So: you could warn against having sex with travelers from West Africa, presumably a small number of people, or you could panic the nation. Guess which approach the CDC has chosen
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just say no
So far, more than 100 cases have been reported across the world, with the majority of cases cropping up in Spain, Portugal and the U.K. There are also several cases tied to an outbreak near Montreal, Canada, one case in New York City and another in Massachusetts, The New York Times reported. Cases have also been reported in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Australia. Many [most, but let’s be delicate here — Ed.] of the cases are in men ages 30 to 55 who have had sex with men, according to The Washington Post.
If you think you have monkeypox, what should you do?
If you suspect you're infected with monkeypox, contact your health care provider for treatment and contact tracing, particularly if you fall into one of the following categories, according to the CDC:
—You have traveled to Central or West Africa, areas in Europe reporting monkeypox or other areas with confirmed cases during the month before symptoms began.
—You have had contact with a person with confirmed or suspected monkeypox.
—You are a man who regularly has intimate contact with other men.
"If individuals are sick, they’re often sick for two to four weeks. It’s urgent to identify people early, get them treatment and identify contacts," Andrea McCollum, a poxvirus epidemiologist at the CDC, told The Atlantic.
Also, there’s already a vaccine. One smallpox vaccine is 85 percent effective at preventing monkeypox and has already been licensed for use against the virus. And as another bioterrorism precaution, stockpiles of three smallpox vaccines are large enough “to vaccinate basically everyone in the U.S.” Inglesby said. And though monkeypox patients usually get just supportive care, a possible treatment does exist and has also been stockpiled: Tecovirimat, or TPOXX, was developed to treat smallpox but would likely work for monkeypox too.
Monkeypox may also be less deadly than is frequently claimed. The oft-cited fatality rate of about 10 percent applies to a strain that infected people in the Congo Basin. The West African strain, which several of the current cases have been linked to, has a fatality rate closer to 1 percent—and that’s in poor, rural populations. “We haven’t seen fatalities in people who’ve had monkeypox in high-resource settings,” Rimoin said.
And still more here: Is Monkeypox sexually transmitted?
The media’s already accelerating into full-panic mode, burying the sexual transmission of this disease, if they mention it at all, deep within its coverage. By the time the elections roll around we’ll be back to mail-in voting, at least, and far worse, if the swamp can get away with it.
