[HN Gopher] Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as...
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Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surge
Author : jasonhansel
Score : 106 points
Date : 2022-07-23 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| msie wrote:
| I would hope that the spread would slow down by now with more
| news and education about how it spread but no dice. Sigh...
| password54321 wrote:
| Seems to be mainly affecting the LGBTQ+ community.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Which in the U.S. would be perceived to be quite a major issue:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/147824/adults-estimate-american...
|
| (This is one of my favorite stats.)
| xwdv wrote:
| I'm skeptical. I feel after agencies declare global health
| emergencies such as for COVID, they become more willing to
| declare another one for something not as severe. I see no cause
| for alarm until I actually hear of local cases.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Time to lock up again. Can't let it to start to spread. We must
| learn from Covid.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category of
| emergency since it was defined 2009[1], so a little more
| frequently than every other year. Likely only one of those
| emergencies significantly affected most people in developed
| countries. I'm not in a high risk group and I personally won't
| change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn't for Ebola
| or Polio.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Emergency_of_I...
| judge2020 wrote:
| Is it hard to believe that the WHO declaring something a global
| health emergency might be the direct cause of reduced
| infections/spread of these diseases?
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category
| of emergency since it was defined 2009_
|
| I too read the second sentence in this article.
|
| > _Likely only one of those emergencies significantly affected
| most people in developed countries. I'm not in a high risk
| group and I personally won't change my behaviour because of
| this, just as I didn't for Ebola or Polio._
|
| This declaration isn't calling for you to change your behavior.
| On the contrary, it's for international health communities to
| start coordinating before the disease has a chance to become
| widespread so that you can continue with your unchanged
| behavior.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I thought it was a pretty important sentence.
|
| Mainly I wanted to balance out the comments on this thread a
| bit as there were many which seemed overly cautious/mildly
| alarmist and there were too many comparisons to covid which
| is not particularly similar except for being a virus and
| causing one of these declarations.
| bobongo wrote:
| > I'm not in a high risk group and I personally won't change my
| behaviour because of this, just as I didn't for Ebola or Polio.
|
| That's irrelevant.
| alexnewman wrote:
| What's the r0
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Historically it was about 1. Presumably it has been a little
| larger with this outbreak.
| crackercrews wrote:
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Yeah. I suspect that putting across a message of "sexual
| distancing" would be incredibly difficult for public health
| authorities, because of the offence it would cause the LGBT
| community. Even if that is objectively what needs to be done. I
| suspect the LGBT community would be so offended by it that the
| advice would completely backfire.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Oh the political environment will go bananas if that happens,
| and they will go bananas if it doesn't happen. Of course the
| political environment going bananas is basically a day that
| ends in y, so :shrug:
|
| We will probably see many reminders that it is not just a gay
| illness as well, which is right, correct and important but at
| the same time is likely to make gay sex seem less dangerous.
| pcrh wrote:
| "Sexual distancing", condom usage, etc, was very well
| supported by the gay community during the 1980's outbreak of
| HIV.
| chernevik wrote:
| Er, no. Calls for condom use were fine, but any suggestion
| that people should have less sex were regarded as
| homophobic and to be avoided at all costs.
| pcrh wrote:
| Not less sex per se, but avoiding sexual practices that
| increased the risk of infection were supported.
| bitwize wrote:
| > If monkeypox becomes a pandemic that spreads as widely as
| COVID, will people look back and say the same things about
| people who engaged in promiscuous sexual behavior?
|
| If they do, it will be flagged as anti-LGBTQ hate and become a
| bannable offense on Twitter and Reddit.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If monkeypox becomes a pandemic that spreads as widely as
| COVID, will people look back and say the same things about
| people who engaged in promiscuous sexual behavior?
|
| Judging from the when there was attention on AIDS and
| particularly the dialog around not following the guidance
| regarding safe sex on that, yes.
| jphalimi wrote:
| Monkeypox is not an STD and it is not an airborne disease.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
| delecti wrote:
| It's not, but from that link:
|
| > Even though it is not considered a sexually transmitted
| infection, monkeypox can spread during intimate physical
| contact between people. This contact can happen when you have
| sex[..]
|
| I think it's important to not let monkeypox be viewed as
| another "gay disease", both so people don't use that as an
| excuse to let their guard down, and also so that homophobia
| doesn't lead to violence, but we should also recognize that
| promiscuous sexual activity is a big risk factor.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The world isn't black and white.
|
| Certain diseases are more like an STD than not. Saying it is
| not an STD is like saying HIV is not an STD.
|
| People will argue both sides to a meaningless end. Who cares
| what it is... care how it spreads and what follows, etc.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| There is evidence from the NHS that it is airborne:
| https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1550820521234894850
| twic wrote:
| Eric Feigl-Ding states there is evidence from the NHS that
| it is airborne, which gives us a very, very strong prior
| that there is not in fact evidence from the NHS that it is
| airborne.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Do you have some concrete reason for distrusting Dr. Eric
| Feigl-Ding?
| napier wrote:
| "For individuals with infection who have evidence of
| lower respiratory tract involvement or severe systemic
| illness requiring hospitalisation, the possibility of
| airborne transmission has not been excluded."
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/principles-
| for-mo...
| napier wrote:
| This preprint published 2 days ago details detection of
| monkeypox virus in air and surface sampling of NHS
| hospitals treating cases: https://www.medrxiv.org/content
| /10.1101/2022.07.21.22277864v...
| Izkata wrote:
| Two clicks through, this is what he's referencing: https://
| www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.21.22277864v...
| [deleted]
| msie wrote:
| I've read two twitter threads of people who have gotten MP and
| both were dancing around how they got it.
| petre wrote:
| Dancing around in a club being sweaty and probably drunk as
| well? Call me not surprised.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > If monkeypox becomes a pandemic that spreads as widely as
| COVID, will people look back and say the same things about
| people who engaged in promiscuous sexual behavior? Surely some
| will be motivated by disapproval of gays. But some will simply
| be observing how this spread, and what gave it enough of a
| foothold in the first place.
|
| One difference between the two is that you "were killing
| grandma" by not wearing a mask _around her_ or exposing
| yourself to the virus when you might _later be around her_.
| With MP, you have to have serious physical skin to skin contact
| with grandma. If promiscuous sexual behavior is the driving
| spread, you'd have to be getting promiscuous around grandma, or
| know you'll be experiencing deep physical contact with her skin
| and yours. All pretty unlikely.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| To quote Dr. Perry Cox
|
| "Then ya you might just have yabba, but if so that is way way
| down on your list of potential problems."
|
| For some reason I feel like if you're doing the nasty with
| your grandma that quote probably applies to you.
| crackercrews wrote:
| COVID has mutated and is now much easier to transmit. There
| are now monkeypox cases where toddlers are getting it. If it
| mutates and becomes more transmissible it seems plausible
| that some people will look at the history and say If we had
| stopped it from getting a foothold, it never would have
| mutated into the variant that transmits so easily through the
| population.
|
| Also people were blaming people for not wearing masks even if
| they were never around a grandma. Just because they might get
| it and infect someone who might then be around someone's
| grandma. Being a link in the causal chain was enough to be
| condemned by some people.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| It's funny that in the earliest days of COVID, when there was
| the most uncertainty, if you wore a mask or distanced as a
| precaution you were called an exaggerating racist. (You
| obviously just hate Chinese and see them as diseased)
|
| Only when it became predictable and appeared flu-like, posing
| no major threat to many demographics, did it become supremely
| virtuous to wear masks and distance.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Not really. There was some idiocy like what you describe, in
| particular the "hug a Chinese person" campaign by the
| Democrats comes to mind.
|
| But mask wearing became popular well before we knew COVID was
| "flu-like".
| llanowarelves wrote:
| Even ignoring the gaffe (though he was ultimately correct)
| with "masks don't work" from the surgeon general, it was
| only really politicized (this time, to the opposite
| political party) as an Other-ing moral choice once the
| unknowns had died down considerably.
|
| People forget this 180 back and forth whiplash.
| irrational wrote:
| Do masks really not work? My family has worn masks since
| the beginning and none of us have had Covid yet. Why
| would none of us have gotten it if not for mask wearing.
| We live in an urban environment, so it's not like it is
| from not being around other people.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Do masks really not work?
|
| It depends on what kind of mask you are wearing.
|
| Disposable cloth face masks work very well for a virus
| with a droplet based spread like the flu.
|
| >CDC says seasonal flu cases hit record lows around the
| world
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-and-flu/cdc-says-
| seasona...
|
| Disposable cloth face masks do not stop the spread of
| airborne viruses like Covid, which continued to spread
| like wildfire globally while Flu cases were at a global
| all time low.
|
| With an airborne virus you need a mask capable of
| filtering the virus out of the air you breathe, not one
| that only catches the tiny droplets you spray out when
| you cough or sneeze.
| irrational wrote:
| We used cloth masks back at the very beginning of the
| pandemic, but switched to N95 once they were available.
| irrational wrote:
| Where do you live?! Where I live everyone that I saw
| immediately started wearing masks. This is literally the
| first time I have ever heard of a connection between mask
| wearing and racism.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Not OP, but US would fit the bill
| gardnr wrote:
| > "For all of these reasons I have decided
|
| Interesting that he chose "I" over "we". I wonder if there was
| internal dissent during the forming of the resolution.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| It's because the International Health Regulations confer the
| power to declare a PHEIC on the WHO's Director General alone,
| rather than the WHO as a whole (or any Emergency Committee
| established under it).
| echopom wrote:
| I wish there was more accountability for International
| Institution.
|
| Saying "WHO Director Declare X" is obviously more accountable
| than "WHO said X must do Y" with a shadow comity deciding for 7
| billion people and claiming it's not their fault when they are
| wrong...
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I do know a few people who've had COVID. I don't know a single
| one, not even a FOAF, who's had MP.
|
| Does anyone?
| lazide wrote:
| They're declaring it an emergency so you don't know folks next
| month who've had it. That's the point?
| ornornor wrote:
| Didn't everyone say that when Covid started? Now you'd be hard
| press to find someone who doesn't know someone who had it (or
| had it themselves)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I think when it (lockdown, not the initial spread) started
| everyone knew a friend of a friend who heard about someone
| with it. Degrees of connection.
|
| Indeed there were posts on this forum in the early days about
| it with first hand accounts. No such accounts with this so
| far?
|
| Personally, a school friend was one of the first cases in the
| country.
| kredd wrote:
| If you have any friends in queer community, ask them and you'll
| find a plenty data points.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Once again not caring about spending time with people in person
| turns out to be the ultimate survival life hack.
| carvking wrote:
| retrac wrote:
| Yes thankfully there are multiple extremely effective vaccines
| for the poxes. (So effective we have exterminated smallpox with
| them.)
|
| Unfortunately supply of the two modern vaccines is limited and
| likely will be into 2023. (Many countries do have huge
| stockpiles of the classic smallpox vaccine, which is also
| effective. But it's, you know, the old smallpox vaccine, live
| attenuated virus jabbed under the skin then allowed to do its
| thing, hopefully without too much scarring at the injection
| site. You don't want that one unless absolutely necessary.)
| carvking wrote:
| Well, I was kind of joking - if you look at the link
| supplied,
|
| I've last a lot of faith in government health emergencies -
| from no masks to mask mandatory to "the vaccine will stop the
| spread" to "you need a booster every 6-9 months.
|
| Truly sad state of affairs.
|
| "Trust the experts" is starting to sound like the last words
| said after you've spent 2 hours with Sharepoint salespeople.
| carvking wrote:
| And even on hn the new religion does not want any
| criticism.
| SSilver2k2 wrote:
| Yes. Get vaccinated when you can.
| SeriousM wrote:
| spicyramen_ wrote:
| justinzollars wrote:
| > The director-general noted that the WHO's Emergency Committee
| under the International Health Regulation was "unable to reach a
| consensus" on whether to make the declaration itself (he actually
| over-ruled the committee which voted 9 to 6 against the
| declaration), compelling Tedros to make the declaration on his
| own.
| api wrote:
| reocha wrote:
| All my apes gone
| yosito wrote:
| According to the CDC:
|
| > Infections with the type of monkeypox virus identified in this
| outbreak ... are rarely fatal. Over 99% of people who get this
| form of the disease are likely to survive. However, people with
| ... a history of eczema ... may be more likely to ... die.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
|
| I feel simultaneous relief and terror. While I do feel that the
| eczema part I've highlighted is probably some standard language
| around risk to people with immune conditions, I do wonder how
| much of a higher risk eczema poses in cases like this.
| amluto wrote:
| Eczema appears to be a major risk factor for serious
| complications from the standard smallpox vaccines. Presumably
| this is related.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I'm less worried about fatality and more worried about long-
| term health consequences.
|
| COVID worries me, but not because it might kill me. I'm more
| worried about long-term brain fog and respiratory problems. I'm
| more worried about being permanently disabled. I'm worried
| about having to life a kind of life where I feel like I'm
| substantially less than I once was.
|
| But back to the point, I'm curious what the odds are of getting
| monkeypox and never quite fully recovering from it.
| censorshiphere wrote:
| valbaca wrote:
| Wow, thank you for pointing this out. I have eczema and
| would've never though it would increase my risk against
| *Monkeypox*. Wild, but glad I'm better informed.
| katkatkatkatket wrote:
| >Over 99% of people who get this form of the disease are likely
| to survive.
|
| Like Covid then?
| thedrbrian wrote:
| Nah. Rona was like 99.8% non death rate.
| epistasis wrote:
| US population is 335M, 1.02M people have died from COVID.
| Even if 100% of people got COVID, that would be 99.7%
| survival rate. But we have lots of vaccination, which
| huuuuugely reduced the death rate, so a far more realistic
| death rate would be 0.6%-1%.
|
| And of course any of the early estimates were exactly in
| that range. Anybody who has been advocating lower rates are
| all charlatans. At least every claim I have traced.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Now break that down by age. And for bonus points tell me
| which people died "from" Covid and "with" Covid.
|
| All the data surrounding Covid is trash. Garbage in,
| garbage out. It's gonna take a while before cooler, non
| politically motivated people can get an accurate figure.
| acgourley wrote:
| This analysis has been done several times. To the best of
| my knowledge, even the covid policy contrarians don't see
| a a problem with its obvious conclusions. Here, let me
| google that for you: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/c
| ovid19/excess_deaths.htm
| katkatkatkatket wrote:
| Here's the UK Covid data dashboard.
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
|
| "Deaths within 28 days of positive test in England" is in
| huge bold letters.
| katkatkatkatket wrote:
| The results on the "Weekly Number of Deaths by Age"
| dashboard are pretty clear - Covid had little impact on
| the death rates in the under-44 group. This is not
| surprising, as every country that records this data shows
| the same result.
|
| I'm not sure of the situation in the US, but here in the
| UK all of the data dashboards and death stats indicate
| "deaths with Covid". This is simply how they were
| recorded, nothing more nothing less - if you tested
| positive for Covid within 30 days of dying, you were a
| "death with Covid".
| katkatkatkatket wrote:
| The results on the "Weekly Number of Deaths by Age"
| dashboard are pretty clear - Covid had little impact on
| the death rates in the under-44 group. This is not
| surprising, as every country that records this data shows
| the same result.
|
| (Separate replies, as I included both statements in a
| reply that then got flagged. Curious which one is
| offensive!)
| adventured wrote:
| Eldt wrote:
| lazide wrote:
| So it being clearly attributable to the largest spike in
| total mortality/deaths since the Spanish Flu is total
| coincidence?
|
| What are you smoking?
| epistasis wrote:
| Politics is a hell of a drug.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| You're right. If anything, the excess death numbers show
| an even worse impact than the number of COVID deaths
| counted.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > The US being the backwards country that it is, provided
| incentives to numerous layers in the healthcare system to
| lie about the Covid figures, to pump them up to get
| funding, so that's exactly what they did.
|
| and the evidence for that is...?
| Isamu wrote:
| Sources for that contention?
|
| On my mother's death certificate there was a space for
| the proximate cause of death, and following that there
| some cascading "due to" lines to be optionally filled in.
| There's no "with" area. It's not free form.
|
| Her death was something like acute hypoxia (it was more
| jargony) and the next line was "Due To" and they filled
| in a sort of pneumonia, then the next line was "Due To"
| and they wrote Covid or something similar. Again there's
| no spaces for anything extra not relevant to the cause of
| death.
|
| When they count death due to Covid, It's because it was
| mentioned on the death certificate as leading to the
| cause of death.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Monkeypox is a disease that is deadlier for children than
| adults. It's estimated to kill 15% of children.
|
| Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478203/
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Depends on which strain. The strain in this outbreak appears
| mild.
| truemotive wrote:
| "Appears mild" when we don't know a damn thing about Long
| COVID yet is quite the stretch.
| Hellion wrote:
| Unlike Covid, which is a relatively new family of virus
| to us, humans have hundreds of years with this family of
| disease
|
| We have a much firmer foundation of understanding
| monkeypox and it's long term effects
| mionhe wrote:
| Erm, we've been dealing with coronovirus since the
| Spanish Flu at least. It seems that any new strain can
| contain surprises.
| taktoa wrote:
| Spanish flu is an orthomyxovirus, not a coronavirus.
| There are some cold-causing coronaviruses though.
| nicoburns wrote:
| My understanding is that we don't know for sure wha kind
| of virus caused Spanish flu (it occurring before our
| ability to analyse this kind of thing). What are you badi
| by your assertion that it was an orthomyxovirus on?
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Scientists have been able to retrieve genetic material
| from the remains of those who are confirmed to have died
| during that pandemic. They've effectively sequenced the
| genome even to know how it relates to other flu viruses h
| ttps://www.news.vcu.edu/article/Genetic_sequencing_of_dea
| dl...
|
| You might be thinking of the 1889-90 "flu" pandemic which
| has been theorized to be from a coronavirus known now as
| OC43, but it's not certain.
| fjfaase wrote:
| Could explain a little more what you mean. I have come to
| understand that covid belongs to the family of corona
| viruses that are responsible for about 15% of all colds.
| This monkeypox virus also belongs to a family of viruses
| that most of us got infected with as a child and that
| also has some long term effects as it can cause shingles.
| This monkeypox virus could also have unexpected long term
| effects with, for example, very severe forms of shingles.
| retrac wrote:
| No, monkeypox is unrelated to shingles/chickenpox.
| Despite the dual confusing names (chickenpox/varicella
| zoster) shingles is not an orthopoxvirus, but a
| herpesvirus. The herpesviruses do tend to cause chronic
| dormant infection which can reactivate.
|
| Monkeypox isn't new. There have been hundreds of human
| infections since the 1950s before this recent outbreak,
| and it is closely related (enough for complete-cross
| immunity) to the other orthopoxes, which are some of the
| most studied viruses ever. So we know a fair bit. Pox
| viruses do not cause a chronic and permanent infection. A
| person usually either recovers and becomes immune, or
| dies.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the strongest predictor for long Covid is having a
| previously diagonosed anxiety disorder, hinting that long
| covid is mostly placebo effect
|
| https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905
| NickM wrote:
| Anxiety is generally correlated with systemic markers of
| inflammation though, so there could be some hidden
| variables there. Perhaps having an overly sensitive
| immune system predisposes one to both anxiety and long
| Covid, or perhaps the physical effects of anxiety on the
| body predispose people to maladaptive immune responses to
| Covid, or etc. etc.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| ...because mostly adults have been infected so far, in whom
| the virus is not very deadly.
| epistasis wrote:
| No, because there are two distinct lineages, and the
| lineage that's is spreading right now is the less deadly
| lineage.
|
| That said, there have been additional mutations, that may
| be responsible for it spreading so much, or not, or may
| have other effects.
|
| Monkeypox mutates much more slowly than, say, flu or
| SARS-CoV-2, so it seems unlikely to have a quick change
| in its effects, but (nearly) everything is possible in
| biology.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| I wonder, is public WCs (like in the office) a potent vector for
| this disease?
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