[HN Gopher] WHO declares monkeypox a public health emergency
___________________________________________________________________
WHO declares monkeypox a public health emergency
Author : l1n
Score : 157 points
Date : 2022-07-23 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It has been a widely studied disease before the current
| European outbreak. So we can safely say it's not an STD.
| aftbit wrote:
| Well lots of things can be spread by sexual contact. Most
| respiratory viruses, for example, are quite easily spread
| through the implied close proximity. The CDC does have a page
| titled "Monkeypox Facts for People Who are Sexually Active"[1]
| but I don't know how many cases are spread that way versus
| other ways of coming into contact with sores or things that
| touched sores.
|
| 1:
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/sexualhealth/index.ht...
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I'm no epidemiologist, but I think "as much an STD as herpes"
| would mean that it's popularly stereotyped as an STD despite
| most infections not having anything to do with sexual activity
| (HSV-1, which is mainly transmitted via oral contact, is _much_
| more prevalent than HSV-2, which is mainly transmitted via
| genital contact [1]).
|
| [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/herpes-
| simp...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Seems like it's _even more_ of an STD than herpes then.
| [deleted]
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| loceng wrote:
| The amount of censorship and suppression of valid dialogue on HN
| is shameful.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Many are unaware of the extent of ineptitude and corruption
| that has infiltrated our institutions. Many people would rather
| assume they are still capable. It's comforting to think we can
| still rely on them. Ignorance is the ultimate happiness.
| loceng wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _where the vaccines were originally claimed to prevent
| infection and transmission by government agencies and
| pharmaceutical corporations_
|
| Who claimed this? In America, for the mRNA vaccines, preventing
| hospitalisation was the only endpoint even tested across the
| board in the pre-release studies.
| cookingrobot wrote:
| I thought the vaccine prevented infection.
|
| The CDC website says "All COVID-19 vaccines currently
| available in the United States are effective at preventing
| COVID-19." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines
| /facts.htm...
|
| Is there a claim that the vaccines don't prevent infection?
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Is there a claim that the vaccines don't prevent
| infection?_
|
| Careful there with conflating the _virus_ , SARS-CoV-2,
| with the _disease_ , COVID-19, these two are not
| synonymous.
|
| At no point does the CDC article even mention SARS-CoV-2,
| it only mentions "the virus", never actually naming it, yet
| it keeps mentioning the disease it causes by name.
|
| Basically a bit like trying to talk about AIDS, without
| even mentioning HIV besides as "the virus".
|
| That's also why the article doesn't really say anything
| about vaccine effects on virus infections, it's all about
| vaccines effects on the disease that comes _post_
| -infection.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| COVID-19, medically speaking, is the disease. SARS-CoV-2 is
| the virus and infection.
|
| Similar to AIDS (the disease) and HIV (the virus that
| causes AIDS).
|
| For many viruses, you can have an infection without
| developing the disease. Especially if your immune system is
| primed, say by prior exposure and/or vaccination.
|
| And while technically you're still transmissible while you
| have an active infection (because you have virus
| multiplying in you), your viral loads are also likely much
| lower than someone exhibiting symptoms (because your immune
| system is keeping things under control).
|
| But for highly infectious diseases, sometimes even low
| doses are sufficient to infect someone around you.
| Izkata wrote:
| Just an aside to go along with sibling comments: Pfizer's
| press release back in 2020 [0], the one where the "95%
| efficacy" statement came from, was also careful to
| distinguish SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. It used both terms
| correctly and made no claims about preventing infection. We
| knew this for ~2 months after that press release [1][2][3].
|
| It was the politicians/media who conflate SARS-CoV-2 and
| COVID-19 that assumed this also meant preventing infection,
| and the general public had little reason to distrust them
| at the time. Even among people who have kept up with this,
| these couple of months seem to have been pretty strongly
| memory-holed.
|
| [0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-
| release-deta...
|
| [1] https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/02/covid-19-vac
| cines...
|
| [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-
| coronav...
|
| [3] https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-
| news/2020/12/covid-...
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Who claimed this?_
|
| Plenty of governments were pushing vaccination campaigns with
| tales of "herd immunity".
| freeflight wrote:
| _> According to the Robert Koch Institute, Germany's center
| for disease control, the new, highly contagious virus
| variants mean that herd immunity can only be reached if 80
| percent of the population is vaccinated._
|
| The Race for Herd Immunity [0]
|
| [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-
| vacci...
| origin_path wrote:
| The vaccine trials didn't measure hospitalization or serious
| illness. They didn't even show impact against mortality. Go
| read the trial reports! The only endpoint they cared about
| was PCR positivity, and they claimed it led to >90% reduction
| in infection.
|
| https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-
| deta...
|
| "Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in
| preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior
| SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis"
|
| It's totally insane how in recent months some people have
| started trying to rewrite the history of the vaccines here.
| This is like the fourth time or so I've seen that claim on HN
| in about as many days. Do you people really think this will
| work? The events in question took place last year, not a
| century ago. Rewriting the historical record isn't going to
| be that easy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _vaccine trials didn 't measure hospitalization_
|
| You're partially right. Symptomatic illness was measured
| [1]. (Not PCR positivity.) Hospitalisation wasn't.
|
| That said, neither was transmission. Broader point holds.
|
| > _Do you people really think this will work?_
|
| Your comment is strong without dipping into bizarre
| conspiracy theory.
|
| [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389
| origin_path wrote:
| I'm not alleging a conspiracy, only that this behaviour
| of claiming the vaccines were never meant to reduce
| infection is now occurring frequently, even though surely
| every one remembers that this isn't how it was presented
| at the time, at all.
| johndevor wrote:
| Fauci:
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-
| shows/553773-fauci-...
| djbusby wrote:
| The relevant quote:
|
| "So even though there are breakthrough infections with
| vaccinated people, almost always the people are
| asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it
| extremely unlikely -- not impossible but very, very low
| likelihood -- that they're going to transmit it," Fauci
| said.
|
| Repeat: "extremely unlikely -- not impossible"
| ethbr0 wrote:
| People ascribe malice to drug development when simple economics
| explains things easily.
|
| Incredibly high initial capital cost (development, safety, and
| testing + calendar time for same) + low probability for success
| (efficacy and no safety issues) = high minimum floor to drug
| development costs
|
| When faced with that reality, how are you going to choose
| between alternative capital investments if you're running a
| pharma company?
|
| Of course you're going to preferentially develop drugs that (a)
| will have continued, high volume demand throughout the patent
| period & (b) address a disease unlikely to be cured.
| olivermarks wrote:
| walterbell wrote:
| _> In an unusual move, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom
| Ghebreyesus made the declaration even though a committee of
| experts he had convened to study the issue was unable to reach a
| consensus. The same committee met just one month ago and declined
| to declare a public health emergency of international concern, or
| PHEIC._
|
| What's the W.H.O. process which allows the director-general to
| bypass the W.H.O. process for scientific debate by experts?
|
| The W.H.O. has (so far) failed to achieve international consensus
| on an international treaty that would give the W.H.O. the legal
| authority to override local health authorities (national, state,
| city) in the declaration of public health emergencies. If such a
| treaty were in effect, today's declaration by one human would
| have immediately affected the daily lives of 8 billion humans.
|
| https://inb.who.int/
| origin_path wrote:
| Yup. And yet people who sound the alarm about the problems of
| international government are described as the crazy ones! One
| guy unilaterally upending people's lives for no obvious reason
| is exactly what that would look like, all the time. Arguably it
| already does given what happened with COVID.
| walterbell wrote:
| There hasn't been enough media coverage of the IHR/W.H.O.
| treaty negotiations, https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-far-
| reaching-us-proposals-to-am...
|
| _> As of yet, there has been almost no public awareness or
| debate of the substantial amendments to the IHR although the
| WHO Secretariat circulated the US initiative first in January
| 2022 to state parties ... Attention to the US amendments was
| further drowned by the stir made around the launch of the
| negotiations to draft a new treaty on pandemic preparedness
| and response by 2024 with a hitherto uncertain scope, content
| and outcome, as well as an uncertain relationship to the
| existing legal framework of the IHR._
|
| Without objective reporting and analysis on the nuts and
| bolts of these ongoing treaty negotiations, which affect
| every person and country on Earth, we're left with coverage
| by polarized blogs, https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/stop-
| the-who
| bagacrap wrote:
| with covid it was a lot of people who conspired to upend
| lives
| dustinmoris wrote:
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Why?
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| China owns them. Doesn't mean everything they say is
| bullshit, but they can't be really trusted anymore.
| curiousgal wrote:
| As opposed to every other organization owned by the U.S. oh
| please.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I believe this is what the kids are calling the
| 'Bothsidesism' Fallacy. Or is this meant to only be said
| in domestic political contexts?
| curiousgal wrote:
| Is there a fallacy for throwing that fallacy around all
| the time?
| effingwewt wrote:
| Sure we can call it the 'curiousgal Fallacy'.
|
| Let me explain my downvote here.
|
| You are not wrong, and as an american it is infuriating
| to see what our country has become.
|
| But that makes his original point no less valid.
|
| China silenced the WHO and the WHO literally pretended
| their internet went out when asked about Taiwan.
|
| Both sides having done something fucked up doesn't negate
| what's going on in this situation, thus the 'both sides-
| ism'
|
| If it did all arguments would be over instantly, as only
| babies are innocent.
|
| There are degrees of fucked up and context matters.
| FredPret wrote:
| freeflight wrote:
| I guess the WHO must be "owned" by a lot of countries [0]
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-
| insight/2013/o...
| l1n wrote:
| Straight lines on log-log plots.
| tjpnz wrote:
| The exclusion of Taiwan and the behaviour of their
| representatives during interviews whenever the subject came
| up.
| waffleiron wrote:
| The WHO is an agency of the UN, of which Taiwan is not an
| independent member.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| philliphaydon wrote:
| That shouldn't matter. It's the World Health
| Organisation. Not the UN Membership Health Organisation.
|
| The only reason Taiwan is not a member is because of
| China being a bully.
| calibas wrote:
| At the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people
| were starting to get concerned about this strange new disease
| in China, the WHO announced there was "no evidence of human-
| to-human transmission" and no need to restrict international
| travel to Wuhan. In reality, there was nothing but evidence
| of human-to-human transmission and plenty of Chinese doctors
| knew this, but the WHO repeated the Chinese government's
| lies.
|
| Instead of trying to contain the pandemic in it's earliest
| stages, the WHO told the world there was nothing to worry
| about. They screwed up about as bad as they possibly could,
| and helped enable the spread of a disease.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The US had more than enough time to control covid by when
| China confirmed human-to-human spread.
| calibas wrote:
| The WHO made a huge mistake, it was already spreading
| internationally, and yet somehow you found a way to shift
| blame to the US...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Human to human spread was confirmed before any
| international case was found.
|
| I traveled from China to US in January 2020 well after
| China had reported the virus as transmissible and the US
| was not doing jack shit to screen.
| makomk wrote:
| _There was literally nothing the US could 've done that
| would've lead to Covid being comtrolled._ Their efforts
| to stop it spreading there from China seem to have more
| or less worked, and were at least effective enough that
| they weren't the problem - the US had contact tracing
| that suggested it wasn't really spreading, and genetic
| testing also indicated this wasn't the source of the
| major US outbreaks. What turned this into a global
| pandemic was undetected, large-scale community spread in
| Europe, in places like Italy - all the subsequent major
| outbreaks seem to have come from there except maybe for
| South Korea's. Those coutries listened to the WHO and
| followed their advice.
|
| This just got obscured because the American media is a
| bunch of partisan trash with unfortunate global influence
| that saw the pandemic as a good way to replace a leader
| they dislike. So everything got distorted and spun based
| on that angle, and it did immense damage to people's
| understanding of the pandemic. American potlics seems to
| have a bit of a main protagonist problem at the best of
| times too.
| calibas wrote:
| > Human to human spread was confirmed before any
| international case was found.
|
| Technically true, but very misleading. It was discovered
| that it was already in Italy before China acknowledged
| human-to-human transmission.
|
| Also, nothing in my first comment has anything to do with
| the US. I don't know why you keep shifting attention to
| the US, unless you think the US is responsible for the
| international spread?
| freeflight wrote:
| > when people were starting to get concerned about this
| strange new disease in China, the WHO announced there was
| "no evidence of human-to-human transmission"
|
| That is an US conservative disinformation meme, this [0]
| was the actual WHO tweet;
|
| _" Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese
| authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human
| transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
| identified in #Wuhan, #China."_
|
| That statement only refers to those particular
| _preliminary_ investigations, yielding no _clear_ evidence.
| It 's very specific and scientific language, that many news
| pundits just chose to read and interpret in the most
| generalized way possible to get their sensationalist
| outrage headline of "WHO says there is no evidence for
| H2H!".
|
| There is a similar disinformation meme out about the WHO
| and CDC allegedly saying _" masks don't help and people
| shouldn't wear them!"_, when the actual WHO and CDC
| statements were about _prioritizing_ masks, as in
| respirators, for health care workers at the front, instead
| of the general public buying up all the supplies of them in
| panic.
|
| A bit part of that was very unclear messaging by a whole
| lot of authorities and governments, where to this day
| nobody makes much of a distinction between "mask", as in
| any kind of face covering, and "mask" as in actual medical
| respirator like a FFP2/N95.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
| calibas wrote:
| I'm not a conservative, nor am I parroting some meme, so
| almost nothing you say applies to me. My comment is based
| off reading the travel advisory the WHO put out claiming
| "no significant human-to-human transmission, and no
| infections among health care workers".
|
| "WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for
| travellers"
|
| The WHO put it's faith in the Chinese government, how did
| that work out? If China was open and honest, we could
| have started taking COVID-19 seriously a month earlier.
| Instead they tried to assure everyone it was nothing to
| worry about and the WHO went right along with it.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Nothing to worry about then, I guess?
|
| On a more serious note: "The WHO" is already a sign of a
| limited understanding of how this works. In as far as an
| organization of that name exists, it's a tiny bureaucracy
| tasked with coordinating other organizations to carry out tasks
| set by the other thing called "WHO", which is just the label
| for a group of delegates from those national organizations.
|
| The WHO does not have any institutional power of itself. It
| does not have any interests or credibility that is distinct
| from the interests and credibility of "getting the world's
| national health agencies" in a room.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| abeppu wrote:
| > "...There's just nobody acting like this is a fucking
| emergency" - Peter Staley
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-stale...
|
| So, I think it's crazy that:
|
| > In early June, top officials assured Staley that the US had in
| place a stockpile of 1.2m doses of the vaccine
|
| > The problem was most of those doses weren't ready. Just 68,000
| of the doses were already located in the US; the rest were in
| freezers in Denmark awaiting shipment. Worse, two-thirds of the
| doses in Denmark had been manufactured on a new factory line that
| the FDA hadn't inspected - which meant the vaccines produced on
| it couldn't be used, despite approvals from the FDA's EU
| counterpart, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
|
| So the US is buying a stockpile of vaccines that it considers
| unacceptable for use? Who does that help? Was this the result of
| lobbying from a US-based donor with heavy investments in specific
| EU producers? Is this emergency-preparedness theater?
|
| The FDA reported that it _started_ inspections of that plant on
| July 7. To be clear, these were bought under a Trump-
| administration order, so they could easily have inspected that
| plant a long time ago. Why wait until you actually have an
| outbreak?
|
| And of the vaccines that _were_ already FDA-approved, it really
| seems like the administration has really slow-walked moving them.
|
| Meanwhile, in my city which has perhaps the worst outbreak in the
| US in per-capita terms, vaccines are scarce enough that people
| can wait for hours in line and then not receive it. People who
| are in the group who are advised to get the vaccine can call one
| of several phone numbers to try to get an appointment, but no one
| will answer.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-monkeyp...
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/san-franciscos...
|
| So while others in this thread are arguing that the WHO shouldn't
| be declaring this an emergency, I'm frustrated that the people
| calling it an emergency aren't empowered to do much.
| dannyw wrote:
| Public regulatory agencies are chronically underfunded and have
| been for a long time.
|
| The FAA gets Boeing to hire people who carry out the jobs of
| regulatory approval, just think about that.
| abeppu wrote:
| If you don't have the resources to inspect overseas
| facilities, maybe try trusting the agencies in those
| countries? And if you're not willing to do that, and you're
| sure you're not going to have the resources to inspect the
| facility, then don't buy vaccines that you're not going to
| allow yourself to use. And if you _are_ going to have to send
| people to inspect an overseas facility, why not do it sooner
| rather than later?
|
| But buying vaccines that are supposed to be used in an
| _emergency_ (i.e. against bioterror
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-
| pandemi...) and storing them overseas and not allowing them
| to be used in a crisis because you haven't inspected the
| facility that produced them seems like the worst of all
| worlds. This government spent resources on vaccines,
| pretended this made us safer, and refused to use them.
|
| I have a bag of supplies for an inevitable earthquake. Using
| the logic of our government, instead of storing it in my
| home, I should keep it in a distant self-storage locker ...
| and I should refuse to drink my emergency water because the
| bottle could have BPA.
|
| > "We were hit by a wall of FDA arrogance, which it's famous
| for: 'This is how we do things, and this is why we do things,
| and you all don't know how it works.' They told us directly
| that they simply think that they are the best in the world at
| this and that the EMA is not quite there yet. And they won't
| say why."
|
| I think when you fail hard, you shouldn't get to be smug at
| the other countries that (a) produced the vaccine and (b) had
| their inspectors do their jobs in a timely manner.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Does anyone have a data source that includes _recoveries_?
| There's been a lot of fearmongering over the past month based on
| charts of cumulative cases.
| yosito wrote:
| According to the CDC:
|
| > Infections with the type of monkeypox virus identified in
| this outbreak--the West African type--are rarely fatal. Over
| 99% of people who get this form of the disease are likely to
| survive.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
| IAmNotACellist wrote:
| >Over 99% of people who get this form of the disease are
| likely to survive.
|
| So it has an IFR two orders of magnitude higher than COVID-19
| in young people.
| [deleted]
| 462436347 wrote:
| [deleted]
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| bilsbie wrote:
| loceng wrote:
| I am curious too what % of those who contract the virus,
| seemingly easier than it used to be caught, have been
| vaccinated with the mRNA shots (how many shots, and how
| recently their last shots were).
| iso1631 wrote:
| thesaintlives wrote:
| wessorh wrote:
| designium wrote:
| What "BS" are you referring to? This is just a news.
| ihsw wrote:
| 300bps wrote:
| According to study published in New England Journal of medicine,
| 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively
| in men who have sex with men.
|
| 41% of those infected with monkeypox were coinfected with HIV.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/monk...
|
| For anyone worried that monkeypox will be equivalent to Covid,
| the evidence does not support that.
| zosima wrote:
| No, it probably won't spread nearly as well outside the gay
| community, and never become anything resembling Covid (or
| smallpox fortunately...).
|
| But it's spread so extensively in the gay community, that it's
| also going to infect people outside that community now. And
| it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another
| STD for many years going forward.
|
| There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly
| established itself in humans, it may mutate to become much more
| human-to-human transmissible. (like Covid did)
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _There is also a high risk that now, when it 's solidly
| established itself in humans_
|
| This has already been the case for a long time, maybe
| forever? It's endemic in parts of Africa, just never managed
| to gain much of a foothold outside that area. But even
| without that movement, the petri dish for such mutations has
| been open for business for quite a while.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| > And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet
| another STD for many years going forward.
|
| But in this case, we already have a vaccine for it. In the US
| at least, once we start opening up smallpox vaccine reserves,
| if you're in the gay community and you have a lot of
| partners, seems like a no-brainer to get the vaccine and be
| done with the risk of tissue-scarring pox.
| wwweston wrote:
| Seems like a no-brainer for most people to get the covid
| vaccine too, and yet something like 1 in 5 haven't done it,
| and maybe up to half aren't fully vaccinated.
|
| There's also the question of availability and it currently
| isn't clear how available the monkeypox vaccinations are.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Compared to COVID, monkeypox is much harder to spread (as
| you can see in the statistics - it's mainly in one very
| specific group, gay men in specific cities within
| specific subcommunities where members have a lot of
| sexual partners), and in some sense, more eyebrow raising
| results. It's likely that Monkeypox is actually less
| deadly than COVID, but the possibility of lesions growing
| on your genitals, anus, mouth that with a quite high
| possibility leads to permanent tissue scaring is quite
| frightening.
|
| The fact that it's mainly in populations of gay men in
| San Francisco and New York also help - I would wager that
| cross section of the population is _heavily_ left
| leaning, and heavily vaccine supportive.
|
| The monkeypox vaccine is just the smallpox vaccine. The
| US has a stockpile of it and it is still given to
| military members.
| samhyde69 wrote:
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > According to study published in New England Journal of
| medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost
| exclusively in men who have sex with men.
|
| I've heard from various outlets that people who are not MSM
| were, as of a couple weeks ago, in some places _being denied
| tests_ even with distinct symptoms because they didn 't meet
| the criteria for test allocation.
|
| Case statistics can be affected by bias in how you identify
| cases.
| makomk wrote:
| It's definitely not just caused by a lack of testing. The
| UKHSA is reporting a huge difference in positivity rates
| between men and women: "More adult men were screened for
| orthopox virus (3,467, 80% of all tests) compared to adult
| woman (447, 10% of all tests) and children (173, 4%).
| Monkeypox positivity rate was considerably higher in adult
| men, 54%, compared to 2.2% in adult women and 0.6% in
| children." See
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-
| outbrea...
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Well, yes, maybe. The gay community also happens to be rather
| well-organized when it comes to STD threats. Together with the
| more benign course this strain seems to take, the varied
| presentation, and issues of shame, it is not unreasonable to
| believe that self-selection and other issues may affect the
| statistics right now.
|
| And, either way, the statistics would have looked exactly like
| that in the early years of the HIV epidemic, which obviously
| became a huge burden on society as a whole, both in terms of
| infections and death as well as curtailing sexual freedom.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Well... the US at least has also spent the last few decades
| decreasing funding to community sexual health centers, which
| were at the forefront of the AIDS response. So, that's not
| great.
|
| Hopefully this is a reason to reallocate money to a critical
| part of public health.
|
| If anyone is curious, there's a 2019 survey of "the
| challenges experienced by state and local public health
| entities at the frontline of STD prevention and control"
| (NCSD Phase II report): https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase...
| friedman23 wrote:
| Anyone know if I can get monkeypox from going to the gym?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| My layman's understanding is that it's pretty unlikely unless
| you are getting frisky with someone. It's spread by "intimate
| contact" which is a lower bar than sexual contact - extended
| contact with an infected persons clothes or bedsheets will do.
| This is also why condoms don't stop the spread of monkeypox.
|
| Not the worst idea to wipe down machines before/after use as a
| general rule, monkeypox or not.
| abeppu wrote:
| My layperson's understanding is also that if this were
| happening, we should have noticed it by now. The communities
| where monkeypox are blowing up all have gyms with a lot of
| gay customers, and if it was easy to spread we would have
| noticed more straight or celibate gym-goers in those areas
| getting infected. That said, the limited testing
| infrastructure and the questions screening people before they
| even get tested might stop us from confirming such cases?
|
| I _am_ annoyed that the guidance on how it spreads keeps
| getting broadened. Initially it was supposed to be fluids or
| skin-to-skin contact ("ok, easy, no cuddling with active
| rashes for now").
|
| Now the guidance says it can be carried on cloth (e.g.
| linens). But really, the virus doesn't know that much about
| what surface it's on, right? And indeed the CDC public-facing
| guidance does say that it can spread from "shared surfaces,
| and objects, such as bedding, towels, and sex toys, that were
| used by a person with monkeypox", but only under a
| collapsible heading "Can I get monkeypox from having sex?"
| I.e. they recognize that surfaces can carry it, but perhaps
| there needs to be a lot of contact with the surface in
| question. But if, for example, I'm unaware I'm infected but I
| lie on a pool-side lounge chair which someone else then uses
| ... couldn't that be comparable shared contact as a bedsheet?
| Is that so far off from contact with a bench at the gym?
|
| Slightly more concerning is:
|
| > "It also can be spread by respiratory secretions during
| prolonged, face-to-face contact"
|
| The same page includes "talking closely" as a form of
| "intimate contact". So it does sound like it can be spread by
| airborne particles but perhaps less easily than the other
| viruses we've all been dealing with. If there are a few
| treadmills in small, not especially well ventilated room, at
| what point do two people running there share respiratory
| particles which are comparable to prolonged face-to-face
| contact?
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Honestly with that many different ways it notes that almost
| feels like those "rare but serious side effects" I see at
| the end of drug commercials.
|
| It feels like they don't have a for sure good idea so they
| are covering all their bases just to be safe.
| mellavora wrote:
| > But really, the virus doesn't know that much about what
| surface it's on, right?
|
| actually, it might. Porous vs impermeable surfaces can
| affect how long a viral particle remains infectious.
|
| Could also be potential electrostatic effects, copper for
| example.
|
| Not that many people have stainless steel bedsheets...
| abeppu wrote:
| I'm not claiming that all surfaces are exactly equal in
| their ability of transmitting it. But the guidance of
| "such as bedding, towels, ..." under a heading
| specifically about sex makes it seem like an artificially
| narrow category. How about upholstered furniture? Did the
| last guest lie shirtless on the sofa in your airbnb or
| hotel room? People are acting like this is only an issue
| of gay men having sex, and while clearly that's a very
| large factor, as the outbreak grows I'm guessing the
| chance of other forms of community transmission are going
| to rise.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We've historically treated the bedsheets of the ill as
| being an infection vector, before germ theory.
|
| It is odd they tie bedsheets to sex contact alone. Eg if
| you sometimes co-sleep, that itself is a vector. Though
| good chances are you are also having sex with your
| sleeping partner.
|
| There is a time element as well. If someone with the
| disease laid out on your sofa yesterday and it's dried
| out since, you're fine. It also probably requires
| sustained (and probably wet - eg sweat) contact.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| If someone with Monkeypox visits your gym, and you touch the
| same surfaces they touch, yes, it is possible.
|
| Source:
| https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...
|
| Even after they recover, they are still very infectious:
| https://twitter.com/alexmeshkin/status/1543313032817917953
|
| And yes, someone with Monkeypox went to a gym after feeling
| sick (https://twitter.com/KxngRudy/status/1545893342994644994).
| samhyde69 wrote:
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| verdverm wrote:
| it's not the mods "censoring" you, it's the community filtering
| your comment out
| lizardactivist wrote:
| HN is definitely turning into an echo-chamber where certain
| opinions and questions are down-voted and whisked out of sight
| quickly.
| hericium wrote:
| ogogmad wrote:
| Organisations sometimes make mistakes when responding to
| something novel. They don't necessarily screw up again, unless
| there's something deeply wrong with what they're doing. Is
| there something deeply wrong with the WHO?
| bilsbie wrote:
| It's allowed to get something wrong if you recognize the
| error and change course. But we're 2-3 years into their
| errors and all they've done is double down.
| bragh wrote:
| What was novel about COVID-19? There is a worldwide epidemic
| pretty much every decade
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Chronology
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| > Is there something deeply wrong with the WHO?
|
| Yes - it is antithetical to national sovereignty. Simple as.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| If you're going to chat shit about an important global
| organisation it's worth explaining your comments. Given they
| were handling a once in a century pandemic I feel like they did
| a decent job.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The way WHO officials pretend their internet connection
| died whenever somebody says the word 'Taiwan' is
| particularly trust inspiring.
| olivermarks wrote:
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| WHO has some huge fails.
|
| They didn't declare it a pandemic until March 11 - extremely
| late.
|
| They were extremely critical of travel restrictions, while
| the countries they did the best in the first year defied that
| advice and had the most extreme restrictions, like New
| Zealand.
|
| They failed to actually investigate the Wuhan Lab that may
| have been the source.
|
| They didn't acknowledge airborne spread for two years -
| allowing people to live in fear of packages.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
|
| What did they do right?
| sgift wrote:
| Why? Cause they told the western states correctly to get their
| shit together, got ignored for month and then people tried to
| blame it on a single statement which was redacted two days
| later to make it seem like the WHO told them to do nothing?
| parkingrift wrote:
| Come on. The WHO comically mishandled Covid. It took them
| months to declare a health emergency despite because they
| didn't want to upset China. They wrongly advised against
| travel bans or curtailing travel. It took them almost two
| years to admit Covid could travel through the air.
|
| And during all this the WHO bent over backward to praise and
| defend China. The same country that covered this up and who's
| actions ultimately led to a global outbreak.
|
| The WHO was so China centric that Bruce Aylward was outright
| ignoring questions if they contained the word "Taiwan." It
| become so comical that the Japanese deputy PM said they
| should change the name to "Chinese Health Organization."
|
| China lied about the nature of the pandemic, lied about the
| severity, gave fake statistics and information, and the WHO
| never questioned or looked further into any of it.
|
| The WHO is a joke. They have been dragged through the mud
| during Covid because they deserved to be dragged through the
| mud. We might not be in this situation if the WHO were a
| competent organization willing to rise to the challenge of an
| actual health emergency.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| > gave fake statistics and information
|
| This is comically false. When the virus spread in the rest
| of the world we got to see that it wasn't the Black Plague
| 2.0 and the CCP didn't (and couldn't) possibly hide
| millions of deaths in Wuhan.
|
| The stance and respect that China has managed to acquire is
| only logical given the very united front they present. That
| isn't without cost for the individual as the harsh
| lockdowns clearly show. Would you trade places with a
| Chinese in order to have the same treatment for your
| country in a press conference happening 5000mi away from
| you?
|
| No? Me neither. It's settled then, China can have #1 as far
| as I am concerned. England used to be #1 for the longest
| time and now it's #6. It's not like people are running
| around like chickens with their heads severed off. As
| always it's all about purchasing power parity and your very
| immediate surroundings which make a person satisfied with
| their life.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> The WHO comically mishandled Covid. It took them months
| to declare a health emergency despite because they didn't
| want to upset China._
|
| The WHO declared COVID-19 a PHEIC on 30 January 2020 [0],
| about _a_ month after it arouse original attention in
| international media by very late 2019 [1] [2] [3]
|
| _> The WHO was so China centric that Bruce Aylward was
| outright ignoring questions if they contained the word
| "Taiwan." _
|
| The very same would have happened if _any_ WHO official was
| asked something in relation to Palestine [4]. Which, just
| like Taiwan, is not a sovereign nation recognizes by the UN
| because certain other UN members are actively denying these
| territories that recognition.
|
| That's why WHO, and UN officials in general will act like
| certain places don't even exist; Their mere mention of
| these territories, like sovereign states, can be
| interpreted as the UN, giving them, at least unofficial,
| recognition.
|
| _> China lied about the nature of the pandemic, lied about
| the severity, gave fake statistics and information, and the
| WHO never questioned or looked further into any of it._
|
| I'd be really interested what your alleged timeline for
| events looks like. By late 2019 China was publicly
| admitting investigating a SARS like outbreak. When do you
| locate the actual outbreak start? Months earlier?
|
| That's the only way the WHO could have taken "months" to
| declare it a PHEIC, yet any public awareness about any of
| this only existed by late 2019.
|
| [0]
| https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-public-
| heal...
|
| [1] https://www.dw.com/en/china-investigates-sars-like-
| virus-as-...
|
| [2]
| https://apnews.com/article/00c78d1974410d96fe031f67edbd86ec
|
| [3] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-china-probes-
| pneumoni...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition
| _of_t...
| tempsy wrote:
| When it first started spreading outside of Africa I was concerned
| because the reported fatality rate was something like 5-10%
|
| Now we have tens of thousands of cases outside of Africa and it
| doesn't appear to be lethal at all and goes away on its own.
| Depending on the severity it seems like the biggest issue is
| pain/itchiness for a week or so.
|
| So what's the "emergency" in that context?
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| The emergency is that the fatality rate in children is 15%.
|
| Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478203/
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Based on what politicians like the head of the WHO learned from
| Covid, you can't go wrong with a strategy of "better safe than
| sorry!" that willfully ignores the real costs of this policy.
| It's politically better to save 1 person directly than 100
| indirectly. You can't execute this policy without the looming
| urgency of an emergency, so you declare one despite that your
| SMEs are unwilling to do so. That's "strong leadership"!
| dannyw wrote:
| Nothing better than prolonging the life expectancy of someone
| in their last few years or months of their natural lives with
| little bodily functions intact; while deferring vital surgery
| for teenagers and destroying the mental health of the entire
| planet (ask any psychologist).
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| The fatality rate depends on the strain. And of course, the
| demographic of people with the disease. Currently in Western
| countries almost all cases are in young, healthy men.
| Originami wrote:
| Thornhill et al, NEJM, MPOX summary:
|
| -98% gay/bisexual
|
| -41% have concurrent HIV
|
| -95% transmission by sexual activity
|
| -13% hospitalized for derm/anogenital lesions
|
| -No deaths
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323
| samhyde69 wrote:
| missedthecue wrote:
| Wasn't the concern when covid started losing lethality all
| about mutations?
| [deleted]
| samhyde69 wrote:
| [deleted]
| winrid wrote:
| Lasting scaring?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Maybe it's developed a new tendency to mutate like covid and
| could turn into something worse. Sounds like it's time to make
| vaccines available.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Can't it leave disfiguring scars?
| tempsy wrote:
| Is that alone cause for declaring something a public health
| emergency? I've only seen videos of men who have contracted
| and recovered from it and no one mentioned disfiguring scars
| so far and couldn't tell that was an issue myself based on
| their appearance.
| abeppu wrote:
| Maybe that's not a good sample? Both by size, and
| selection, insofar as if you've recently got disfiguring
| scars perhaps you'd be less likely to make and share a
| video of yourself. Also, how long does it take to know if
| marks from pox sores are going to be permanent scars
| anyway? Or how much they might fade? This is all so recent
| that even if you did still have marks on your face
| afterwards, could you really know whether they'll be
| "disfiguring" in the future?
| tshaddox wrote:
| A contagious disease that makes a lot of people sick, has a
| considerable death rate, and often causes scars is
| definitely cause for declaring a public health emergency.
| Under what possible definition of the term would you think
| otherwise?
| [deleted]
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| jeofken wrote:
| ribeyes wrote:
| the mental sickness to wish harm upon someone you
| disagree with is just sad. get help.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > So what's the "emergency" in that context?
|
| You've named it: "tens of thousands of cases outside of
| Africa". It entered the white world (disclaimer: I'm white
| myself).
|
| On top of that we've just lived through (hopefully) the worst
| if the COVID pandemic, so WHO is additionally spooked.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Because this is affecting the western world, it gets a huge
| attention. I'll keep dreaming of a world where headlines are
| about the 1.5 million confirmed deaths caused by diarrhea
| globally. Instead of a disease with 0 deaths in Europe out of
| 10k+ cases. But of course no one wants lesions because they
| don't look pretty on the gram.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| >> I'll keep dreaming of a world where headlines are about
| the 1.5 million confirmed deaths caused by diarrhea
| globally
|
| But that's not news. That's well known. Also, generalising
| 'news' makes no sense. Of course news sources from certain
| countries will focus on news that effects their readers.
| Deaths from diarrhea are of little relevance to the readers
| of any 'western' news source.
| tempsy wrote:
| My critique is that this could create a "boy who cried wolf"
| scenario.
|
| And apparently this decision was actually an overrule by the
| director - a panel actually voted against it.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I agree with this risk. What wave of Covid are we ever-
| vigilant against currently?
| rajup wrote:
| > You've named it: "tens of thousands of cases outside of
| Africa". It entered the white world (disclaimer: I'm white
| myself).
|
| You're probably being downvoted for this though it's
| completely true.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| "It's affecting us now and we're talking more about it,
| that's just racist!" I don't know why everything these days
| has to call to arms over how woke we all are.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This isn't the first time monkeypox has been seen in the
| 'white world' though
|
| > Monkeypox is a disease of global public health importance
| as it not only affects countries in west and central Africa,
| but the rest of the world. In 2003, the first monkeypox
| outbreak outside of Africa was in the United States of
| America and was linked to contact with infected pet prairie
| dogs. These pets had been housed with Gambian pouched rats
| and dormice that had been imported into the country from
| Ghana. This outbreak led to over 70 cases of monkeypox in the
| U.S. Monkeypox has also been reported in travelers from
| Nigeria to Israel in September 2018, to the United Kingdom in
| September 2018, December 2019, May 2021 and May 2022, to
| Singapore in May 2019, and to the United States of America in
| July and November 2021. In May 2022, multiple cases of
| monkeypox were identified in several non-endemic countries.
|
| [0] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
| sheets/detail/monkeypox
| dmitriid wrote:
| So now it's more of a "we're more scared now because of the
| pandemic we've just had".
|
| This is as good a reason as any.
| [deleted]
| ISL wrote:
| It is the first poxvirus to spread across the globe since the
| eradication of smallpox. Vaccines exist, unlike at the outset
| of Covid, but not at the scale necessary to vaccinate the world
| and move on.
|
| Even if monkeypox is only an annoyance (which I doubt), if 7
| billion people all have to get sick for a week, that deprives
| humanity of ~134 million people-years of life that they'd
| rather spend doing something else -- even if there are no
| longer-lasting impacts.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _It is the first poxvirus to spread across the globe since
| the eradication of smallpox._
|
| How do you figure? I got chickenpox in the 90s.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Despite the name, the virus that causes chickenpox is
| classified as a herpes virus, not a pox virus.
| danielfoster wrote:
| This comment does not contribute anything to the
| discussion.
|
| I think chickenpox spread before smallpox in any case?
| gringo_flamingo wrote:
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Chickenpox is caused by varicella zoster, which is a herpes
| virus. Which is why it can linger and re-emerge as shingles
| decades later.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_zoster_virus
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Cause
|
| Similar symptoms, substantially different family trees.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If it disfigures you just the same as monkeypox, is it a
| distinction with a difference?
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| A different "species" of a virus is as different as you
| or I are from a dog, so yeah it's a distinction that
| matters.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Yes, because it's a different disease. Radiation sickness
| will give you burns, but normal burn ward treatments
| won't work on it.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Yes, because it's a different disease_
|
| So are monkeypox and smallpox, right? Related, but
| different diseases.
|
| So are this year's strain of influenza, and the Spanish
| Flu. Related, but different diseases. Should extant
| monkeypox cause more alarm than extant influenza?
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Related" being the operative word. Chickenpox is not
| meaningfully related to the virus family that causes
| smallpox and monkeypox.
|
| Nothing is _a priori_ worthy of more or less alarm.
| Public health officials raise a degree of alarm based on
| the best epidemiological, medical, and demographic
| information available to them.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I'm talking about the relationship between monkeypox and
| smallpox, vs the relationship between 2022's influenza
| and the spanish flu. These are both respectively in the
| same virus families. No?
|
| Smallpox is concerning, monkeypox as it is today isn't
| very concerning. If I understand the comments in this
| thread, the great concern is that monkeypox could become
| something quite deadly like smallpox was.
|
| Is _that risk_ substantially greater than the risk of a
| new influenza that rips through the population like the
| Spanish Flu once did?
| woodruffw wrote:
| These are questions for your public health officials, not
| me. I'm merely invested in correcting your previously
| incorrect statements; any questions of epidemiology are
| best left to them. Presuming that you're interested in
| their answers, of course.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The other note I'd make is industrial vaccination
| capacity. We've gotten pretty damn good at identifying,
| synthesizing, manufacturing, and distributing influenza
| vaccines at scale on a yearly basis.
|
| If a deadly influenza strain is in our future, we're
| decently prepared.
|
| On the other hand, we haven't manufactured or
| administered human pox vaccinations at scale in... 50
| years?
| Izkata wrote:
| Flu shot effectiveness averages around 35-40%. It used to
| be higher on average and has been dropping over the past
| decade.
| sterlind wrote:
| We understand how the flu behaves. We've had >100 years
| of flus and Spanish Flu only happened once.
|
| The only experience we have with poxes in humans is
| smallpox and monkeypox. Smallpox was not a good time.
| Past monkeypox outbreaks have killed 5%. This one is
| behaving very differently, but we don't know if it's
| going to revert to killing people! It has in the past,
| like every outbreak, so it's a rational worry.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Endemic seasonal influenza didn't just recently acquire
| the ability to jump to humans. Even considering the 2009
| H1N1 pandemic the H1 protein is descended from the human
| strain which circulated in 1918-1957 and there was still
| enough immunity in the human race in 2009 to make that
| virus not that novel. This monkeypox virus is brand new
| to the human immune system.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not quite as simple as stating they are different
| diseases.
|
| These diseases are caused by single celled organisms
| which keep spawning clones rather than having sex among a
| population. So the point you call a different COVID or
| influenza strain a different disease is effectively
| arbitrary unlike with sexual species where you can draw
| the line when they can't breed with each other.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is
| arbitrary?
|
| How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't
| seem like an arbitrary distinction to me.
| didibus wrote:
| > The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is
| arbitrary?
|
| All differences between two things is always arbitrary.
| This is something I wish more people understood. Two
| different things are never the same thing. You can come
| up with similarities based on arbitrary criteria, and
| that's all.
|
| For example, what we consider make two different person a
| woman is arbitrary criteria that we just all agree on, or
| debate forever.
|
| > How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't
| seem like an arbitrary distinction to me
|
| You want to engage in that "forever debate of semantics",
| but I don't think that's your point.
|
| Currently, it's agreed on taxonomy that chickenpox is not
| on the same family as monkeypox and smallpox. That's just
| agreed upon arbitrary categories.
|
| Now the arbitrary doesn't mean useless. Often categories
| are chosen based on some practical aspect. For example it
| helps to group them if they have a similar behavior in
| some way that is often helpful to group in the default
| case.
|
| An example of this is how in culinary science, a Tomato
| is made a Vegetable, because it's more useful to club
| vegetables around their flavor profile. You most of the
| time don't want to use a Tomato for a recipe that calls
| for fruits. But in botanical science, flavor isn't
| useful, it's more useful to think in terms of what
| contain seeds, thus a Tomato is made a fruit.
|
| Each science uses their own arbitrary classification
| based on what is more practically useful for their line
| of research.
|
| Ok, so I think your point isn't to try and tell
| virologists that their chosen taxonomy isn't as optimal
| for their line of research. But that in the case of
| public policy and messaging, virulence might be more
| important.
|
| Even though both virus are of the same family, there is
| still a major difference in their virulence. And maybe
| that property holds more weight in this case.
|
| I think that's a great point, but that you were arguing
| wrong by attacking the definition instead of bringing up
| the characteristic of importance and explaining why.
|
| Now this is as much as I know of virology, so I can't say
| if there are good reasons to be worried about the chances
| of virulence changing because they are in the same family
| or not. But I'd say you're right, virulence is what the
| public cares about, and it be nicer for virologist to
| explain the chances of the virulence getting worse
| through some mutations and if they think it's high, why,
| or if they think it's low, why.
| Retric wrote:
| Different strains of monkeypox and smallpox have wildly
| different fatality rates.
|
| Variola minor is a strain of smallpox with fatality rates
| under 1%, while some strains of monkey pox are believed
| to kill 10% of the infected.
|
| In the end where exactly we draw the line within
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus is arbitrary,
| but not without justification.
| kingofpandora wrote:
| Wow you are really doubling down on being right about a
| statement that was factual wrong ...
| bad416f1f5a2 wrote:
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I try to bring my best self to HN in all comments. It was
| a good question.
| ColanR wrote:
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community.
| lfpeb8b45ez wrote:
| "A man's reach should exceed his grasp" - Arnold
| Schwarzenegger
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's the difference between being worried that a dog is
| going to act wolf-like, versus a chicken is going to act
| wolf-like.
|
| The herpes lineage is no joke, especially given recent
| evidence for long-term effects, but Orthopoxviruses has
| some nasty members (for humans and other economically-
| important species).
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| So it's not about Monkeypox as it exists today, but a
| fear of what Monkeypox might become if it changed into
| something it presently isn't? Because as it is, it seems
| to kill very few people but gives people disfiguring
| scars. Like chickenpox.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I can't speak for the WHO, but that would be my
| assumption.
|
| And when I say "nasty Orthopoxviruses," I mean ~25% case
| fatality rate in the affected species, with an increased
| fatality rate in infants. So... pretty horrible stuff. :(
|
| These numbers seem squishy (keep an eye on the
| situational caveats they note for a specific row), but
| lists relative CFRs for different diseases. Chickenpox
| probably isn't going to kill you, unless you're a
| pregnant mother who acquires it in a specific window: htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat
| ...
| jhugo wrote:
| The repeated mentions of chickenpox are weird. Apart from
| ending in the same sequence of three characters
| chickenpox and monkeypox/smallpox have nothing in common.
| The name similarity is accidental.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| A linguistic artifact from a time when we classified
| diseases by symptoms, because we had not yet acquired our
| modern genetic tools. :)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd hazard the WHO discomfort with "wait and see" is (1)
| lingering institutional shame at failing to warn about SARS-
| CoV-2 in a timely manner, (2) unexpectedly high
| transmissibility and geographic spread, (3) it's an
| orthopoxvirus, and while distant from smallpox... it's not
| _that_ distant, (4) largely unvaccinated world population, and
| (5) history of diseases which are circulating in men-who-have-
| sex-with-men being ignored (read: HIV).
|
| Honestly, IMHO, this is what the WHO _should_ be doing: looking
| at the _potential_ for pandemics and making moves ahead of
| time. (2) & (4) should be enough to scare the crap out of
| anyone who accepts the possibility of mutations once it's more
| widely circulating.
|
| Smallpox is objectively horrific, and its eradication was one
| of public health's greatest modern triumphs. So anything close
| should be taken seriously.
|
| Not panic. But pragmatic seriousness.
|
| (WARNING: Not for the faint of heart)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
| ratsmack wrote:
| >lingering institutional shame at failing to warn about SARS-
| CoV-2 in a timely
|
| They have no shame. They sided with China to cover up the
| severity of the situation for fear of losing money on their
| grift operation. They are a sham organization that should be
| disregarded on all points.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Worldwide organizations operate across national boundaries
| via consensus and voluntary agreement.
|
| Off the top of my head, the only _forceful_ worldwide
| organization we have is the UN Security Council, which is
| finely calibrated. And historically predicated on ownership
| of nuclear arms.
|
| Consequently, the job of every other worldwide organization
| is to (a) build political goodwill with nations & (b) spend
| that political goodwill to urge them to take actions, when
| the situation calls for it.
|
| If those nations dig their heels in, it becomes a choice.
| Do you want to burn bridges because the current situation
| is that important? Or do you want to let things slide to
| maintain the relationship and preserve future goodwill?
|
| Hint: There isn't an obvious right answer. Especially when
| you're looking forward at a novel, uncharacterized pathogen
| with unknown effects.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > maintain the relationship and preserve future goodwill
|
| If the relationship involves lies and cover ups that
| caused this pandemic to get out of control leading to
| millions of deaths and massive global disruption, what is
| the value of the relationship in the future?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Are you expecting a pandemic-less future?
| colpabar wrote:
| If the relationship still involves lies and cover ups
| that caused a future pandemic to get out of control
| leading to millions of deaths and massive global
| disruption, what is the value of the relationship?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That it's still better than the no-worldwide coordination
| body alternative?
|
| An optimal but impossible-to-implement world organization
| isn't a useful measuring stick for organizations that
| need exist in reality.
|
| Nations exercise sovereignty within their borders.
| Nations have their own priorities. Those priorities often
| conflict with other nations'. Inconvenient in public
| health responses, but facts that must be dealt with.
|
| And in a choice between (1) no WHO, (2) a WHO that spends
| time playing politics and is less effective than it could
| be, (3) a perfectly-efficient authoritarian WHO supported
| by a global police state... I'll take (2).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Off the top of my head, the only forceful worldwide
| organization we have is the UN Security Council, which is
| finely calibrated.
|
| It is utterly and completely locked up and has been for
| years because the worst threats to international security
| (Russia and China) have been blocking _anything_ against
| them or their interests.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It has not been "utterly and completely" locked up for
| years. Each member has been acting in its own interests,
| but even in times of poor international relationships,
| there is sometimes agreement by all on a particular
| matter.
|
| https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/volumes-
| resolutio...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The key thing is, the UNSC was established to prevent
| nuclear war between the super powers.
|
| While it has been successful on that front, it has
| utterly, _utterly_ failed however in preventing a repeat
| of what happened between 1933-1945 in Germany, which was
| the reason for why the UN was founded:
|
| - China is genociding off Tibetans and Uyghurs for many
| years and _no one_ seems to be willing to put a stop on
| that. Not to mention Chinese fishing vessels illegally
| fishing as far as Africa or continuous Chinese
| imperialist aggression against its neighbor states.
|
| - Russia... well, the current invasion in Ukraine speaks
| for itself, but there has been more. Alone the land grab
| of the Krim 2014 should have been more than enough to
| warrant intervention.
|
| - Syria, where Assad (with a lot of assistance from
| Russia and its Wagner mercenaries) has liberally broken
| _every_ red line the Western nations set. Barrel bombs
| against civilians, genocide, nerve gas, torture, and that
| 's just the rough list.
|
| - the collapse of Libya and its descent into civil war
| and chaos
|
| - a boatload of other conflicts turning into ethnic
| cleansings and genocide across Africa
|
| - a lot of nations in South America falling under the
| effective control of drug cartels
|
| About the _only_ horror stopped by the UNSC was the self-
| proclaimed Islamic State, and that was only because both
| Russia and China didn 't want anything to fuel their
| local Islamist-extremist insurgent groups.
| saganus wrote:
| Don't all permanent members do the same though?
|
| It seems to me like that is the point of beingn a
| permanent member, above everyone else.
|
| Otherwise, what's the point of being one if you won't
| block things that are against your interest?
|
| Not saying I like, it but nuclear weapons tend to give a
| lot of leverage.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Source?
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| > Not panic. But pragmatic seriousness.
|
| the very nature of an "emergency" does cause panic, though.
| from what you are describing I don't see how that word can be
| justified. sounds more like "public health threat" or sth
| like that.
| techdragon wrote:
| The problem is expressing the situation as urgent but not
| yet out of control in a clear and concise way that doesn't
| leave the reader/listener with the idea that the problem is
| one that can be ignored because it is not out of control
| yet.
|
| We have lots of language to say this sort of thing, but the
| more words you add the easier it is to be misunderstood. On
| a sociolinguistic level we do sort of overuse the word
| "emergency" but it's primarily because we tend to do most
| of our "highest priority" communication with chunks of
| words that fit in a sound byte, or newspaper headline, or
| bullet point that fits on a PowerPoint slide ,or tv news
| lower third.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| but what can be done now practically? with covid it was
| easy to come up with measurements - but monkeypox? I am
| already using condoms at the local swinger club
| techdragon wrote:
| And here's the failure to communicate that most concerns
| me... this isn't HIV, it's got multiple routes for
| infection and covering one with a condom does nothing to
| stop you catching it via another route.
|
| Money pox can be transmitted via infected bodily fluids,
| via via contact with the blisters/lesions/"rash" that
| forms, via inhaling droplets of infected fluids (simplest
| example, heavy breathing + sweaty bodies very close
| together), and potentially any method where infected
| fluids from one body come into contact with the mucous
| membranes of another person, so that's the eyes, nose,
| mouth, etc. Also it can contaminate surfaces so there's a
| risk of infection via contaminated bedding. Only one of
| these is mitigated by a condom.
|
| Effectively the only preventative options are
| vaccinations and avoiding exposure via the normal ways,
| trying to not come into contact with anyone infected (the
| "avoiding high risk behaviour" option) and by wearing
| personal protective equipment such as disposable gowns,
| gloves, masks... which is basically all the sort of
| things medical staff do to prevent the spread of all
| sorts of diseases around hospitals, but its a whole list
| of stuff you need to do and remember to do right, to the
| point where medical staff need training and spot checking
| to ensure they do it right all the time... understandably
| its not something the public is very well equiped to do.
|
| Oh and it's infectious before it's "obvious that you have
| monkeypox" since the first early few days the various
| skin symptoms could be mistaken for a zit or pimple or
| other skin reaction and don't necessarily start somewhere
| you regularly look at, such as behind the ear.
|
| The wikipedia article is actually pretty informative
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeypox other than not
| having a clear idea yet what's different about the new
| strain spreading around, we actually know quite a bit
| about monkeypox since its endemic to certain African
| animals there has been cases to study for decades, and
| the fact its related to the much more deadly Smallpox
| virus (the Smallpox vaccine is apparently 85% effective
| against Monkeypox) means its been an interesting virus
| for researchers to study, basically since we started
| trying to wipe out smallpox decades ago.
|
| Edit: Missed a key point. The extra trouble is they need
| to "thread the needle" with their messaging to ensure
| what they are saying isn't misinterpreted as pointing the
| finger at the MSM (men who have sex with men) since they
| have mountains of evidence on how badly handled
| everything was with HIV/AIDS. They don't want the regular
| public assuming this is a disease only gay people can
| get, because its not, but the kinds of activities that
| are most likely to cause you to catch it are most
| commonly associated with gay men, which is sort of at
| odds with their first goal.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I agree with the use of emergency when desired outcome is
| people seeing the situation as urgent, but all this does
| is kick the can.
|
| At some (I feel like close) future point, people will see
| "emergency" and equate it to "someone's being cautious.
| This is possibly not a problem at all and therefore can
| be ignored."
|
| What's that old saying along the lines of "intentionally
| use more subtle language in your writing because it gives
| you room to be intense later."?
| philistine wrote:
| Everything is about context. The context in this case it
| that the WHO declaring an emergency might sound ominous,
| but I don't see the panic you are decrying. And I'll hazard
| a guess, you will not see panic from this declaration. I
| think this will be proof the WHO was historically scared of
| acting too quickly, particularly with COVID, and should not
| have. A declaration of an emergency by the WHO is not a
| source of panic, it's the start of a muscled response by
| health organizations around the world.
|
| I feel safer that the WHO has declared an emergency, and so
| does the rest of the world.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The next level for the WHO is pandemic, right?
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| The outward presentation of this virus is most interesting. We
| just went through a pandemic that was silent, invisible and on
| the whole similar symptoms to other illnesses - it's funny to
| think Monkeypox will be a pandemic of vanity as well as
| monkeypox.
| designium wrote:
| So are you saying that the 6M of people who died of COVID was a
| vanity pandemic?
| bilsbie wrote:
| Naga wrote:
| This line of thinking has never made sense to me. We spend
| billions worldwide combatting diseases that mostly impact
| people over the median age of death and with other co-
| morbidities. Heart disease mostly kills old and obese
| people, but no one ever has a problem with tax dollars
| going to this. If we don't care about people with co-
| morbidities, doesn't it make sense to shut down heart
| institutes and cancer wards?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We don't put everyone into lockdown to treat heart
| disease.
| peyton wrote:
| I believe coronavirus spending was well into the
| trillions over a short period of time. Not to mention the
| disruption of the lives of people not at risk. The
| response was disproportionate to the risk, and I don't
| think questioning that response means one doesn't "care
| about people with comorbidities."
| mandmandam wrote:
| Any time people's thinking around Covid doesn't make
| sense to you, try to remember how often we were (and are)
| knowingly and intentionally lied to by trusted
| authorities. For example, "masks don't work", or, "GOF
| researchers are so confident this didn't leak from a lab
| that you're an anti-science (!) Trump fanatic if you
| suggest it".
|
| Also, the idea that the elderly must be saved at all
| costs surely comes as surprising news to anyone paying
| attention to how healthcare works, or how nursing homes
| are managed. Many countries Corona death states consist
| of 30-50% purely nursing home deaths from extreme
| mismanagement, and decades of under-funding for nursing
| homes.
|
| If you care about the elderly, then be outraged at those
| responsible for that major fuckup, not the people trying
| to get a sense of perspective amid oceans of deliberate
| misinformation and unjustified censorship.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| "Of" or "with"? Cause that makes a pretty big difference.
| aftbit wrote:
| The way I read the parent post, they are implying that SARS-
| CoV-2 would have been taken more seriously if it left
| disfiguring scars on the faces of 10%[1] of those who
| contracted it, rather than "just" killing 0.1%[2] or so.
|
| 1,2: numbers entirely made up from my head, not from sources!
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Exactly, thanks for staying level headed beyond the knee
| jerk reaction. I'm more speaking to the metaphorical prod
| needed to move the public.
| designium wrote:
| I don't understand how HN has become this cesspool of nonsense.
| It is a news. The virus is spreading. What this has to do with US
| or China? WTF with you guys.
| [deleted]
| password1 wrote:
| HN became just another community where it's trendy to talk in a
| smug way about everything, like it's this elite community of
| smarter people and everyone acts like one. The only problem is
| that people know nothing and still act this way, like they are
| major experts in the field spreading the truth.
|
| It's easier to notice when they talk about non-tech related
| things, because with tech you are prone to give the benefit of
| the doubt that they might now what they are talking about,
| since if it's not your field of expertise it's harder to
| doublecheck the claims. With news instead everything is crystal
| clear. Just the usual average internet user that believes he
| understood everything and acts as a major expert when in
| reality it completely misses the complexity of the issues he's
| talking about.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I find this to be true of smart people in general. They have
| strong opinions about things they know little about, maybe
| because they're used to being right more often than not.
| carapace wrote:
| This comment of yours is an amazingly good example, even an
| exemplar, of itself!
|
| Well done! (I mean that. It probably sounds snarky but I
| swear I'm just impressed with how well the self-
| referentiality held up over most of the whole thing.)
|
| Anyhow, I once got to talk to Alan Kay on here. There's a lot
| of noise, sure, but the _signal_ here, when you get it, is
| outstanding.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| It's actually not a good example of the described behavior
| at all. The commenter was clearly opining about how some
| people act on HN, not feigning expertise in some field.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I want to ask about - sometimes people presume a
| statement on a forum like this is an authoritative
| statement, when it's just an opinion.
|
| Why don't we always just consider posts on forums to be
| just some opinion, from the poster's point of view, isn't
| that how a conversation works? Though I know expectations
| differ, I'm not sure why.
| carapace wrote:
| Let me own up to it: to some extent I was just teasing
| the OP.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| People talking about COVID, vaccines, China and Bill Gates in
| one paragraph make me lose faith in humanity.
| [deleted]
| naillo wrote:
| I agree that that's going way too far. But I also sympathize
| with people and see the side of people who feel like they've
| lost some trust in all this after the last few years. There's
| a spectrum of reactions.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Bit tangential and perhaps meta but, did you lose faith in
| humanity reading your own comment? You did mention all those
| things in single paragraph. Just kidding.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Why would talking about corruption cause you to lose faith in
| humanity rather than the corruption itself?
| rjzzleep wrote:
| People dismissing valid criticism, are just as bad as people
| making up conspiracy theories that are being criticized in
| the above comment.
|
| There is no way you cannot talk about the Gates foundation
| when talking about the AZ covid vaccine[1]. It was supposed
| to be open access and the Gates foundation lobbied to sell it
| to AZ which has a horrible track record[2].
|
| I personally think that had they not lobbied that hard to
| privatize the Oxford vaccine, the problems with the AZ
| vaccine, would probably have been fixed with further
| iterations by third parties and the discussion would have
| looked a bit differently. But we will never know. It's worth
| noting that the medical branch of the Gates foundation is run
| by ex pharma bros.
|
| At end of the day Gates is just another greedy grifter,
| hiding his greed behind altruism. That puts him squarely in
| line with most Billionaires that have their own little
| foundations that help them steer and lobby shit instead of
| paying tax.
|
| [1] https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-
| vaccine...
|
| [2] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/astrazeneca-
| looks-...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think it's a hacker tradition to distrust authority and
| question everything.
|
| And now this attitude of mistrusting anything and everything
| coming from an "official" source has gone mainstream.
| [deleted]
| throwk8s wrote:
| There's so little content to the references to WHO's COVID
| handling that I can't tell whether they mean WHO over-reacted
| or under-reacted to COVID.
| aftbit wrote:
| Agreed. I don't quite understand the focus on the WHO. They
| don't really control much in a practical sense. In terms of
| global response to the pandemic, I think we both under-
| reacted (at the start) and over-reacted (towards the "end").
| China could have stopped the virus if they had locked down
| back in November/December of 2019, instead of updating their
| WeChat filters. Whereas by mid-2021, we were past the point
| of controlling the virus, but NPIs continued in force for a
| while longer before people realized they were mostly
| pointless.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... Looks like it was already a worldwide pandemic at
| December 2019, and in several countries already by
| November. So no, China trying that wouldn't have much of an
| impact.
|
| I don't know if it would be possible to detect the virus
| earlier if it happened on some place that wasn't trying to
| cover it up, but when we got to know about it, it was
| already too late to contain.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Agreed. I don 't quite understand the focus on the WHO._
|
| Some conspiracy folks consider the WHO, just like the UN,
| the manifestation of the NWO global government that
| secretly controls everything.
|
| Didn't help that Trump had some weird hate boner for the
| WHO to such a degree that the US left it, plus a lot of _"
| WHO is in the pocket of China to suppress the truth!"_
| hysteria around t he same time.
|
| Then there was this whole episode of, mostly US
| conservative media, creating a shit-storm over this WHO
| tweet [0] by interpreting that tweet as _" WHO said it
| doesn't transmit between humans, WHO has been wrong and
| shouldn't be trusted!"_
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
| peyton wrote:
| I think you're muddying the waters. Outside of US
| partisan stuff, corruption at the WHO is _legendary_ and
| has been for decades.
| espadrine wrote:
| Those positions are surprising to me, for two reasons:
|
| 1 Finger-pointing an institution that has very limited
| funding, and very limited power, for corruption, is like
| blaming the river for sea level rise. Sure, if you dig
| into the numbers, it contributes to the result; but
| fundamentally it is not the cause of the problem, and
| there are much bigger fishes that deserve much more
| scrutiny.
|
| 2 Blaming WHO for a tweet where they simply report the
| words of the Chinese investigation with attribution, at a
| time where many countries with actual power pretended
| there was no risk, feels disingenuous.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Forget about conspiracy though, the WHO should have a
| relatively clear and narrow mandate, while the UN is
| known to be a toothless assortment of petty bureaucrats
| involved in everything with no clear consensus. The only
| thing they share is the goal of their members to grow
| their personal fiefdoms.
| lamontcg wrote:
| China didn't know they had a virus at all in November 2019.
| The 16th of December is the first documented
| hospitalization in Wuhan. A wastewater sample in Italy
| collected on 18th of December was later found to be
| positive. 23rd/24th of Dec was the first sample collection
| in Wuhan which was sent to be analyzed for a novel
| pathogen. 27th-30th of December is when the alarm bells
| started really going off in China. The first official
| messages and international alerts went out on Dec 30th and
| on Dec 31st Reuters published it's first report.
|
| So the virus had been in Italy at least 2 days after the
| first hospitalization in Wuhan, and around 5 days before
| doctors collected the first samples which were sent off to
| labs which later determined it was a novel virus.
|
| You actually can't blame China for not acting before they
| really had any patients or knew anything was going on.
| dannyw wrote:
| Chinese government records put the first case as Nov 17,
| with a daily trickle of cases after that:
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/c
| oro...
| lizardactivist wrote:
| throw93232 wrote:
| hackerlight wrote:
| I hope the vaccination efforts are targeting gay men?
| Madmallard wrote:
| > In an unusual move, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom
| Ghebreyesus made the declaration even though a committee of
| experts he had convened to study the issue was unable to reach a
| consensus. The same committee met just one month ago and declined
| to declare a public health emergency of international concern, or
| PHEIC.
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