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“I keep getting asked the same question again and again; is this outbreak of monkey pox a real threat, or is this another case of overstated and weaponized public health messaging? I am going to save my answer to this question for the end of this article and instead focus on what monkey pox is, the nature and characteristics of the associated disease, what we know and don’t know…
…The symptoms of monkeypox are somewhat similar to, but much milder than smallpox disease. The general clinical presentation of the disease caused by the West African monkey pox clade virus involves Influenza-like symptoms — fever, body aches, chills — together with swollen lymph nodes. A rash on the palm of the hand is often observed…
…There is no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. In other words, current medical knowledge indicates that it is only spread by person to person contact between an uninfected individual and someone who already has symptoms of the disease. Therefore, disease spread can be readily controlled by classical public health interventions…
…Essentially all of the current cases in the west which we are seeing in the news are among men who have sex with men, and appear to be due to close physical contact. Monkeypox is endemic in many parts of Africa, and is a “zoonotic” virus, meaning it can be transmitted from a variety of animals (not just monkeys) to humans. Initial animal to human transmission followed by limited human to human transmission is probably the cause of the sporadic cases typically observed in Africa. Chicken pox, which is highly transmissible, is not part of the genus
Orthopoxvirus, despite that name “pox.” Once again for emphasis, Cowpox and Camelpox are also in the genus
Orthopoxvirus, and they are not particularly pathogenic when contracted by humans;
just because Monkeypox is a “pox” virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus, does not mean it is particularly deadly…
…Current data indicate that Monkeypox is not very infectious in humans - it has a low Ro (perhaps below 1), which is the term used to describe how efficiency an infectious disease can spread from human to human. Again, this is super good news for containment. An Ro of <1 generally means that (even in the absence of social distancing of other containment measures), for every person already infected, on average less than one other person will become infected. For comparison purposes, the Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 have an Ro in the range of 7 to 10. A virus with an Ro of less than one can be easily contained with the standard public health methods discussed above….
KEY TAKEAWAYS
THIS IS NOT AN INFLUENZA or COVID - this virus mutates slowly, it is not highly infectious, naturally acquired immunity is potent and long lasting, and Orthopox vaccines are usually cross protective. The risk of immunologic escape is very, very low. And the spread of this virus can be readily stopped by simple, inexpensive classical public health measures. If it were otherwise, we would already have experienced a pandemic of Monkeypox decades ago.
Monkeypox disease severity can vary with different clades (found in different regions in Africa, which also suggest the virus has been around for a very long time). Luckily, this particular clade is less severe and appears to be endemic in Africa”
EXCERPTS from Dr Malone’s article:
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/monkey-pox?sd=nfs&s=r
