Monkey pox discussion

By request, I thought I’d start a separate thread for monkey pox. The prior discussion was mixed in with the covid main thread, and you can find about a dozen prior posts there with this search.

https://www.fragiledeal.com/search?expanded=true&q=Pox%20topic%3A3655%20after%3A2022-05-01

In many ways, the poor pandemic responses we saw from our health authorities and political leaders are being replicated here as they were with covid early on, and the disease is being allowed to spread without meaningful public health measures. We have learned little it seems, and this in a situation where we already know a lot about the monkey pox virus, have vaccines for it, know how it spreads, etc.

On one hand, it is tempting to say this lax approach is due to the much lower public health threat, the lower disease severity, and mostly being spread by direct contact with obviously symptomatic people. On the other hand, the great reluctance to “stigmatize” the male gay orgies that served as super spreader events in Europe to start the outbreak and the subsequent Pride Month ones have lead to additional unmitigated transmission and suggest otherwise. This makes me think that our leadership is prioritizing woke sensibilities over sensible policy, and at least in the US, they’re working hard on that track record on main fronts.

Feel free to post anything monkey pox related here.

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Admitting the obvious, finally, we have an article that discusses how the gay male community has much much more sexuality activity and sexual partners, and consequently those features lead to the expanding outbreak.

Furthermore, they speculate that if unchecked by vaccination or precautions, which so far have been very limited, monkey pox could persist indefinitely within the gay community via sexual transmission, even though it would not in the heterosexual community due to the lower levels of such activity.

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-the-monkeypox-outbreak-is-mostly-affecting-men-who-have-sex-with-men

suggests the outbreak will keep growing rapidly if the spread isn’t curtailed. It also has implications for how to protect those most at risk and limit spread, while suggesting the risk for the wider population remains low.

Without effective intervention measures or behavioral changes, a large and sustained outbreak with more than 10,000 cases among MSM globally is “highly likely,” they write. “In contrast, sustained transmission in the non-MSM population is unlikely in all scenarios considered.”

Admittedly, for now the way you avoid monkey pox is by not having gay sex with guys, especially guys with pox sores on them. That may not always be the case, since anyone could get the disease, but in practice, those are the people who currently have it so those are the ones you could get it from.

The vast majority of cases in the current outbreak have been in MSM. Researchers at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), for example, asked patients to fill out questionnaires. Of 152 who did, 151 said they were MSM, the team wrote in a technical briefing published on 10 June; the remaining patient refused to answer. Other countries have seen similar patterns.

Of the 152 people in the UKHSA data set, 82 were invited for additional interviews focusing on their sexual health. Among the 45 who participated, 44% reported more than 10 sexual partners in the previous 3 months, and 44% reported group sex during the incubation period.

I had to look up the MSM acronym in the quote from Science magazine. Apparently it’s the latest politically correct term for homosexual men. It stands for men who have sex with men. I just wonder how they handle transgender females who think they are men and have sex with real men? The mind boggles at the permutations.

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Well, not that recent - they came up with it during AIDS. I think the point of MSM is to include bisexual men as well, or men who were actively involved in the “gay” male lifestyle but for whatever reason didn’t like to think of themselves that way (and I suppose if you’re gay and celibate, like some priests, then you’re not a MSM). You can read more hand wringing over this at the NIH from years ago.

Nowadays I guess MSM includes your wife, if she’s thinking masculine thoughts when she’s getting it on with you, and I guess then it would count you too in that situation! The mind boggles.

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The one thing that I can guarantee is that there will be no “tracking” á la the covid trackers. You can bet the farm on that. :smile:

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The thing that caught my attention regarding monkeypox is the scar I see when I look down and to my left, at the upper portion of my left arm. I actually had to use Google to be sure. Apparently I was vaccinated against smallpox, hence also monkeypox, when I was young. However, importantly:

My investigation indicates such routine smallpox vaccinations were DISCONTINUED decades after I was inoculated. I mean, with the passage of so much time you stop paying attention or heed to this stuff. But this means younger people, who might not today be all that young, are at risk for monkeypox.

This is from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

The end of routine smallpox vaccinations in the USA

As you can confirm there, the routine smallpox vaccinations ended circa 1971.

There is never a dull moment in this life. But I am pleased to look at my upper left arm and see that scar.

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Fooled me. I thought he was pointing to the mainstream media.

Seriously, what could be more obvious?

The inmates have seized total control of the asylum.

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Heterosexual sex parties spread it too! Maybe that’s just a New Orleans thing. We are hosting a (mostly straight) swingers convention this week, lol. Hopefully we won’t become the monkey pox capital of the US. They didn’t do too well with Covid either last year.

I’m not that promiscuous of a gay man anymore, but I’m hoping I still have partial immunity from having a smallpox vaccine pre-1972. The scar is gone but I’m certain I used to have one.

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It’s not really a politically correct thing. A sex act doesn’t define one’s sexual orientation. There are plenty of men who sometimes have sex with men who do not identify as a homosexual. MSM is a catchall term to describe them.

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“Tightly connected sexual networks” is one way of putting it, lol. Read this post with the sound of me giggling like a 16-year-old :heart:

That’s the one that looks like a small piranha bite, right? I had one, but have built so many muscles and tanned so much that it’s no longer visible … even with a mirror. :blush:

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One picture worth many words.

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I continue to be struck by the fact there could exist today Americans as old as age fifty who do not have that scar. I mean:

Fifty is well into middle age in my view. I never paid a whit of attention to this; never gave it a thought prior. But now with monkeypox . . . . . .

It’s stunning millions of “younger” Americans do not have that protection.

Smallpox vaccine has real risks, and not just ending up with a bad localized reaction.

The life-threatening complications of post-vaccinial encephalitis and vaccinia necrosum were at least 3 and 1 per million primary vaccinations, respectively. Twenty-nine percent of vaccinees with post-vaccinial encephalitis died and 15% with vaccinia necrosum died.

image

Worked for me. I’m still here many decades later. And I recall no complications - not that I would given how long ago it was that I was vaccinated.

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This is a quite good update article

Briefly, there is community transmission in the UK, mostly London, where people are getting it and they don’t know how. Cases are doubling every two weeks. It’s still nearly entirely in the gay sexual community, and so far no one has died.

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They don’t know how. Really?

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I should have said “they don’t know from whom”, meaning contact tracing isn’t working in some of those cases.

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though it’s hard to spread right now, my main concern would be mutations a la omicron. We have learnt nothing.