First they came after the murder hornet, but I remained silent, because I'm a WASP; then they came after monkeys, and I'll be a monkey's uncle

They’re hurt

NYC Health Department urges a name change for Monkey pox because of its painful and racist history. What, monkeys? Who’s ever picked on them?

White House Covid Response Coordinator Ashish Jha addressed monkeypox Monday and stressed that it’s “really important” not to use this moment “to propagate homophobic or transphobic messaging.” That’s what’s really important. Science, you know.

But it gets dumber … way dumber. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s commissioner, Ashwin Vasan, has written a letter to the World Health Organization asking it to change the name of monkeypox because of a growing concern “for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on these already vulnerable communities.”

Is he talking about the gay community? Not quite.

“NYC joins many public health experts and community leaders who have expressed their serious concern about continuing to exclusively use the term ‘monkeypox’ given the stigma it may engender, and the painful and racist history within which terminology like this is rooted for communities of color,” Vasan continues.

These are the same people who locked down schools, churches and restaurants, yet won’t shut down the gay spas where the disease is spread. These are the same people who demanded that children at no risk of contracting or speeding COVID to wear facemasks, but won’t require gay men to wear condoms in bath houses. Forced citizens to remain 6 feet apart at all times, yet won’t require men to keep their penises 6” from a stranger’s anus.

What might these morons turn their attention to rather than monkeying around, worrying about simians’ hurt feelings? How about addressing their own ineptitude? The NYT reported yesterday, “As Monkeypox spread in New York, 300,000 doses sat in Denmark.”

NEW YORK — On the Thursday before Pride Weekend last month, hundreds of men dropped what they were doing and raced to a city-run health clinic in Manhattan. Finally, more than a month after monkeypox appeared in the city, a vaccine was being made available to sexually active gay and bisexual men, among whom the virus was rapidly spreading.

But there was a catch: There were only 1,000 doses available. Within two hours, the only clinic offering the shots began turning people away.

At that same moment, about 300,000 doses of a ready-to-use vaccine owned by the United States sat in a facility in Denmark. U.S. officials had waited weeks as the virus spread in New York and beyond before deciding to ship those doses to the United States.

Even then, there was little apparent urgency: The doses were flown piecemeal, arriving in shipments spread out over more than a week. Many didn’t arrive until this month, more than six weeks after the first case was identified in New York City.

By holding back the doses, an early opportunity to contain or slow the largest monkeypox outbreak in the country appears to have slipped by. On Saturday, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency. At least 16,000 cases have been reported around the world, with about 3,000 in the United States. Infections in New York City make up nearly one-third of the national case count.

…

The federal response to monkeypox, including the limited testing capacity, has echoes of how public health authorities initially mismanaged COVID-19.

With monkeypox, however, the federal government had a powerful tool to slow the spread from the start: an effective vaccine.

Called Jynneos, the vaccine is effective against both smallpox, which generally has a 30% fatality rate, and monkeypox, which can be severe but has a far lower fatality rate. [5 deaths so far, all in Africa — ED]

When monkeypox was first detected in the United States in mid-May, there were about 2,400 doses on U.S. soil, in the federal government’s strategic national stockpile, used mainly to protect lab workers and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personnel engaged in research, officials said.

The United States also owned well over 1 million Jynneos doses in vials — and enough vaccine for millions of more doses that had yet to be filled into vials — in Denmark, where the producer of the vaccine, Bavarian Nordic, is headquartered.

Much of that supply was tied up in bureaucratic red tape because the Food and Drug Administration had yet to inspect and certify a new facility outside Copenhagen where the company now fills the vaccine into vials — an issue that has yet to be fully resolved.

But there were 372,000 doses owned by the United States that were ready to go. These doses, stored at the company’s headquarters, had been filled into vials earlier, at a different facility with the necessary FDA approval.

Rather than quickly transfer those doses back to the United States and begin administering them, however, the federal government adopted a wait-and-see attitude. In the first few weeks after monkeypox was detected in the United States, the government requested only 72,000 of the 372,000 doses.

NYC Health Department, the FDA, the CDC: A pox on all their houses.