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United States Medicine

US Officials Declare Monkeypox a Public Health Emergency (nbcnews.com) 193

Posted by msmash from the one-bad-news-after-another dept.
The Biden administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency on Thursday as cases topped 6,600 nationwide. From a report: The declaration could facilitate access to emergency funds, allow health agencies to collect more data about cases and vaccinations, accelerate vaccine distribution and make it easier for doctors to prescribe treatment. "We're prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus," Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Thursday briefing about the emergency declaration. A quarter of U.S. cases are in New York state, which declared a state of emergency last week. California and Illinois followed suit with emergency declarations Monday.
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US Officials Declare Monkeypox a Public Health Emergency More

US Officials Declare Monkeypox a Public Health Emergency

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  • Just 15 days to show the "spread" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @03:10PM (#62762868) Homepage

    Gay dudes just need to stop fucking around for 15 days. If it saves one life, right? I'm sure they don't want to kill grandma.

    • Re:Just 15 days to show the "spread" (Score:5, Informative)

      by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @03:24PM (#62762910)

      You're modded troll but you're not wrong, just crass. >98% of spread has been in homosexual men.

      • That is largely a coincidence, though. It just happens that this outbreak likely started at a gay bath house. Big surprise, the people in closest contact with the clientele are also gay men so that's the social network where a lot of the spread has occurred. The previous time the US had a monkeypox outbreak, it started at a pet store. I'm fairly sure that the children who got infected by their pet prairie dogs were not fucking them.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by ravenshrike ( 808508 )

          Riiiiiiiiiight. It's not like there were ZERO confirmed cases of human to human transmission in the 2003 outbreak. Per the CDC.

          https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/m... [cdc.gov]

          All people infected with monkeypox became ill after having contact with infected pet prairie dogs. A study conducted after the outbreak suggested that certain activities associated with animals were more likely to lead to monkeypox infection. These activities included touching a sick animal or receiving a bite or scratch that broke the skin. Another important factor was cleaning the cage or touching the bedding of a sick animal. No instances of monkeypox infection were attributed exclusively to person-to-person contact.

          So blood or other non-sanitary bodily fluids transmission from infected animals. But all cases were zoonotic in origin.

          • I also doubt that children who handle prairie dogs are a demographic that tends to meet up in crowded spaces on the weekend and then rub their skin together with numerous partners. They're probably kept in their homes and they fight off the virus, or maybe there's a handshake or high five at school, and the spread is quite unlikely there.

            • Honestly everyone who keeps repeating the crap about it spreading other ways reminds me of Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber exclaiming with his shit eating grin "So you're saying there's a chance".

              • Well if it turns out that's true, there are dark implications that need to be investigated: children of men who have had sex with men have gotten it. If it can't spread by close contact those kids need help now.

                • Not really. Toddlers and infants have a habit of A)sticking their hands everywhere, including in the mouth and up the nose of the person holding them and then B) sticking it in their own mouths. Then there's the fact that the tried and true method of getting a kid to eat the vile paste that is most baby food is to eat it yourself while faking a yummy reaction, and then quickly shoving some into the kid's mouth before they realize you're bullshitting them. Given that lesions appear inside the mouth, those ar

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by david-bo ( 578532 )
          No it is not. Gays behave in a unique way you don't find among any other demographics. Guess why AIDS struck the gay community the way it did? To be frank, gays are sluts.

      • Re:Just 15 days to show the "spread" (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday August 05, 2022 @05:55AM (#62764086) Homepage Journal

        It would be a mistake to think that focusing on gay men will be enough to stop it though. We have been here before with AIDS.

        Schools are due to start back soon. I have a feeling that once that happens it will spread between children.

    • The infections are primarily in men who have sex with men now, but it WILL spread AND mutate. FYI, gay men are men who are romantically involved with other men. Plenty of "straight" men will fuck a dude's hole recreationally, think prison or just being very horny and heteroflexible. It's like how I go to a friend's seder every year and have been to his kids' bar mitzvahs, but I am not Jewish. So don't think this is confined to your out and proud neighbors. You have a few that are sneaking off in the mi

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ...and that's the government/CDC/etc. plan here.

        1. Don't be clear that the vector here is the gay male community and what actions they should be taking to stop the spread.
        2. Wait until in penetrates the non-gay male community in large numbers.
        3. Now tell everyone that it's everyone's problem and everyone has to stop gathering, sitting next to each other, no hugging...you'll kill grandma!

        All this to not offend the gay male community.

      • You have a few that are sneaking off in the middle of the night to get their dicks sucked by other dudes, but consider themselves fully straight.

        I can consider myself to be a fucking legend, but it doesn't make me one

        Unlike AIDS, you don't need semen or other body fluids to transmit monkeypox, so while you were largely safe with a condom or abstaining with AIDS, you could get monkeypox simply by sitting next to someone on subway ride or long flight

        They're literally warning you could catch it from laundry.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        "Plenty of 'straight' men will fuck a dude's hole recreationally" - Somervillain (4719341), totally 'straight' man
        August 4, 2022.

        • I've seen this language emerge over the past month from numerous sources. I'm not conspiracy minded, but it struck me as odd that so many would begin trying to push that narrative at around the same time.

          Doesn't really bother me; I don't care if people are gay or not. I don't even care if they admit it to themselves that they're gay or not. But it struck me as odd.

      • The infections are primarily in men who have sex with men now, but it WILL spread AND mutate

        As the saying goes misery loves company. The only real problem here is now transmission is limited to only a subset of a certain group that happens to be sexually reckless enough to keep the transmission chains alive. If they work hard enough with luck eventually it may mutate enough to spread to everyone but I doubt it. Then hey at least all the members of the group get to celebrate the fact hey its not just us you can't blame us..... don't be discriminatin... all the while young children and the unborn

    • First problem here is that it is transmissible if you don't know you have it.
      Second problem is that it can spread with close contact, it doesn't have to be sexual, it doesn't have to even be be skin-to-skin. It could be in a packed elevator, or in jobs where you have to be close to coworkers, from using gym equipment that wasn't cleaned between uses, etc.
      Third, monkeypox is very rarely fatal and grandma will be ok. Most serious problems occur from opportunistic infections.

      Remember, AIDS was ignored for a l

    • Yeah, this article is ridiculous. It's not a public heath emergency so much as a public health emergency in the gay community. It's essentially an STD, and I'm sure using condoms would help reduce the spread from anal sex.

  • Fun Fact (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @03:44PM (#62762978) Homepage
    We have a vaccine for it. If you've been vaccinated against smallpox, [uclahealth.org] you should have some protection against it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      One if the few cases where I'm glad that at least parts of the Soviet Bloc continued to vaccinate against smallbox until the end of the 80's.
      Though I do wonder how effective the protection still is after all that time.

      I've read about 85% effectiveness against monkeypox, but since sample sizes are still not very large by the looks of it, I suppose time will have to tell.

    • There is no where to actually get the vaccine. Every place is only giving it gay men and even if you lie about that, there are no appointments available for 3 months.

    • We have a vaccine for it. If you've been vaccinated against smallpox, [uclahealth.org] you should have some protection against it.

      The jury is out on the long term effects of the smallpox vaccine. Most sources believe it to be completely ineffective after 35 years, and the efficacy of the vaccine starts dropping after 5-10 years already. It was a vaccine used to get people to survive childhood.

      Given that we stopped giving the vaccine 40 years ago I wouldn't count on the vaccine to afford you any protection.

  • The WHO Also Declared Monkeypox a Crisis (Score:3)

    by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @03:50PM (#62763010) Journal
    They waited too long with Covid. They won't get fooled again.
    • So, they lied about (or at a minimum, uncritically repeated lies) the risk and severity of covid, so now they have to lie and overstate the risk of monkey pox? I don't accept that. By this point in the covid outbreak, there were more people who died from it than have caught monkey pox. Today, maybe five people world-wide have died from monkey pox. What the f-k about that sounds like a crisis?

      Even if the WHO and White House think they are correcting for prior mistakes, they're overcorrecting to such

  • Death is just not scary enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fons_de_spons ( 1311177 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @03:50PM (#62763014)
    I noticed this during discussions about quarantine when COVID was starting.
    Death is not scary... Think of smokers. I believe that if a virus would permanently change our voice to a squeaky high pitched voice and result in extreme flatulence people would really take it seriously. Probably would result in some mild panic.

  • to declare a public health emergency anymore. 6000 cases out of a population of 330,000,000 (or 0.00001818%) doesn’t seem like it warrants an emergency declaration. I guess the government got drunk off the power grabs it made during COVID and now officials want to keep their egos inflated by declaring constant health emergencies to feel important.

    • Monkeypox is still nothing compared to the global-obesity-epidemic [who.int].

      • My chances of getting infected with monkeypox: 0.00001818% (or whatever)
        My chances of getting infected with obesity: 0%

        Yeah, I think I know which is the lesser danger for me. And everyone else making responsible life choices.

      • Obesity isn't contagious and doesn't spread exponentially.

    • Mmmm, yeah, how did waiting for cases to explode BEFORE taking any measures to contain it work with covid? ... Oh right, once you add up the life-years and disability-years, it's gonna turn out to be the most expensive fucking mistake in history.

      Fortunately, monkeypox is not remotely as infectious or virulent nor does it have as short a generation time as covid. The number of cases is growing, but the rate of new cases is slowing rather than accelerating.

      • Mmmm, yeah, how did waiting for cases to explode BEFORE taking any measures to contain it work with covid? ... Oh right, once you add up the life-years and disability-years, it's gonna turn out to be the most expensive fucking mistake in history.

        You mean how did the leftists screaming that travel restrictions to China are racism and trumpism, and WHO screaming that Chinks got everything under control and there's no reason to isolate them, how did that work? Yeah, not so well.

        • " travel restrictions to China are racism and trumpism"

          Travel restrictions to China *but not to Europe*, at the time when the latter was known to be the direct source of more infection being brought into the USA than the former, is racist.

          • " travel restrictions to China are racism and trumpism"

            Travel restrictions to China *but not to Europe*, at the time when the latter was known to be the direct source of more infection being brought into the USA than the former, is racist.

            At most, more like government action being, as always, government being government, few weeks late with respect to actual events, and fit for time when the disease was still mostly confined to China. Still, I don't recall leftists screaming for extension of travel bans to cover Europe, on the contrary.

      • So because they underreacted before, a gross overreaction now is okay? It's an emergency because five people have died and none were in the US?

        This is dangerous. An emergency means more power and money for those who declare it. A health "emergency" means people will accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. So, when an emergency is declared over an outbreak that is clearly not a threat to the public, we should be both suspicious and outraged.

    • Any disease that primarily harms a protected group is going to get a disproportionate response form a democratic administration. In particular the Biden administration is very sensitive to the rather inevitable allegation that it's responding poorly like Reagan did to AIDS.

    • to declare a public health emergency anymore. 6000 cases out of a population of 330,000,000 (or 0.00001818%) doesn’t seem like it warrants an emergency declaration.

      Calm yourself. Public Health Emergency doesn't mean to hide indoors, vaccinate everyone, and freak out. They are literally declared all the time for a large variety of minor (on the national scale) issues.

      You only seem to care about it now because you have some anti-government agenda driven by some hate on how they handled COVID.

      Or did you also freak out during the swineflu outbreak in 2009?
      Or when the red river flooded in North Dakota?
      Or Hurricane Ida?
      Or Wildfires in Oregon?
      Or Hurricane Dorian?

      These were a

    • I suppose a contributing factor is the readiness of people to lie about how it is spread.

  • Information about Monkeypox (Score:5, Informative)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @04:17PM (#62763092)

    Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus. Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal (3-6%, WHO figures. 1%, West African region which this current clade (clade 3) belongs to. The CDC has not yet established a rate.). Monkeypox is not related to chickenpox.

    Monkeypox spreads in a few ways:

    * It can spread to anyone through close, personal, often skin-to-skin contact.
    * Direct contact with monkeypox rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox.
    * Touching objects, fabrics (clothing, bedding, or towels), and surfaces that have been used by someone with monkeypox.
    * Contact with respiratory secretions.
    * Hugging, massage, and kissing.
    * Prolonged face-to-face contact.
    * Touching fabrics and objects during sex that were used by a person with monkeypox and that have not been disinfected.
    * A pregnant person can spread the virus to their fetus through the placenta.
    * It’s also possible for people to get monkeypox from infected animals (albeit rare), either by being scratched or bitten by the animal or by preparing or eating meat or using products from an infected animal. Animals include: Prairie dogs, apes, monkeys, squirrels, marmots, chinchillas, the giant-pouched rat, mice, rabbits, hedgehogs, and shrews. Though no known active infection is spreading through any notable animal population in the US.

    A person with monkeypox can spread it to others from the time symptoms start until the rash has fully healed and a fresh layer of skin has formed. The illness typically lasts 2-4 weeks. Scientists are still researching: If the virus can spread when someone has no symptoms. The spread of the virus through respiratory secretions. If the virus can spread through semen, vaginal fluids, urine, or feces.

    Signs and symptoms are:

    * Fever
    * Headache
    * Swollen lymph nodes
    * Chills
    * Exhaustion
    * Respiratory symptoms (sore throat, nasal congestion, cough)
    * A rash that may be located on the point of contact. (hands, feet, chest, face, mouth, genitals, or anus)

    The rash has several phases, including scabbing, before fully healing. Scabs are infectious. The rash looks like pimples or small blisters that can be painful and/or itchy. Most people will develop a rash, some people have developed a rash with no other symptoms. Monkeypox symptoms usually start within three weeks of exposure to the virus. Flu-like symptoms will develop first with the rash following thereafter by about one to four days. You are infectious from the time symptoms begin until all wounds have FULLY healed. All scabs have fallen off and a fresh layer of skin has fully formed. This is a period of usually two to four weeks after symptoms begin.

    Prevention recommendations by the CDC currently include safe behaviors such as safer sex and social gatherings. Additionally, recommendations are for those who feel they may have been exposed to monkeypox to receive the monkeypox vaccine. The largest vectors in the United States currently are saunas, sex parties, festivals, events, raves, private parties, private clubs, and concerts where skin-to-skin contact, kissing, or sexual encounters may be had. It is recommended that those who feel sick or are experiencing a rash to not attend these gathers and seek guidance from their healthcare provider.

    There are no known treatments for monkeypox. Recommendations are to get plenty of rest and treat symptoms with over the counter medication as issues arise. Antiviral treatments like TPOXX may be recommended for those who become severely ill with the disease. Researchers are currently studying the effects of some antiviral drugs that were developed for smallpox.

    If you have symptoms of monkeypox, you should talk to your healthcare provider, even if you don’t think you had contact with someone who has monkeypox. A PCR test can confirm infection in a person after incubation but before symptoms develop, usually one to two weeks after infection and one week before symptoms appear.

  • So let me get this straight (no pun intended) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:26PM (#62763564)

    A small minority of people are going to keep doing highly irresponsible things like shopping in unsanitary wet markets or having group anal sex orgies and I am the one who will be forced to stop socializing and walk around in bubblewrap to "protect the vulnerable"? I am not a religious nut, but sex is supposed to be special and being indiscriminate carries all kind of risks to self and others. There is no reason a gay couple committed to at least serial monoandry would be at huge risk of AIDS or monkeypox, especially if they are mindful of increased risks and avail themselves of testing, waiting for a few weeks before getting intimate with a new partner and so on. In the same way, someone who wishes to eat exotic meats can do so while observing responsible agricultural practices.

    Or, I am even Ok with individual freedom being supreme, public consequences be damned. But then, don't nag me to still wear a mask in 2022 after 3 Pfizer shots and two bouts of Omicron. Once morons create a totally avoidable public health disaster, the bug is going to spread no matter what I do.

    • "I'm not religious but sex is supposed to be special"

      That's a religious perspective. Sex just is, it wasn't engineered, it just exists, the closest thing to purpose for it is procreation. It's not "supposed" to be anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iamacat ( 583406 )

        Evolution was driven by common challenges human faced when they are evolving. Since women invest major resources of each offspring and require father's support and defense for years, they have been choosy about their partners and immune systems in reproductive organs are not as robust as they are in digestive system for example (and digestive system is not designed to be penetrated from back end). For that matter, we are not designed to live in ultra crowded cities, stay awake way beyond daytime, sit idle a

    • "A small minority of people are going to keep doing highly irresponsible things like..." ...like lying about how monkeypox is spread, they was that you just did?

  • Isolate New York and call it a day?
    https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/m... [cdc.gov]

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