‘Shocking’ Monkeypox Screw-Up Means We Need to Admit We Now Face Two PandemicsDavid Axe
Fri, July 15, 2022
We blew our chance to quickly contain monkeypox. Now the dangerous virus is spreading fast all over the world.
Health experts agree: the outbreak could soon qualify as a pandemic, if it doesn’t already. And the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. More infections, more deaths, more chances for the pox to mutate.
“We are in uncharted territory with this outbreak… and still early in the event,” James Lawler, an infectious disease expert and a colleague of Wiley at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told The Daily Beast.
The latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are startling. The CDC tallied 9,647 infections as of July 11. That’s a fourfold increase compared to just a month ago.
The virus, which causes a rash and fever and can be fatal in a very small percentage of cases, is in 63 countries—57 of which don’t usually have any monkeypox cases.
Cases are concentrated in West and Central Africa—where the virus is endemic—as well as in Europe, where the current outbreak began in May. But the U.S. is logging a startling number of cases, as well: 865 in 39 states, according to the CDC. That’s five times as many as a month ago.
“Monkeypox is clearly a global health emergency,” Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University global-health expert, told The Daily Beast. “It has simmered in small pockets in Central and West Africa for decades, but until now there have been no cases unrelated to travel in the rest of the world. Now it is in virtually every region of the world and spreading rapidly.”
The death rate, mercifully, is still low. As of July 4, the most recent date for which figures are available, the World Health Organization had recorded just three deaths in the current outbreak.
Three out of 9,647—or .03 percent—is a much lower death rate than West and Central African countries apparently suffered in their own pox outbreaks in recent decades. The worst African outbreaks, involving a strain of the virus that’s endemic to the Congo River Basin in Central Africa, have resulted in official death rates as high as 10 percent.
But the more viruses spread, the more they mutate—often in ways that make them deadlier. As long as monkeypox spreads faster than health authorities can contain it, the greater the risk it’s going to spawn new, more dangerous variants, potentially driving up the death toll.
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Source:
https://news.yahoo.com/shocking-monkeypox-screw-means-admit-030643200.html
