4 ms·

If it disfigures you just the same as monkeypox, is it a distinction with a difference?

OccamsMirror 4y ago
woodruffw 4y ago
Yes, because it’s a different disease. Radiation sickness will give you burns, but normal burn ward treatments won’t work on it.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > Yes, because it’s a different disease So are monkeypox and smallpox, right? Related, but different diseases. So are this year's strain of influenza, and the Spanish Flu. Related, but different diseases. Should extant monkeypox cause more alarm than extant influenza?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    “Related” being the operative word. Chickenpox is not meaningfully related to the virus family that causes smallpox and monkeypox. Nothing is a priori worthy of more or less alarm. Public health officials raise a degree of alarm based on the best epidemiological, medical, and demographic information available to them.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      I'm talking about the relationship between monkeypox and smallpox, vs the relationship between 2022's influenza and the spanish flu. These are both respectively in the same virus families. No? Smallpox is concerning, monkeypox as it is today isn't very concerning. If I understand the comments in this thread, the great concern is that monkeypox could become something quite deadly like smallpox was. Is that risk substantially greater than the risk of a new influenza that rips through the population like the Spanish Flu once did?
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        These are questions for your public health officials, not me. I’m merely invested in correcting your previously incorrect statements; any questions of epidemiology are best left to them. Presuming that you’re interested in their answers, of course.
        ethbr0 4y ago
        The other note I'd make is industrial vaccination capacity. We've gotten pretty damn good at identifying, synthesizing, manufacturing, and distributing influenza vaccines at scale on a yearly basis. If a deadly influenza strain is in our future, we're decently prepared. On the other hand, we haven't manufactured or administered human pox vaccinations at scale in... 50 years?
        Izkata 4y ago
        Flu shot effectiveness averages around 35-40%. It used to be higher on average and has been dropping over the past decade.
      - lamontcg 4y ago
        Endemic seasonal influenza didn't just recently acquire the ability to jump to humans. Even considering the 2009 H1N1 pandemic the H1 protein is descended from the human strain which circulated in 1918-1957 and there was still enough immunity in the human race in 2009 to make that virus not that novel. This monkeypox virus is brand new to the human immune system.
      - sterlind 4y ago
        We understand how the flu behaves. We've had >100 years of flus and Spanish Flu only happened once. The only experience we have with poxes in humans is smallpox and monkeypox. Smallpox was not a good time. Past monkeypox outbreaks have killed 5%. This one is behaving very differently, but we don't know if it's going to revert to killing people! It has in the past, like every outbreak, so it's a rational worry.
  - Retric 4y ago
    It’s not quite as simple as stating they are different diseases. These diseases are caused by single celled organisms which keep spawning clones rather than having sex among a population. So the point you call a different COVID or influenza strain a different disease is effectively arbitrary unlike with sexual species where you can draw the line when they can’t breed with each other.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is arbitrary? How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't seem like an arbitrary distinction to me.
      - Retric 4y ago
        Different strains of monkeypox and smallpox have wildly different fatality rates. Variola minor is a strain of smallpox with fatality rates under 1%, while some strains of monkey pox are believed to kill 10% of the infected. In the end where exactly we draw the line within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus is arbitrary, but not without justification.
      - kingofpandora 4y ago
        Wow you are really doubling down on being right about a statement that was factual wrong ...
      - didibus 4y ago
        > The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is arbitrary? All differences between two things is always arbitrary. This is something I wish more people understood. Two different things are never the same thing. You can come up with similarities based on arbitrary criteria, and that's all. For example, what we consider make two different person a woman is arbitrary criteria that we just all agree on, or debate forever. > How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't seem like an arbitrary distinction to me You want to engage in that "forever debate of semantics", but I don't think that's your point. Currently, it's agreed on taxonomy that chickenpox is not on the same family as monkeypox and smallpox. That's just agreed upon arbitrary categories. Now the arbitrary doesn't mean useless. Often categories are chosen based on some practical aspect. For example it helps to group them if they have a similar behavior in some way that is often helpful to group in the default case. An example of this is how in culinary science, a Tomato is made a Vegetable, because it's more useful to club vegetables around their flavor profile. You most of the time don't want to use a Tomato for a recipe that calls for fruits. But in botanical science, flavor isn't useful, it's more useful to think in terms of what contain seeds, thus a Tomato is made a fruit. Each science uses their own arbitrary classification based on what is more practically useful for their line of research. Ok, so I think your point isn't to try and tell virologists that their chosen taxonomy isn't as optimal for their line of research. But that in the case of public policy and messaging, virulence might be more important. Even though both virus are of the same family, there is still a major difference in their virulence. And maybe that property holds more weight in this case. I think that's a great point, but that you were arguing wrong by attacking the definition instead of bringing up the characteristic of importance and explaining why. Now this is as much as I know of virology, so I can't say if there are good reasons to be worried about the chances of virulence changing because they are in the same family or not. But I'd say you're right, virulence is what the public cares about, and it be nicer for virologist to explain the chances of the virulence getting worse through some mutations and if they think it's high, why, or if they think it's low, why.
bad416f1f5a2 4y ago
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I try to bring my best self to HN in all comments. It was a good question.
- ColanR 4y ago
  > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
- lfpeb8b45ez 4y ago
  “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” - Arnold Schwarzenegger
ethbr0 4y ago
It's the difference between being worried that a dog is going to act wolf-like, versus a chicken is going to act wolf-like. The herpes lineage is no joke, especially given recent evidence for long-term effects, but Orthopoxviruses has some nasty members (for humans and other economically-important species).
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  So it's not about Monkeypox as it exists today, but a fear of what Monkeypox might become if it changed into something it presently isn't? Because as it is, it seems to kill very few people but gives people disfiguring scars. Like chickenpox.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I can't speak for the WHO, but that would be my assumption. And when I say "nasty Orthopoxviruses," I mean ~25% case fatality rate in the affected species, with an increased fatality rate in infants. So... pretty horrible stuff. :( These numbers seem squishy (keep an eye on the situational caveats they note for a specific row), but lists relative CFRs for different diseases. Chickenpox probably isn't going to kill you, unless you're a pregnant mother who acquires it in a specific window: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fatality_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...
  - jhugo 4y ago
    The repeated mentions of chickenpox are weird. Apart from ending in the same sequence of three characters chickenpox and monkeypox/smallpox have nothing in common. The name similarity is accidental.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      A linguistic artifact from a time when we classified diseases by symptoms, because we had not yet acquired our modern genetic tools. :)
stjohnswarts 4y ago
A different "species" of a virus is as different as you or I are from a dog, so yeah it's a distinction that matters.

Yes, because it’s a different disease. Radiation sickness will give you burns, but normal burn ward treatments won’t work on it.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> Yes, because it’s a different disease So are monkeypox and smallpox, right? Related, but different diseases. So are this year's strain of influenza, and the Spanish Flu. Related, but different diseases. Should extant monkeypox cause more alarm than extant influenza?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  “Related” being the operative word. Chickenpox is not meaningfully related to the virus family that causes smallpox and monkeypox. Nothing is a priori worthy of more or less alarm. Public health officials raise a degree of alarm based on the best epidemiological, medical, and demographic information available to them.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    I'm talking about the relationship between monkeypox and smallpox, vs the relationship between 2022's influenza and the spanish flu. These are both respectively in the same virus families. No? Smallpox is concerning, monkeypox as it is today isn't very concerning. If I understand the comments in this thread, the great concern is that monkeypox could become something quite deadly like smallpox was. Is that risk substantially greater than the risk of a new influenza that rips through the population like the Spanish Flu once did?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      These are questions for your public health officials, not me. I’m merely invested in correcting your previously incorrect statements; any questions of epidemiology are best left to them. Presuming that you’re interested in their answers, of course.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        The other note I'd make is industrial vaccination capacity. We've gotten pretty damn good at identifying, synthesizing, manufacturing, and distributing influenza vaccines at scale on a yearly basis. If a deadly influenza strain is in our future, we're decently prepared. On the other hand, we haven't manufactured or administered human pox vaccinations at scale in... 50 years?
        Izkata 4y ago
        Flu shot effectiveness averages around 35-40%. It used to be higher on average and has been dropping over the past decade.
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      Endemic seasonal influenza didn't just recently acquire the ability to jump to humans. Even considering the 2009 H1N1 pandemic the H1 protein is descended from the human strain which circulated in 1918-1957 and there was still enough immunity in the human race in 2009 to make that virus not that novel. This monkeypox virus is brand new to the human immune system.
    - sterlind 4y ago
      We understand how the flu behaves. We've had >100 years of flus and Spanish Flu only happened once. The only experience we have with poxes in humans is smallpox and monkeypox. Smallpox was not a good time. Past monkeypox outbreaks have killed 5%. This one is behaving very differently, but we don't know if it's going to revert to killing people! It has in the past, like every outbreak, so it's a rational worry.
- Retric 4y ago
  It’s not quite as simple as stating they are different diseases. These diseases are caused by single celled organisms which keep spawning clones rather than having sex among a population. So the point you call a different COVID or influenza strain a different disease is effectively arbitrary unlike with sexual species where you can draw the line when they can’t breed with each other.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is arbitrary? How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't seem like an arbitrary distinction to me.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Different strains of monkeypox and smallpox have wildly different fatality rates. Variola minor is a strain of smallpox with fatality rates under 1%, while some strains of monkey pox are believed to kill 10% of the infected. In the end where exactly we draw the line within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopoxvirus is arbitrary, but not without justification.
    - kingofpandora 4y ago
      Wow you are really doubling down on being right about a statement that was factual wrong ...
    - didibus 4y ago
      > The difference between monkeypox and smallpox is arbitrary? All differences between two things is always arbitrary. This is something I wish more people understood. Two different things are never the same thing. You can come up with similarities based on arbitrary criteria, and that's all. For example, what we consider make two different person a woman is arbitrary criteria that we just all agree on, or debate forever. > How many people are dropping dead from it? It doesn't seem like an arbitrary distinction to me You want to engage in that "forever debate of semantics", but I don't think that's your point. Currently, it's agreed on taxonomy that chickenpox is not on the same family as monkeypox and smallpox. That's just agreed upon arbitrary categories. Now the arbitrary doesn't mean useless. Often categories are chosen based on some practical aspect. For example it helps to group them if they have a similar behavior in some way that is often helpful to group in the default case. An example of this is how in culinary science, a Tomato is made a Vegetable, because it's more useful to club vegetables around their flavor profile. You most of the time don't want to use a Tomato for a recipe that calls for fruits. But in botanical science, flavor isn't useful, it's more useful to think in terms of what contain seeds, thus a Tomato is made a fruit. Each science uses their own arbitrary classification based on what is more practically useful for their line of research. Ok, so I think your point isn't to try and tell virologists that their chosen taxonomy isn't as optimal for their line of research. But that in the case of public policy and messaging, virulence might be more important. Even though both virus are of the same family, there is still a major difference in their virulence. And maybe that property holds more weight in this case. I think that's a great point, but that you were arguing wrong by attacking the definition instead of bringing up the characteristic of importance and explaining why. Now this is as much as I know of virology, so I can't say if there are good reasons to be worried about the chances of virulence changing because they are in the same family or not. But I'd say you're right, virulence is what the public cares about, and it be nicer for virologist to explain the chances of the virulence getting worse through some mutations and if they think it's high, why, or if they think it's low, why.

bad416f1f5a2 4y ago

ethbr0 4y ago
I try to bring my best self to HN in all comments. It was a good question.
ColanR 4y ago
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
lfpeb8b45ez 4y ago
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

ethbr0 4y ago

It's the difference between being worried that a dog is going to act wolf-like, versus a chicken is going to act wolf-like. The herpes lineage is no joke, especially given recent evidence for long-term effects, but Orthopoxviruses has some nasty members (for humans and other economically-important species).

MichaelCollins 4y ago
So it's not about Monkeypox as it exists today, but a fear of what Monkeypox might become if it changed into something it presently isn't? Because as it is, it seems to kill very few people but gives people disfiguring scars. Like chickenpox.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I can't speak for the WHO, but that would be my assumption. And when I say "nasty Orthopoxviruses," I mean ~25% case fatality rate in the affected species, with an increased fatality rate in infants. So... pretty horrible stuff. :( These numbers seem squishy (keep an eye on the situational caveats they note for a specific row), but lists relative CFRs for different diseases. Chickenpox probably isn't going to kill you, unless you're a pregnant mother who acquires it in a specific window: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fatality_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...
- jhugo 4y ago
  The repeated mentions of chickenpox are weird. Apart from ending in the same sequence of three characters chickenpox and monkeypox/smallpox have nothing in common. The name similarity is accidental.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    A linguistic artifact from a time when we classified diseases by symptoms, because we had not yet acquired our modern genetic tools. :)

stjohnswarts 4y ago

A different "species" of a virus is as different as you or I are from a dog, so yeah it's a distinction that matters.