America are now 50, so it’s possible that we’ll see more monkeypox cases than previously (the smallpox vaccine provides 85% protection). We were able to eradicate smallpox completely because it has no animal reservoir, unlike monkeypox which also infects rodents and monkeys.
It can still go either way. It's likely enough that the global spread will end with identified cases in the low thousands though (people that are shedding virus tend to have readily identified symptoms).
Also, this one is likely similar to AIDS where it’s actually spreading as an STD. In that case you wouldn’t learn it as the media would think that’s gross and not want to report it.
Of course it would. Look at the attention paid to past Ebola outbreaks that mostly didn't even leave West Africa. Hell, one single doctor was repatriated and treated at a CDC isolation lab, and that single case led to a huge amount of panic and controversy. Monkeypox is a mysterious new disease that is much less deadly (good!) but has made it to several continents (surprising!) and has done it against all historical precedent.
Probably not, there have been countless outbreaks and epidemics in the past, all got some attention and media scare. But we haven't had a pandemic since 1920s, so I would bet on the 99.9% chance of it being just a media scare, rather than a new pandemic.
> proposed US amendments to Article 12 IHR will both considerably extend the executive powers of the WHO Director-General to declare global emergency-like situations and centralise this power further by removing the need to consult and find agreement with the respective state party ... Articles 9 and 10 IHR moreover strengthen WHO’s powers to assess alleged global health risks by relying on information received outside official channels, giving the respective states only 24 hours to verify such information.
> ... if WHO’s powers are extended in this way, is there a need to also answer the question quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who guards the guards?), and to thus set up mechanisms ensuring that WHO complies with its obligations under the IHR and its Constitution, as well as its responsibilities for human rights deriving from customary international human rights law?
WHO's Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) site has videos from their April 2022 meeting: https://inb.who.int
That's the part I take issue with. Any time power becomes centralized (including during emergency situations) it leads to loss of individual freedoms, and often increased anthropogenic (=human-caused) suffering.
What is the “power” here? Does the power to declare things itself result in consequences?
Nb America has too many elected positions; most democracies have fewer (are more “centralized”) but also it’s easier to fire them if you don’t like them (here it’s difficult to impossible). For instance the best reason to elect both a mayor and supervisors of SF is if you want them to fight instead of getting things done, and indeed that’s what they do.
This is a really hard philosophical claim you have here. Especially given the fact that it uses vague terms like freedom and power, which philosophers don’t really know the full ramifications of, and whole books have been written on trying to understand what they even are.
I’m gonna call bullshit on this. This sentence can mean anything you want to, while being constructed in such a way to be arise suspicion.
That is, unless you care to clarify what you mean by power and freedom here, i.e. is patents on vaccines included in centralization of power? Is my freedom to infect those around me included?
And even after you have clarified these terms, some empirical data wouldn’t hurt either. To show a negative correlation with—whatever you call centralization of power and individual freedom (however you define it).
The WHO is not really "powerful" like a nation is, as they do not have a military or enforcement arm, and they do not pass laws.
All they can do is decide how their funds get spent. They are granted all these "powers" to spend their funds by the participating states. Furthermore, they are restricted to spending it on things that promote world health. The worst they can do is squander the money, which isn't even all that much.
Compare this to people like Jeff Bezos who have vastly more money, 100% centralized, and effectively no restrictions on how they spend it. Whether you should be concerned about that is up for argument, but by contrast, any concerns about the WHO are pretty absurd.
Transmission of monkeypox virus occurs when a person comes into contact with the virus from an animal, human, or materials contaminated with the virus. The virus enters the body through broken skin (even if not visible), respiratory tract, or the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, or mouth). Animal-to-human transmission may occur by bite or scratch, bush meat preparation, direct contact with body fluids or lesion material, or indirect contact with lesion material, such as through contaminated bedding. Human-to-human transmission is thought to occur primarily through large respiratory droplets. Respiratory droplets generally cannot travel more than a few feet, so prolonged face-to-face contact is required. Other human-to-human methods of transmission include direct contact with body fluids or lesion material, and indirect contact with lesion material, such as through contaminated clothing or linens.
I think the biggest failure wasn't the CDC being wrong at first, it was society not being receptive to changes. It's impossible to be correct every single time. The only thing they can do is say what they know so far.
red: bush meat provides vital nutrients and is the perfect paleo diet!
blue: bush meat consumption increases worldwide temperatures! If you eat bush meat, you dine with hitler!
FTA: "people are poring over the data right now and comparing it to "classic" monkeypox sequences to see if this a new variant, perhaps with enhanced transmissibility. So far there are no glaring signs of that, but this work is very much ongoing; it's just too early to draw any conclusions."
Health officials are investigating whether a number of monkeypox cases in the UK were sexually transmitted – in what one expert fears could be the first recorded instances of their kind.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has detected seven monkeypox cases in total, all of which were diagnosed between 6 and 15 May. Four new ones were confirmed last week. Three of the new cases are in London and one linked case is in the north east of England. All four sufferers are men who identify as gay, bisexual or as men who have sex with men (MSM).
Not to mention most of the identified infections were sex-related, making it even less of an issue. Most people aren't promiscuous so it will be very difficult to spread far that way. There's other transmission routes of course but they seem to be much less potent.
Add gain of function / deliberate bio-terrorism in there as well.
Feb 1992 - a Soviet defector revealed to Western intelligence that he had overseen an extensive, illegal programme to develop smallpox into a highly effective biological weapon:
> Ken Alibek believes that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, unemployed or badly-paid scientists are likely to have sold samples of smallpox clandestinely and gone to work in rogue states engaged in illicit biological weapons development.
To summarize the linked blog post (emphasis because this is not a news article, an urgent bulletin, or a report on research findings):
Cases of Monkeypox have been popping up around the world. Monkeypox is not a new disease, is "not particulary contagious", and is rarely fatal. The provocative thing is that numerous cases are popping up at the same time in different parts of the world.
Its a blog post from an author with a long history of effectively communicating complex things without extra hype and with entertainment value. Don't miss the "things I wont work with" posts.
If the close contact during sex is a good way to get infected then it makes sense that a group that are largely cut off sexually from the rest of the population would see it first.
I think this information is from the UK where MSM are more likely to be engaged with their sexual health (ie get tested more often) than the population generally
I'm seeing a lot of conspiratorial thinking on Twitter and elsewhere where people think it's just too suspicious that a new virus has popped up so soon after COVID-19. If you're harboring these suspicions, it might be worth reading a little about the Poisson Distribution[1] and Frequency Illusion[2].
Because the appearance of an emerging disease isn't generally correlated to the appearance of another, different disease (big assumption here), there is no guarantee of even spacing. Furthermore, we've had over 30 emerging infection diseases pop up in the last 30 years[3]. They're much more likely to receive increased attention now however, due to heightened worldwide awareness of infectious disease from COVID-19.
I'm not saying that there's definitely no conspiracy, but Occam's Razor says cognitive bias is a much more likely explanation for why monkeypox seems so oddly-timed than Bill Gates's secret world domination plan.
This virus is a great place for effective altruism biosecurity projects to focus. By building up expertise solving real challenges, we'll be in a better spot with future pandemics. Anti-fragility by figuring out small challenges so we're better prepared for the big ones.
You might be happy to learn about CEPI [0][1], the "Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations". They have the goal to ship vaccines 100 days [2] after outbreak of a pandemic by doing a lot of the research and testing in advance. They plan to create "templates" for vaccines for two dozen different viruses that pose a risk of causing a pandemic and test these in advance for safety and dosage, so that they only need to be slightly tweaked for an actual pandemic.
Readit News
I'm sure this is hyperinflated in the media due to covid however. This monkeypox news is everwhere and most countries have literally a handful of cases, most of them traced to sexual contact (which means large spread is not likely). Really, this warrants the same disinterest as we had in covid in early Feb 2020. But instead it's getting treated as if it's covid-2022. Some caution is of course warranted but I think this is really a knee-jerk reaction.
They're already talking about mandatory quarantines and reporting here (monkeypox dashboard, lol). It would probably be a postage stamp on page 10 if it hadn't been for covid, less than bird flu or swine flu was. Even though the mandatory measures are mostly gone, we still have a ways to go to be really 'back to normal' where people are not constantly worried about diseases. A pandemic is a once-in-a-century event and we shouldn't treat every disease as one until it is.
People are already spreading misinformation online about the disease.
This article is from an Utah and most likely Mormon news source, so expect some bias:
https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/23/23138042/monkeypox-2022-be...
So there are parts of the body the immune system cant go, like the gonads, and eyes, the viruses like Ebola can get in there like toxoplasmosis (eye floaters from cat faeces) and then you become a carrier. Men can pass on Ebola through semen which was being seen in Africa not so long ago and yet still test negative for Ebola!
And then there is global warming like the Artic permafrost thawing that has the potential to release long since forgotten threats. https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Permafr...
So with increased numbers of people travelling and the global population going up, the risks keep going up so I'm not surprised WHO want to take control of this globally. At least they issued a directorate to reduce the number of cycles a PCR test goes through. Putting aside somewhere between 80 and 85 different PCR testing machines, which are not standardised, some countries were only using a cycle threshold of 18 whilst others were using a higher cycle threshold of 45. The cycle threshold can be likened to microscope magnifications, at some point the fluorescence of past viral debris will show up like a live virus the higher the cycle threshold goes.
Now with out this WHO directorate, you would probably be seeing more lockdowns in some parts of the world and other parts spreading Covid like wildfire. Sure its hard to argue things could have been better or worst when we cant jump into parallel universes, but COVID isnt over yet and monkeypox could trigger more lockdowns.
It also shows that countries need global guidance.
Emphasis added, source:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/what-you-nee...
With some exceptions the youngest people who received the smallpox vaccine in America are now 50, so it’s possible that we’ll see more monkeypox cases than previously (the smallpox vaccine provides 85% protection). We were able to eradicate smallpox completely because it has no animal reservoir, unlike monkeypox which also infects rodents and monkeys.
1) Diseases are a growing issue, with increased human population and travel.
2) It's hard to predict which ones will become pandemics.
It's kind of like asking whether a game of Russian Roulette is a big deal or just a story to get hits. You don't know until you pull the trigger.
If I see 1 case one week, then 10 cases two weeks later, and pushing 100 two weeks after that, it’s pretty scary.
As far as I know, they aren't air transmittable, so I don't see the problem.
> proposed US amendments to Article 12 IHR will both considerably extend the executive powers of the WHO Director-General to declare global emergency-like situations and centralise this power further by removing the need to consult and find agreement with the respective state party ... Articles 9 and 10 IHR moreover strengthen WHO’s powers to assess alleged global health risks by relying on information received outside official channels, giving the respective states only 24 hours to verify such information.
> ... if WHO’s powers are extended in this way, is there a need to also answer the question quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who guards the guards?), and to thus set up mechanisms ensuring that WHO complies with its obligations under the IHR and its Constitution, as well as its responsibilities for human rights deriving from customary international human rights law?
WHO's Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) site has videos from their April 2022 meeting: https://inb.who.int
That's the part I take issue with. Any time power becomes centralized (including during emergency situations) it leads to loss of individual freedoms, and often increased anthropogenic (=human-caused) suffering.
Nb America has too many elected positions; most democracies have fewer (are more “centralized”) but also it’s easier to fire them if you don’t like them (here it’s difficult to impossible). For instance the best reason to elect both a mayor and supervisors of SF is if you want them to fight instead of getting things done, and indeed that’s what they do.
I’m gonna call bullshit on this. This sentence can mean anything you want to, while being constructed in such a way to be arise suspicion.
That is, unless you care to clarify what you mean by power and freedom here, i.e. is patents on vaccines included in centralization of power? Is my freedom to infect those around me included?
And even after you have clarified these terms, some empirical data wouldn’t hurt either. To show a negative correlation with—whatever you call centralization of power and individual freedom (however you define it).
/s
This is discomforting. Genuinely curious how anyone would see this as anything more than a power grab.
All they can do is decide how their funds get spent. They are granted all these "powers" to spend their funds by the participating states. Furthermore, they are restricted to spending it on things that promote world health. The worst they can do is squander the money, which isn't even all that much.
Compare this to people like Jeff Bezos who have vastly more money, 100% centralized, and effectively no restrictions on how they spend it. Whether you should be concerned about that is up for argument, but by contrast, any concerns about the WHO are pretty absurd.
This seems off topic.
The article is about monkeypox. The WHO meeting is about regulations.
Yes, they are both public health issues, but that's about as close of a connection as there is.
https://twitter.com/criticalsway/status/1526464386386345984
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1526464386386345984.html
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Transmission of monkeypox virus occurs when a person comes into contact with the virus from an animal, human, or materials contaminated with the virus. The virus enters the body through broken skin (even if not visible), respiratory tract, or the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, or mouth). Animal-to-human transmission may occur by bite or scratch, bush meat preparation, direct contact with body fluids or lesion material, or indirect contact with lesion material, such as through contaminated bedding. Human-to-human transmission is thought to occur primarily through large respiratory droplets. Respiratory droplets generally cannot travel more than a few feet, so prolonged face-to-face contact is required. Other human-to-human methods of transmission include direct contact with body fluids or lesion material, and indirect contact with lesion material, such as through contaminated clothing or linens.
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html
On no, not this droplet thing again. The CDC said the same thing about SARS-COV-2. Hopefully they are right this time.
Stop worrying. This isn't another coronavirus-level pandemic.
Health officials are investigating whether a number of monkeypox cases in the UK were sexually transmitted – in what one expert fears could be the first recorded instances of their kind.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has detected seven monkeypox cases in total, all of which were diagnosed between 6 and 15 May. Four new ones were confirmed last week. Three of the new cases are in London and one linked case is in the north east of England. All four sufferers are men who identify as gay, bisexual or as men who have sex with men (MSM).
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/monkeypox-uk-outbreak-first-...
That is not a necessary limited interpretation of «prolonged face-to-face contact».
Original SARS, Bird Flu part 1, MERS, Swine Flu (arguably an actual pandemic), Bird Flu part 2, Covid.
No one should be surprised that there's a new possible pandemic 3 years after Covid.
If this ends up being another actual pandemic - that would be surprising.
Dead Comment
Feb 1992 - a Soviet defector revealed to Western intelligence that he had overseen an extensive, illegal programme to develop smallpox into a highly effective biological weapon:
> Ken Alibek believes that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, unemployed or badly-paid scientists are likely to have sold samples of smallpox clandestinely and gone to work in rogue states engaged in illicit biological weapons development.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/pox_weapon_0...
June 1998 - The WHO recommends that all smallpox samples should be destroyed https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199808203390811
Feb 2002 - WHO says that Russia and US can keep their smallpox samples https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2002/02/wide-ran...
Nov 2002 - CIA claims that Russia, France, Iraq and North Korea have "secret" stashes of small pox (erm you already know Russia has them, that's not a secret) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2002/11/cia-beli...
Sep 2019 - Explosion and fire break out at Russian lab known for housing deadly smallpox virus https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosion-s...https://www.livescience.com/russia-lab-stores-smallpox-explo...
Cases of Monkeypox have been popping up around the world. Monkeypox is not a new disease, is "not particulary contagious", and is rarely fatal. The provocative thing is that numerous cases are popping up at the same time in different parts of the world.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/monkeypox-outbreak-is-primar...
I think this information is from the UK where MSM are more likely to be engaged with their sexual health (ie get tested more often) than the population generally
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Because the appearance of an emerging disease isn't generally correlated to the appearance of another, different disease (big assumption here), there is no guarantee of even spacing. Furthermore, we've had over 30 emerging infection diseases pop up in the last 30 years[3]. They're much more likely to receive increased attention now however, due to heightened worldwide awareness of infectious disease from COVID-19.
I'm not saying that there's definitely no conspiracy, but Occam's Razor says cognitive bias is a much more likely explanation for why monkeypox seems so oddly-timed than Bill Gates's secret world domination plan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5618832/
[0] https://cepi.net/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_for_Epidemic_Prepare...
[2] https://100days.cepi.net/100-days/