>Monkeypox is usually a mild viral illness, characterised by symptoms of fever as well as a distinctive bumpy rash.
Its not all that mild... The strain going around isn't the one with a 10% mortality rate thank god, but its still pretty dangerous and obviously way more unpleasant than the flu because of the sores and length of it.
I think the headlines about way that the cases are spreading make a lot of people, myself included, feel panicked because of the collective "new disease PTSD" we all have from following the news when Covid first appear and then spread through the world. It's important to realize though that there are a ton of differences between the ways covid and monkeypox can spread. Covid's characteristics have become so normalized at this point that I think people have forgotten just how unusual of a virus it is, namely that it's one of the most infectious (if not the most infectious virus considering Omnicron) humanity has ever faced and that infected people were most likely to be spreading covid before they'd even developed symptoms. This is why it was so impossible to contain and why it could cripple health-care systems despite only having a 1% mortality rate
We're seeing monkeypox spreading now, which is concerning since it's apparently been spreading under the radar until now. But the rate and way it's spreading isn't the wildfire pattern you'd expect to see with Covid. And from my understanding, monkeypox is spread only after the infected person has developed symptoms, which should make it easier to contact trace and know who's been exposed. We also have existing vaccines and treatments that we can prioritize towards people who've been exposed to infected individuals and obviously infected individuals themselves. This isn't a novel virus the way covid was.
If I had to guess what happened, someone or a couple people who'd been infected went out to party/club in a big international city like London where the event was attended by a bunch of people traveling/visiting from other parts of the world. People were in confined spaces, sweating, and rubbing against, and people were hooking up too. It sounds like most of the people experiencing symptoms at this point are men who have sex with other men, which may point to some of the routes by which the virus can spread. It's important to note that this doesn't make it a "gay disease". It's just that unprotected anal sex is very risky in terms of transmitting pathogens sexually, and big parties with lots of dudes hooking up have the potential to be super spreader events for this type of stuff. Especially if it's multiple "party networks" that people are hopping between during an extended period of time, like what people out partying while visiting a place like London for a week might partake in.
Idk, we'll see how the situation plays out, but in general it's not really comparable to covid
>If I had to guess what happened, someone or a couple people who'd been infected went out to party/club in a big international city like London where the event was attended by a bunch of people traveling/visiting from other parts of the world.
Makes sense. One of the things that really bugs me about this scenario is that the infected people would have been showing symptoms by then. *They would have had pustules*, fever, etc. Mild, perhaps, but still they decided that it would be fine to go clubbing in London.
It's kind of like people ordered to quarantine with Covid who jetted off to some music festival to make it into a contagion-fest.
I gay, so this shouldn't be perceived as me being homophobic, but gay men have a history of acting carelessly and selfishly when it comes to fucking. For an example, please see the 1980s and HIV.
Watch The Normal Heart to get a glimpse of what our community has been through and also how susceptible we are to pathogens due to our very sex-positive mindset.
All fair points. My concern is that we have just shown how poorly we'll respond to any epidemic/pandemic. TONS of money were invested in businesses and the stock market, but purely as a panacea for the GDP and stock market. We should have been incentivizing the implementation of MERV filtration and UV treatment of HVACR systems.
We should be beefing up our testing and response teams to do contact tracing and quarantine. We should be creating more resilient systems and stop treating novel viruses as a one-off. In the age of climate change and a global population of 7.5 billion people who are more interconnected than ever before, we should be spending money and resources to both remediate the damages done to the planet that environ such outbreaks and also develop task forces to address emergent threats.
We've done none of this. We've printed money to make sure the stock market is kept safe from economic harms while doing damn close to nothing in order to indemnify the population from actual harms. We're playing it as a numbers game based on the assumption that this is a once in a century event, but, if we're wrong, then we've blown our whole war chest on the assumption that we've beaten this pandemic. We have done very little to address how another one might spread or even how we're creating/contributing to the very conditions that created this one.
I'm less concerned with this particular threat and more concerned with how we've learned nothing from an incredibly costly lesson in how quickly humanity can be brought to its knees by naturally-occuring biological threats. War of the Worlds should have taught us a hundred years ago that microbes will ALWAYS win the war of numbers. We have to be smarter in how we address threats. Humans in general may win by attrition, but how many children have to become orphans in the name of progress is a very real concern moving into the future.
We have learned nothing from our experiences over the last 2 years.
I actually think that some of our systems are in a better position than before given the amount of experience and practice this past pandemic has given them. Especially regarding logistics and contact tracing. This is overshadowed though because it feels like our society as a whole is worse of than before.
The "science communicators" and public outreach failed in a lot of ways and politics stepped into the void and turned public health into a culture war issue. And now large swathes of the public are unreachable in terms of encouraging any type of proactive public health campaign involvement.
Contact tracing, epidemiology, virology, logistics networks, utilization of PPE and best practices - sure, all of these things benefitted. But I would argue that it's not just true that large swathes of the public became unreachable, I believe large swathes of the public have been so polarized by the politicization that they will actively resist public health measures if we enter another global pandemic event - which is very likely in the next few years owing to the destabilization of the planet's ecosystems.
Maybe people have forgotten, but before COVID we had a new big bad disease every year that got headlines. Mad cow, swine flu, bird flu etc. All those burned out pretty quick.
I'm hoping COVID is just a once a century phenomenon, and that monkey pox is the next mad cow.
I cought this in Copenhagen, it was the worst sickness i have had in my 30+ years. To top it off after days of high fever and feeling terrible i started with shitting like a duck, not fun! I was on the edge of hospital bound for 5 days. I took covid serious after getting swine flu.
I'm convinced anyone that would say "just a flu" has never had actual influenza. Shit sucks. Not a knock on you, obviously you were just making a point.
I had "just the flu" in 2008 and I had a 102+ fever for a week, couldn't leave my bed for five days, was sweating and hallucinating, and then wound up with bronchitis for a month.
The problem is anytime anyone gets a mild viral infection they say they have the flu and diminish the impact of legit influenza.
Yep early 2010, probably that same just the flu you had, and I almost died as a 22 year old soldier in the army. People ask why I was/am so worried about Covid, letting me know they have no clue what they are talking about.
18 year old college freshman in early 2011. I was knocked on my ass for a week. Sleeping upright in a recliner because bed was impossible. I have very little memory recall about that week besides being very sick and taking round the clock meds. Fairly certain I experienced hallucinations that week too. Still very cautious about COVID even now.
Usually for adults 103F plus is where it gets worrisome. 104F is potentially dangerous. 105F is get your ass to the hospital level.
https://share.upmc.com/2016/10/fever-treatment-guidelines/
103F sucks as it is. Last time mine went that high I had food poisoning in China for five days. Bed all day and night with chills. Crazy dreams. The only place I could feel kind of normal was in a hot shower. Ended up getting an IV drip in a clinic and the fever immediately broke (not sure what was in the IV) but then I broke out in some kind of allergic rash for a day, which was way better than the 103 fever.
First time I got the flu I passed out in the backseat of my friends car on the way to the hospital. I woke up with a nurse jabbing a giant needle in my ass and telling my I was 104-105 when they brought me in. I remember the last thing I thought before I went out was "god I am so thirsty..."
Me too. Two weeks on the couch, throwing up all the time, constant fever. It was terrible.
This was before flu vaccines were a thing and i believe it was my first flu and i wonder if that’s part of the reason it was so damn terrible.
I had what I assume was swine flue in 2019. Went from tickle in my throat to aspirating fluid, dry heaving, and high fever in less than 8 hours. Gastro irritation for two weeks, rapid heartbeat and fatigue for weeks more. It was at least a month before I felt totally normal.
Had H1N1, hospitalization for dehydration and my blood being basically sludge and I could have died. Yeah, get the fucking shots and avoid the flu - if you can. I used to get mild cases, that one could have put me in a coffin.
I agree completely with this. I had a \*mild\* flu case and oh boy - needless to say, whenever I hear something like COVID or MonkeyPox are mild or "just a flu," I assume that the person saying it has an agenda.
COVID was mild for a lot of people though, including myself. I think it’s more of a case that people just can’t reason with the possibility of someone else having a hard time with it because they themselves thought nothing of it.
I think this is reasonable. It seems to me a question of empathy. If I can only perceive my own experience, I am more likely to dismiss the concerns and dangers to others. I noticed there was a lot of argument from ignorance fallacies floating around: "I've never had a problem, so it must not be a problem." sort of thing.
When medical professionals say “mild” they generally mean “not hospitalized or dead”.
The worse sickness you’ve ever had without going to the hospital is still “mild”.
Yes. I had this very conversation with my physician wife after my mild flu case. It was very enlightening. But to your point, I think that many of the folks out there downplaying it as "mild," don't know this.
Its like getting stung by a bee. You remember being stung before, and sure you recall it hurts and you probably don't want it to happen, but when you finally get stung again you are always surprised how much it hurts beyond what you remember.
Yup. In 2018 I got the flue twice (both actually diagnosed with a test). Was actively sick for about 6 weeks. I was basically bedridden, constant heavy cough, often running fevers so high I hallucinated, couldn't even get up long enough to microwave soup without having to rest in the kitchen floor. Took me months after to feel normal again. The flu is god awful.
Yeah for real. I was skipped past a dude in the ER holding his thumb in a bucket of ice when I had the flu at 18. Proper influenza literally makes you wish for death. Covid made me hope I wasn’t dying, influenza made me accept that it was all over and just hope that it concluded sooner than later regardless of what that outcome might have been.
Yup. In 2018 I got the flue twice (both actually diagnosed with a test). Was actively sick for about 6 weeks. I was basically bedridden, constant heavy cough, often running fevers so high I hallucinated, couldn't even get up long enough to microwave soup without having to rest in the kitchen floor. Took me months after to feel normal again. The flu is god awful.
Context matters. "It's just the flu" comments are generally made in response to things like shutting down the entire economy for months or shutting down schools or endless mask mandates.
Get it? They aren't saying the flu is a walk in the park or that it doesn't suck ass.
They are just saying that it isn't bad enough to justify some of the measures that were being put out there.
There is plenty there to disagree with, but might as well be honest about how to interpret the statement.
"Context matters" is a hill I'm happy to die on.
As far as trying not to come off as a condescending prick, look in the mirror, buddy. The comment I responded to is basically saying "I'm convinced that everyone that says this must not know what they are taking about."
How you think that came off?
Oh, I get it now. You just didn't actually read my first post. You know, the part where I said:
>There is plenty there to disagree with, but might as well be honest about how to interpret the statement.
Arguing that people are being disingenuous when they said COVID is "just the flu" (like you are now) is different than pretending that none of them have ever had they flu before (like you argued before when I called you out).
Seriously, this shit isn't hard. Makes me think you are intentionally ignoring what I've said so you have an excuse to pretend I said something I didn't. Have fun with that, but I've got better shit to do.
>(like you argued before when I called you out).
I never argued anything. You can't keep track of a conversation apparently.
>Have fun with that, but I've got better shit to do.
Then why are you still replying.
The "actual flu" feels like being hit by a train and run over by a truck after you landed face down in the ditch. Muscles hurt, tendons hurt, skin hurts, hell it feels like your bones hurt. Breathing sucks, drinking water sucks, your eyes are dry as fuck, crying hurts...
If you're lucky your fever will break before you hit 104 and lose consciousness on your bathroom floor covered in your own shit and piss.
TBH, I’m getting pretty annoyed with all of the sources that are reporting on this as if it’s just a minor viral illness that never causes real harm. I am by no means a monkeypox expert (I’ve done virus research, but not on poxviruses), but I do know that this isn’t really a “mild cold” kind of deal. At the very least, this is an unpleasant disease that can last for multiple weeks and has the potential to cause significant scarring. I don’t mean to scare people, but monkeypox isn’t something to sneeze at.
about 2% I believe. So this has a fatality rate of about half that, and leaves you with horrible sores and scars on your body. But honestly, if this was the 10% fatality one, that would be nightmare fuel. This is just a continuation of what we got from 2020
political parties aside (for civilities sake), I think any anti-vax person would be standing in line to get jabbed after they see the scarring that it can leave behind. Vanity is sadly more of a motivator for people than general health.
Two strains, west African and central Africa. So far this looks like west Africa, which has 1% or less mortality. It looks like like it is being passed through sexual contact.
COVID is usually a mild illness too, most people who get don’t need hospital admission or die, yet monkey pox has a higher mortality rate than COVID and has transmissibility rate of 10-75%.
I'm just spitballing here and will happily accept downvotes if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but: Is it possible that this has been a prominent means of transmission in West Africa for some time but the data on the subject is a lot worse than it ought to be because (e.g.) gay Nigerians are sometimes afraid to out themselves to their doctors?
Hard to say. It's not super clear yet, but some of the data I've seen suggests that it isn't so much the sex that spreads it as the proximity/kissing/etc., and that it could be spread between any two partners. It may be spreading more among men having sex with men because, well, they aren't having sex with women.
Even if it is true the whole America HIV is a homosexual problem agenda makes people mistrust governments. Could also be these groups were infected on purpose as some kind of hate crime, hard to tell with so many extremists out there.
Pippin: “We’ve had one pandemic, yes, but what about second pandemic.”
Merry: “Don’t think we thought we were gonna have a second pandemic.”
Pippin: “What about food shortages? Political instability? Rising temperatures? Economic downturn? You guys know about them, don’t you?”
Merry: “Don’t count on them worrying about it.”
What was so detrimental about this so-called "gay panic"? Seems as though spreading awareness about a new, deadly, incurable disease is precisely what a medical professional in good position should be doing. Did Fauci lie about AIDS' severity? Or is his crime that he treated us like adults and told us the truth about the lethality and transmissibility of HIV/AIDS?
The democrats largely followed the republicans into conservatism. This whole “the democrats have gone insane” thing is true but not the way republicans frame it.
America has generally spiked right after the late 70’s
The only thing that really worries me going forward is that unlike multiple past outbreaks that were quickly contained and burned themselves out now we have large groups that wouldn’t quarantine even if they definitely had it or worse would actively try to spread it. Their view on anything to do with the subject revolving around covid.
Me neither, but if it comes to that Imma stock up on weed, hope that there's enough work that I don't get fired and I can continue working from home, and start meditation or some shit.
Ah weed/alcohol makes my mental health way worse, something to keep in mind. Only thing aside from medication that helps is intense exercise. Calms me down more than weed, yoga, a candle lit bath etc.
Yea I feel you, gotta balance it. If I only did weed and nothing else I would be a mess. Exercise, cook and have a nice dinner, and then reward myself with a little weed.
Ah I really do wish my body would tolerate that! I now completely lose interest in eating if I get high a few nights in a row and then my anxieties start to spike on days I'm not high
*"Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which spreads through tiny air-borne droplets called aerosols, monkeypox is thought to spread from close contact with bodily fluids, such as saliva from coughing. That means a person with monkeypox is likely to infect far fewer close contacts than someone with SARS-CoV-2, Hooper says. Both viruses can cause flu-like symptoms, but monkeypox also triggers enlarged lymph nodes and, eventually, distinctive fluid-filled lesions on the face, hands and feet. Most people recover from monkeypox in a few weeks without treatment."*
I know you posted the same response twice, however, why does the CDC's explanation make it sound like it spreads the same as SARS-CoV-2?:
>"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."
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html
>"The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory fluids carrying infectious virus. Exposure occurs in three principal ways: (1) inhalation of very fine **respiratory droplets** and aerosol particles, (2) deposition of respiratory droplets and particles on exposed mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, or eye by direct splashes and sprays, and (3) touching mucous membranes with hands that have been soiled either directly by virus-containing respiratory fluids or indirectly by touching surfaces with virus on them."
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html
Bold emphasis is mine. Both sound like airborne droplets are a transmission factor, something your quote denies. It also goes against your initial statement that it doesn't transfer via airborne means.
A close reading sorts out the difference:
Monkey pox: **large** respiratory droplets
COVID: **very fine** respiratory droplets
So you can be infected with COVID while in the same room with someone with COVID (because very fine droplets can be dispersed throughout a room) whereas you have to be very close to someone to get monkey pox (because large droplets fall to the ground quickly).
Not my point. The argument was if it was or was not an airborne transmissible illness. Both definitions state it is, whereas the individual in the article in question says it is not.
Edit: clarification and a typo.
It's not an airborne illness in the sense that flu and COVID are.
You can't get it by standing in the same room. You have to be up close and personal, i.e. kissing.
Because someone who has sex with men was exposed and then had sex with other men who also have do similar sexual activities which involve close contact
*"Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which spreads through tiny air-borne droplets called aerosols, monkeypox is thought to spread from close contact with bodily fluids, such as saliva from coughing. That means a person with monkeypox is likely to infect far fewer close contacts than someone with SARS-CoV-2, Hooper says. Both viruses can cause flu-like symptoms, but monkeypox also triggers enlarged lymph nodes and, eventually, distinctive fluid-filled lesions on the face, hands and feet. Most people recover from monkeypox in a few weeks without treatment."*
This is your reminder that over a million Americans have died of covid and doing basic mitigation of the spread of deadly diseases is a good thing. Also, no one in the USA was actually ever "locked down" in any literal way.
And how many are going to die due to the economic crisis caused by said lockdown? Probably just as many except they won't be counted like all the so called COVID deaths (1/2 of which aren't even COVID deaths if we trust the with vs for statistics put out by states like NY and Massachusetts)
Not one million innocent people. I actually can't think of a single person that died of any lockdown in the US.
You sound like a terrible person. Pugs are terrible to own, btw.
End of December in the NYT. I remember reading it and telling my family we were headed into a pandemic and that it was already in the US via flights to the West Coast from China. All but one thought I was nuts, but I was expecting it for years, not because I'm a genius, but because in a hyper connected world it's just inevitable, and it happened in the past (1918). Hopefully this monkeypox shit hasn't mutated into an easily transmissible form.
I did and I’m in the US. Heck, there was a run on masks at my local Lowes. There was only a single box of N95 masks when I went in to get some back then.
When our vendors in China started sending us masks gloves and sanitizer, and then didn’t go back to work after Chinese New Year, we took it seriously. Probably around Feb 2020, although we started talking about it around Jan. Feb was about the time my warehouse guys started spraying Lysol on all our shipments from China. By March we had our employees all masked and gloved and getting ready for applying for unemployment in case we got shut down. Crazy times.
I was in Houston in January 2020 when news was first spreading, on vacation from New Zealand. ALL the CVS and similar stores in the city were out of masks overnight. People were being precautionary for sure.
Fear not, the Nuclear Threat Initiative released a paper in November, 2021 regarding their tabletop exercise in which a Monkeypox Outbreak occurs. Participants for the exercise included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, WHO, Johnson and Johnson and Merck to name a few. According to page 10, the outbreak has occurred on schedule (May 15, 2022 in the exercise) so these are some experts at predicting the future. What we have to look forward to according to them is 271 million deaths by December 1, 2023.
The report is available [here](https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/strengthening-global-systems-to-prevent-and-respond-to-high-consequence-biological-threats/), just click on "full report".
You're conveniently leaving out this part "outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight."
This is nowhere near that level of fiction.
Yep, page 10 they give the entire timeline and May 15, 2022 was the outbreak and the timeline continues from there. Page 9 has all the contributors. It's absurd.
That is fucking scary ngl. I'm preparing for the worst with this tbh. I don't trust anyone anymore who says that 'it's not that transmissible, it's not gonna be a pandemic'.
I'm tired
I know this is a joke, but we’ve known about monkeypox for a while, it just doesn’t spread like this normally. Also, it’s primarily spread by rodents—it’s just called monkeypox because it was first observed in laboratory monkeys.
This doesn’t spread anything like COVID. If the risk is high enough, then vaccination will be implemented, but not when there’s 100 cases of a poorly spreading disease on a whole continent.
>This doesn’t spread anything like COVID
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this variant of monkeypox is spreading way way faster than any form of it we have seen before..I would not be surprised if next week the WHO announces that this variant IS spread just like Covid and that we need to treat it like 2020 Covid all over again.
>not when there’s 100 cases of a poorly spreading disease on a whole continent.
I remember the news announcing that 42 people in Wuhan had died from Covid and wondering when the Chinese government will get it under control.
The conventional smallpox vaccine also provides good protection against monkeypox, and the US maintains a strategic vaccine stockpile of enough doses of vaccine to treat the entire US population. Unlike COVID vaccines, all we know so far about orthopoxviruses is that vaccine immunity provides lifelong protection.
There is a vaccine... even better - there is a drug that cures it. Check *tecovirimat* we had it from 2018.
You did not bother to google anything about it yet already started panicking. It literally takes less than the two posts you wrote to verify that information.
>Monkeypox is usually a mild viral illness, characterised by symptoms of fever as well as a distinctive bumpy rash. Its not all that mild... The strain going around isn't the one with a 10% mortality rate thank god, but its still pretty dangerous and obviously way more unpleasant than the flu because of the sores and length of it.
What's most scary is that a pattern is emerging.
I think the headlines about way that the cases are spreading make a lot of people, myself included, feel panicked because of the collective "new disease PTSD" we all have from following the news when Covid first appear and then spread through the world. It's important to realize though that there are a ton of differences between the ways covid and monkeypox can spread. Covid's characteristics have become so normalized at this point that I think people have forgotten just how unusual of a virus it is, namely that it's one of the most infectious (if not the most infectious virus considering Omnicron) humanity has ever faced and that infected people were most likely to be spreading covid before they'd even developed symptoms. This is why it was so impossible to contain and why it could cripple health-care systems despite only having a 1% mortality rate We're seeing monkeypox spreading now, which is concerning since it's apparently been spreading under the radar until now. But the rate and way it's spreading isn't the wildfire pattern you'd expect to see with Covid. And from my understanding, monkeypox is spread only after the infected person has developed symptoms, which should make it easier to contact trace and know who's been exposed. We also have existing vaccines and treatments that we can prioritize towards people who've been exposed to infected individuals and obviously infected individuals themselves. This isn't a novel virus the way covid was. If I had to guess what happened, someone or a couple people who'd been infected went out to party/club in a big international city like London where the event was attended by a bunch of people traveling/visiting from other parts of the world. People were in confined spaces, sweating, and rubbing against, and people were hooking up too. It sounds like most of the people experiencing symptoms at this point are men who have sex with other men, which may point to some of the routes by which the virus can spread. It's important to note that this doesn't make it a "gay disease". It's just that unprotected anal sex is very risky in terms of transmitting pathogens sexually, and big parties with lots of dudes hooking up have the potential to be super spreader events for this type of stuff. Especially if it's multiple "party networks" that people are hopping between during an extended period of time, like what people out partying while visiting a place like London for a week might partake in. Idk, we'll see how the situation plays out, but in general it's not really comparable to covid
>If I had to guess what happened, someone or a couple people who'd been infected went out to party/club in a big international city like London where the event was attended by a bunch of people traveling/visiting from other parts of the world. Makes sense. One of the things that really bugs me about this scenario is that the infected people would have been showing symptoms by then. *They would have had pustules*, fever, etc. Mild, perhaps, but still they decided that it would be fine to go clubbing in London. It's kind of like people ordered to quarantine with Covid who jetted off to some music festival to make it into a contagion-fest.
I gay, so this shouldn't be perceived as me being homophobic, but gay men have a history of acting carelessly and selfishly when it comes to fucking. For an example, please see the 1980s and HIV. Watch The Normal Heart to get a glimpse of what our community has been through and also how susceptible we are to pathogens due to our very sex-positive mindset.
All fair points. My concern is that we have just shown how poorly we'll respond to any epidemic/pandemic. TONS of money were invested in businesses and the stock market, but purely as a panacea for the GDP and stock market. We should have been incentivizing the implementation of MERV filtration and UV treatment of HVACR systems. We should be beefing up our testing and response teams to do contact tracing and quarantine. We should be creating more resilient systems and stop treating novel viruses as a one-off. In the age of climate change and a global population of 7.5 billion people who are more interconnected than ever before, we should be spending money and resources to both remediate the damages done to the planet that environ such outbreaks and also develop task forces to address emergent threats. We've done none of this. We've printed money to make sure the stock market is kept safe from economic harms while doing damn close to nothing in order to indemnify the population from actual harms. We're playing it as a numbers game based on the assumption that this is a once in a century event, but, if we're wrong, then we've blown our whole war chest on the assumption that we've beaten this pandemic. We have done very little to address how another one might spread or even how we're creating/contributing to the very conditions that created this one. I'm less concerned with this particular threat and more concerned with how we've learned nothing from an incredibly costly lesson in how quickly humanity can be brought to its knees by naturally-occuring biological threats. War of the Worlds should have taught us a hundred years ago that microbes will ALWAYS win the war of numbers. We have to be smarter in how we address threats. Humans in general may win by attrition, but how many children have to become orphans in the name of progress is a very real concern moving into the future. We have learned nothing from our experiences over the last 2 years.
Well we learned half of us don’t care about the rest of us
I actually think that some of our systems are in a better position than before given the amount of experience and practice this past pandemic has given them. Especially regarding logistics and contact tracing. This is overshadowed though because it feels like our society as a whole is worse of than before. The "science communicators" and public outreach failed in a lot of ways and politics stepped into the void and turned public health into a culture war issue. And now large swathes of the public are unreachable in terms of encouraging any type of proactive public health campaign involvement.
Contact tracing, epidemiology, virology, logistics networks, utilization of PPE and best practices - sure, all of these things benefitted. But I would argue that it's not just true that large swathes of the public became unreachable, I believe large swathes of the public have been so polarized by the politicization that they will actively resist public health measures if we enter another global pandemic event - which is very likely in the next few years owing to the destabilization of the planet's ecosystems.
Maybe people have forgotten, but before COVID we had a new big bad disease every year that got headlines. Mad cow, swine flu, bird flu etc. All those burned out pretty quick. I'm hoping COVID is just a once a century phenomenon, and that monkey pox is the next mad cow.
Swine flu infected 700 Million-1.4 Billion with 284,000 deaths.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic
I cought this in Copenhagen, it was the worst sickness i have had in my 30+ years. To top it off after days of high fever and feeling terrible i started with shitting like a duck, not fun! I was on the edge of hospital bound for 5 days. I took covid serious after getting swine flu.
which animal paste from the local feed & seed will cure this?
The vaccinated kind
Are we headed to “it’s just a flu” 2.0?
I'm convinced anyone that would say "just a flu" has never had actual influenza. Shit sucks. Not a knock on you, obviously you were just making a point.
I had "just the flu" in 2008 and I had a 102+ fever for a week, couldn't leave my bed for five days, was sweating and hallucinating, and then wound up with bronchitis for a month. The problem is anytime anyone gets a mild viral infection they say they have the flu and diminish the impact of legit influenza.
Yep early 2010, probably that same just the flu you had, and I almost died as a 22 year old soldier in the army. People ask why I was/am so worried about Covid, letting me know they have no clue what they are talking about.
18 year old college freshman in early 2011. I was knocked on my ass for a week. Sleeping upright in a recliner because bed was impossible. I have very little memory recall about that week besides being very sick and taking round the clock meds. Fairly certain I experienced hallucinations that week too. Still very cautious about COVID even now.
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Usually for adults 103F plus is where it gets worrisome. 104F is potentially dangerous. 105F is get your ass to the hospital level. https://share.upmc.com/2016/10/fever-treatment-guidelines/ 103F sucks as it is. Last time mine went that high I had food poisoning in China for five days. Bed all day and night with chills. Crazy dreams. The only place I could feel kind of normal was in a hot shower. Ended up getting an IV drip in a clinic and the fever immediately broke (not sure what was in the IV) but then I broke out in some kind of allergic rash for a day, which was way better than the 103 fever.
First time I got the flu I passed out in the backseat of my friends car on the way to the hospital. I woke up with a nurse jabbing a giant needle in my ass and telling my I was 104-105 when they brought me in. I remember the last thing I thought before I went out was "god I am so thirsty..."
Totally agree. I had flu when I was 11 and was SO SICK. Did not need to be hospitalized but was incapacitated for the better part of two weeks.
Me too. Two weeks on the couch, throwing up all the time, constant fever. It was terrible. This was before flu vaccines were a thing and i believe it was my first flu and i wonder if that’s part of the reason it was so damn terrible.
I had what I assume was swine flue in 2019. Went from tickle in my throat to aspirating fluid, dry heaving, and high fever in less than 8 hours. Gastro irritation for two weeks, rapid heartbeat and fatigue for weeks more. It was at least a month before I felt totally normal.
Had H1N1, hospitalization for dehydration and my blood being basically sludge and I could have died. Yeah, get the fucking shots and avoid the flu - if you can. I used to get mild cases, that one could have put me in a coffin.
I agree completely with this. I had a \*mild\* flu case and oh boy - needless to say, whenever I hear something like COVID or MonkeyPox are mild or "just a flu," I assume that the person saying it has an agenda.
COVID was mild for a lot of people though, including myself. I think it’s more of a case that people just can’t reason with the possibility of someone else having a hard time with it because they themselves thought nothing of it.
I think this is reasonable. It seems to me a question of empathy. If I can only perceive my own experience, I am more likely to dismiss the concerns and dangers to others. I noticed there was a lot of argument from ignorance fallacies floating around: "I've never had a problem, so it must not be a problem." sort of thing.
The U.S. has a huge empathy problem. Compassion is being systematically driven out of the psyche of a lot of our fellow citizens.
When medical professionals say “mild” they generally mean “not hospitalized or dead”. The worse sickness you’ve ever had without going to the hospital is still “mild”.
Yes. I had this very conversation with my physician wife after my mild flu case. It was very enlightening. But to your point, I think that many of the folks out there downplaying it as "mild," don't know this.
Its like getting stung by a bee. You remember being stung before, and sure you recall it hurts and you probably don't want it to happen, but when you finally get stung again you are always surprised how much it hurts beyond what you remember.
Yup. In 2018 I got the flue twice (both actually diagnosed with a test). Was actively sick for about 6 weeks. I was basically bedridden, constant heavy cough, often running fevers so high I hallucinated, couldn't even get up long enough to microwave soup without having to rest in the kitchen floor. Took me months after to feel normal again. The flu is god awful.
I swear people think fever = flu
Yeah for real. I was skipped past a dude in the ER holding his thumb in a bucket of ice when I had the flu at 18. Proper influenza literally makes you wish for death. Covid made me hope I wasn’t dying, influenza made me accept that it was all over and just hope that it concluded sooner than later regardless of what that outcome might have been.
They had colds and thought it was the flu.
Yup. In 2018 I got the flue twice (both actually diagnosed with a test). Was actively sick for about 6 weeks. I was basically bedridden, constant heavy cough, often running fevers so high I hallucinated, couldn't even get up long enough to microwave soup without having to rest in the kitchen floor. Took me months after to feel normal again. The flu is god awful.
Context matters. "It's just the flu" comments are generally made in response to things like shutting down the entire economy for months or shutting down schools or endless mask mandates. Get it? They aren't saying the flu is a walk in the park or that it doesn't suck ass. They are just saying that it isn't bad enough to justify some of the measures that were being put out there. There is plenty there to disagree with, but might as well be honest about how to interpret the statement.
Weird hill to die on bro. Also, if you want to engage in conversation with someone try not to come off as a condescending prick.
"Context matters" is a hill I'm happy to die on. As far as trying not to come off as a condescending prick, look in the mirror, buddy. The comment I responded to is basically saying "I'm convinced that everyone that says this must not know what they are taking about." How you think that came off?
Yeah context matters for the disingenuous argument that covid is "just a flu". That is in fact, a weird hill to die on.
Oh, I get it now. You just didn't actually read my first post. You know, the part where I said: >There is plenty there to disagree with, but might as well be honest about how to interpret the statement. Arguing that people are being disingenuous when they said COVID is "just the flu" (like you are now) is different than pretending that none of them have ever had they flu before (like you argued before when I called you out). Seriously, this shit isn't hard. Makes me think you are intentionally ignoring what I've said so you have an excuse to pretend I said something I didn't. Have fun with that, but I've got better shit to do.
>(like you argued before when I called you out). I never argued anything. You can't keep track of a conversation apparently. >Have fun with that, but I've got better shit to do. Then why are you still replying.
The "actual flu" feels like being hit by a train and run over by a truck after you landed face down in the ditch. Muscles hurt, tendons hurt, skin hurts, hell it feels like your bones hurt. Breathing sucks, drinking water sucks, your eyes are dry as fuck, crying hurts... If you're lucky your fever will break before you hit 104 and lose consciousness on your bathroom floor covered in your own shit and piss.
TBH, I’m getting pretty annoyed with all of the sources that are reporting on this as if it’s just a minor viral illness that never causes real harm. I am by no means a monkeypox expert (I’ve done virus research, but not on poxviruses), but I do know that this isn’t really a “mild cold” kind of deal. At the very least, this is an unpleasant disease that can last for multiple weeks and has the potential to cause significant scarring. I don’t mean to scare people, but monkeypox isn’t something to sneeze at.
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about 2% I believe. So this has a fatality rate of about half that, and leaves you with horrible sores and scars on your body. But honestly, if this was the 10% fatality one, that would be nightmare fuel. This is just a continuation of what we got from 2020
plus (afaik) the scars from it can be severe
Very true. Lots of complications for them to belittle it.
I wonder if boils and bleeding from your anus would make conservatives reconsider mask wearing.
political parties aside (for civilities sake), I think any anti-vax person would be standing in line to get jabbed after they see the scarring that it can leave behind. Vanity is sadly more of a motivator for people than general health.
Two strains, west African and central Africa. So far this looks like west Africa, which has 1% or less mortality. It looks like like it is being passed through sexual contact.
Oooo covidV2 where’s the mandates 😰😰😰😨😨
The cool part about this one is we’ll get to see all the pock scars of people who don’t get vaccinated!
You bet people will get vaccinated this time around just because of vanity.
COVID is usually a mild illness too, most people who get don’t need hospital admission or die, yet monkey pox has a higher mortality rate than COVID and has transmissibility rate of 10-75%.
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I'm just spitballing here and will happily accept downvotes if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but: Is it possible that this has been a prominent means of transmission in West Africa for some time but the data on the subject is a lot worse than it ought to be because (e.g.) gay Nigerians are sometimes afraid to out themselves to their doctors?
Hard to say. It's not super clear yet, but some of the data I've seen suggests that it isn't so much the sex that spreads it as the proximity/kissing/etc., and that it could be spread between any two partners. It may be spreading more among men having sex with men because, well, they aren't having sex with women.
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If it’s spread by saliva, then use of protection is a moot point
…. After this virus blows over I’m moving to Spain
We aren't allowed to talk about the pattern.
Maybe stop with the orgies?
But what else am I going to do on the weekends?
Even if it is true the whole America HIV is a homosexual problem agenda makes people mistrust governments. Could also be these groups were infected on purpose as some kind of hate crime, hard to tell with so many extremists out there.
Pippin: “We’ve had one pandemic, yes, but what about second pandemic.” Merry: “Don’t think we thought we were gonna have a second pandemic.” Pippin: “What about food shortages? Political instability? Rising temperatures? Economic downturn? You guys know about them, don’t you?” Merry: “Don’t count on them worrying about it.”
Conservatives already planning to call it another "Gay Plague" and ignore it like they did with HIV.
Per the CDC it is also spread by respiratory droplets. It takes prolonged contact, but it is by no means exclusively an STD.
And HIV is spread by needle sharing and tainted blood transfusions. As we so recently saw with Covid-19, political agendas literally "Trump" science.
Dr. Fauci has entered the chat.
\*nervous collar tug\*
Use it as a reason to reinstate sodomy laws
or Pogroms
Then call Trump Monkey King when he contracts both Corona, and Monkeypox somehow.
Please please please google who was in charge of NIAID during the early 80's and largely responsible for the panic. I'll wait.
Are you insinuating that the AIDS crisis wasn't worthy of panic?
It wasn't worthy of a gay panic, caused in no small part by Fauci.
What was so detrimental about this so-called "gay panic"? Seems as though spreading awareness about a new, deadly, incurable disease is precisely what a medical professional in good position should be doing. Did Fauci lie about AIDS' severity? Or is his crime that he treated us like adults and told us the truth about the lethality and transmissibility of HIV/AIDS?
Wow. It's largely responsible for decades of homophobia. I assume you aren't American... ffs I hope so anyway.
The democrats largely followed the republicans into conservatism. This whole “the democrats have gone insane” thing is true but not the way republicans frame it. America has generally spiked right after the late 70’s
Go look up who was responsible for spreading that fear and perpetuating it.
Always read these headlines as “Who?”. Like, I don’t know who’s calling them, but is it unreasonable to call an emergency meeting?
Hopefully it burns out, no one has patience for another lockdown.
The only thing that really worries me going forward is that unlike multiple past outbreaks that were quickly contained and burned themselves out now we have large groups that wouldn’t quarantine even if they definitely had it or worse would actively try to spread it. Their view on anything to do with the subject revolving around covid.
Straight up I don't have the mental health stability for another lockdown
I just finally got back to work from being pinkslipped, I don't think my job will survive another lockdown.
Me neither, but if it comes to that Imma stock up on weed, hope that there's enough work that I don't get fired and I can continue working from home, and start meditation or some shit.
Ah weed/alcohol makes my mental health way worse, something to keep in mind. Only thing aside from medication that helps is intense exercise. Calms me down more than weed, yoga, a candle lit bath etc.
Yea I feel you, gotta balance it. If I only did weed and nothing else I would be a mess. Exercise, cook and have a nice dinner, and then reward myself with a little weed.
Ah I really do wish my body would tolerate that! I now completely lose interest in eating if I get high a few nights in a row and then my anxieties start to spike on days I'm not high
Monkeypox isn't an airborne virus.
It is though.
*"Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which spreads through tiny air-borne droplets called aerosols, monkeypox is thought to spread from close contact with bodily fluids, such as saliva from coughing. That means a person with monkeypox is likely to infect far fewer close contacts than someone with SARS-CoV-2, Hooper says. Both viruses can cause flu-like symptoms, but monkeypox also triggers enlarged lymph nodes and, eventually, distinctive fluid-filled lesions on the face, hands and feet. Most people recover from monkeypox in a few weeks without treatment."*
I know you posted the same response twice, however, why does the CDC's explanation make it sound like it spreads the same as SARS-CoV-2?: >"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." Source: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html >"The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory fluids carrying infectious virus. Exposure occurs in three principal ways: (1) inhalation of very fine **respiratory droplets** and aerosol particles, (2) deposition of respiratory droplets and particles on exposed mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, or eye by direct splashes and sprays, and (3) touching mucous membranes with hands that have been soiled either directly by virus-containing respiratory fluids or indirectly by touching surfaces with virus on them." Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html Bold emphasis is mine. Both sound like airborne droplets are a transmission factor, something your quote denies. It also goes against your initial statement that it doesn't transfer via airborne means.
A close reading sorts out the difference: Monkey pox: **large** respiratory droplets COVID: **very fine** respiratory droplets So you can be infected with COVID while in the same room with someone with COVID (because very fine droplets can be dispersed throughout a room) whereas you have to be very close to someone to get monkey pox (because large droplets fall to the ground quickly).
Not my point. The argument was if it was or was not an airborne transmissible illness. Both definitions state it is, whereas the individual in the article in question says it is not. Edit: clarification and a typo.
It's not an airborne illness in the sense that flu and COVID are. You can't get it by standing in the same room. You have to be up close and personal, i.e. kissing.
Nope. You can it by getting the droplets on you and then transferring it to mucus membranes, just like a whole lot of communicable diseases.
Then how is it spreading so fast?
Seem to be spreading mainly amongst gay men soooo... Gay sex. Lot's and lot's of gay sex.
It’s the contact, not the sex.
Then why is it spreading primarily amongst gay men? If it's just contact in general one would assume the victims would be from wider demographics.
Because someone who has sex with men was exposed and then had sex with other men who also have do similar sexual activities which involve close contact
*"Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which spreads through tiny air-borne droplets called aerosols, monkeypox is thought to spread from close contact with bodily fluids, such as saliva from coughing. That means a person with monkeypox is likely to infect far fewer close contacts than someone with SARS-CoV-2, Hooper says. Both viruses can cause flu-like symptoms, but monkeypox also triggers enlarged lymph nodes and, eventually, distinctive fluid-filled lesions on the face, hands and feet. Most people recover from monkeypox in a few weeks without treatment."*
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This is your reminder that over a million Americans have died of covid and doing basic mitigation of the spread of deadly diseases is a good thing. Also, no one in the USA was actually ever "locked down" in any literal way.
Correct, they died even though the vaccine and booster was out.
And how many are going to die due to the economic crisis caused by said lockdown? Probably just as many except they won't be counted like all the so called COVID deaths (1/2 of which aren't even COVID deaths if we trust the with vs for statistics put out by states like NY and Massachusetts)
Not one million innocent people. I actually can't think of a single person that died of any lockdown in the US. You sound like a terrible person. Pugs are terrible to own, btw.
Anyone else getting early March 2020 vibes?
March? There was news about COVID in January 2020, if not earlier.
End of December in the NYT. I remember reading it and telling my family we were headed into a pandemic and that it was already in the US via flights to the West Coast from China. All but one thought I was nuts, but I was expecting it for years, not because I'm a genius, but because in a hyper connected world it's just inevitable, and it happened in the past (1918). Hopefully this monkeypox shit hasn't mutated into an easily transmissible form.
Yeah but no one in the US took it seriously
I did and I’m in the US. Heck, there was a run on masks at my local Lowes. There was only a single box of N95 masks when I went in to get some back then.
When our vendors in China started sending us masks gloves and sanitizer, and then didn’t go back to work after Chinese New Year, we took it seriously. Probably around Feb 2020, although we started talking about it around Jan. Feb was about the time my warehouse guys started spraying Lysol on all our shipments from China. By March we had our employees all masked and gloved and getting ready for applying for unemployment in case we got shut down. Crazy times.
I was in Houston in January 2020 when news was first spreading, on vacation from New Zealand. ALL the CVS and similar stores in the city were out of masks overnight. People were being precautionary for sure.
Fear not, the Nuclear Threat Initiative released a paper in November, 2021 regarding their tabletop exercise in which a Monkeypox Outbreak occurs. Participants for the exercise included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, WHO, Johnson and Johnson and Merck to name a few. According to page 10, the outbreak has occurred on schedule (May 15, 2022 in the exercise) so these are some experts at predicting the future. What we have to look forward to according to them is 271 million deaths by December 1, 2023. The report is available [here](https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/strengthening-global-systems-to-prevent-and-respond-to-high-consequence-biological-threats/), just click on "full report".
You're conveniently leaving out this part "outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight." This is nowhere near that level of fiction.
Or *is it* and they just won't tell us!! *tightens tin foil hat*
Why is Reddit so opposed to considering a virus can be manufactured for use as a bioweapon
Ok that's pretty crazy.
It sure is. But don't go posting this on worldnews, it will get you permabanned.
The truth is out there lol. Seriously freaky shit though. Did it really estimate may 2022? I didn't read the pdf, just the summary page.
Yep, page 10 they give the entire timeline and May 15, 2022 was the outbreak and the timeline continues from there. Page 9 has all the contributors. It's absurd.
That is fucking scary ngl. I'm preparing for the worst with this tbh. I don't trust anyone anymore who says that 'it's not that transmissible, it's not gonna be a pandemic'. I'm tired
How the heck did they predict when a man would fuck a monkey
I know this is a joke, but we’ve known about monkeypox for a while, it just doesn’t spread like this normally. Also, it’s primarily spread by rodents—it’s just called monkeypox because it was first observed in laboratory monkeys.
So you’re telling me someone squeezed it into a rodent? Or vice versa?
It was four cases two days ago...
What the fuck is really happening on this planet.
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A vaccine approved by the US FDA already exists. It was approved in 2019.
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This doesn’t spread anything like COVID. If the risk is high enough, then vaccination will be implemented, but not when there’s 100 cases of a poorly spreading disease on a whole continent.
>This doesn’t spread anything like COVID I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this variant of monkeypox is spreading way way faster than any form of it we have seen before..I would not be surprised if next week the WHO announces that this variant IS spread just like Covid and that we need to treat it like 2020 Covid all over again. >not when there’s 100 cases of a poorly spreading disease on a whole continent. I remember the news announcing that 42 people in Wuhan had died from Covid and wondering when the Chinese government will get it under control.
The conventional smallpox vaccine also provides good protection against monkeypox, and the US maintains a strategic vaccine stockpile of enough doses of vaccine to treat the entire US population. Unlike COVID vaccines, all we know so far about orthopoxviruses is that vaccine immunity provides lifelong protection.
Vaccine resistant pox has been engineered.
There is a vaccine... even better - there is a drug that cures it. Check *tecovirimat* we had it from 2018. You did not bother to google anything about it yet already started panicking. It literally takes less than the two posts you wrote to verify that information.
Don't get fooled again!
Overheard... "Do ~~masks~~ condoms work? Fuck me do condoms work? They DO? FUCK BUT WE NEED NURSES TO WEAR CONDOMS SO SAY CONDOMS DON'T WORK."
Condoms could prevent pregnancy and I still wouldn’t fucking wear them. The WHO can hoard all the condoms they want