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No, it probably won't spread nearly as well outside the gay community, and never become anything resembling Covid (or smallpox fortunately...). But it's spread

by zosima 4y ago

No, it probably won't spread nearly as well outside the gay community, and never become anything resembling Covid (or smallpox fortunately...). But it's spread so extensively in the gay community, that it's also going to infect people outside that community now. And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans, it may mutate to become much more human-to-human transmissible. (like Covid did)

CWuestefeld 4y ago
There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans This has already been the case for a long time, maybe forever? It's endemic in parts of Africa, just never managed to gain much of a foothold outside that area. But even without that movement, the petri dish for such mutations has been open for business for quite a while.
stu2b50 4y ago
> And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. But in this case, we already have a vaccine for it. In the US at least, once we start opening up smallpox vaccine reserves, if you're in the gay community and you have a lot of partners, seems like a no-brainer to get the vaccine and be done with the risk of tissue-scarring pox.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Seems like a no-brainer for most people to get the covid vaccine too, and yet something like 1 in 5 haven’t done it, and maybe up to half aren’t fully vaccinated. There’s also the question of availability and it currently isn’t clear how available the monkeypox vaccinations are.
  - stu2b50 4y ago
    Compared to COVID, monkeypox is much harder to spread (as you can see in the statistics - it's mainly in one very specific group, gay men in specific cities within specific subcommunities where members have a lot of sexual partners), and in some sense, more eyebrow raising results. It's likely that Monkeypox is actually less deadly than COVID, but the possibility of lesions growing on your genitals, anus, mouth that with a quite high possibility leads to permanent tissue scaring is quite frightening. The fact that it's mainly in populations of gay men in San Francisco and New York also help - I would wager that cross section of the population is heavily left leaning, and heavily vaccine supportive. The monkeypox vaccine is just the smallpox vaccine. The US has a stockpile of it and it is still given to military members.

by zosima 4y ago

CWuestefeld 4y ago

There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans This has already been the case for a long time, maybe forever? It's endemic in parts of Africa, just never managed to gain much of a foothold outside that area. But even without that movement, the petri dish for such mutations has been open for business for quite a while.

stu2b50 4y ago

> And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. But in this case, we already have a vaccine for it. In the US at least, once we start opening up smallpox vaccine reserves, if you're in the gay community and you have a lot of partners, seems like a no-brainer to get the vaccine and be done with the risk of tissue-scarring pox.

wwweston 4y ago
Seems like a no-brainer for most people to get the covid vaccine too, and yet something like 1 in 5 haven’t done it, and maybe up to half aren’t fully vaccinated. There’s also the question of availability and it currently isn’t clear how available the monkeypox vaccinations are.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  Compared to COVID, monkeypox is much harder to spread (as you can see in the statistics - it's mainly in one very specific group, gay men in specific cities within specific subcommunities where members have a lot of sexual partners), and in some sense, more eyebrow raising results. It's likely that Monkeypox is actually less deadly than COVID, but the possibility of lesions growing on your genitals, anus, mouth that with a quite high possibility leads to permanent tissue scaring is quite frightening. The fact that it's mainly in populations of gay men in San Francisco and New York also help - I would wager that cross section of the population is heavily left leaning, and heavily vaccine supportive. The monkeypox vaccine is just the smallpox vaccine. The US has a stockpile of it and it is still given to military members.