Recently The Daily Wire posted an article about Monkeypox and what we need to know about it.
This is, I believe, the most important sentence in the article:
Unlike SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, it is not a respiratory pathogen, which means monkeypox is not thought to spread via inhalation of the same air or respiratory droplets that are released during a sneeze or cough.
The article explains who is most likely to get Monkeypox:
We have also amassed a great deal of information regarding who is at risk. As of August 2, California’s Department of Public Health has reported that among its approximately 1,135 statewide cases of monkeypox, 14 have been hospitalized for the infection, with the vast majority of patients being aged between 25 and 44 years. From among the monkeypox cases with available data, 98.8% have been reported in male or transgender male individuals, with 97.2% of infected individuals identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Given this information, California’s public health website states: “While it’s good to stay alert about emerging public health outbreaks, the current risk of getting monkeypox in the general public is very low.”
The article concludes:
At this point in the monkeypox epidemic, when case numbers are relatively few and infections are concentrated among well-defined communities, we have a unique and narrow window of opportunity to adopt lessons we have learned from the COVID pandemic and enact focused protection of those who are at risk to both protect those individuals and halt the broader spread of the virus. Focused vaccination programs, educational campaigns regarding safe practices, and temporary limitations on specific events that are likely to lead to further spread of the monkeypox virus should all be considered. We learned from our initial response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s that we can do so while being respectful to impacted communities by focusing our language on medical risk reduction, rather than shaming individuals for their identities or personal practices. Any efforts to avoid focused protection of at-risk communities out of fear of stigmatization will cause public health agencies to squander this opportunity to contain the spread of monkeypox, effectively worsening its impact and potentially making it far more difficult to control in the future.
Given how skeptical the public has become after watching public health and political leaders make one harmful mistake after another in their attempt to manage the COVID pandemic, leaders must now set aside politics and political correctness and very transparently employ the clinical evidence about monkeypox to address this epidemic swiftly, before it spreads beyond its existing pockets. Time is running out.
We need to remember that this disease does not have to spread through the general public. Common sense measures will prevent this becoming another Covid-19. However, it might be politically advantageous for some politicians to create a panic that requires mail in ballots and drop boxes in the mid-term elections.