11 ms·

This title made me wonder, what ever happened to monkey pox. Turns out that it has more or less died away.

_djo_ 4y ago
It was handled well by global public health authorities, with education campaigns, targeted vaccinations, early warning, treatment, and growing immunity in the most at-risk populations.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Additionally, most of the most-at-risk population has lived through the AIDS horror. A good gay friend of mine roughly summarized it as "we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as important as is my life". Once it was clear that MSM were (once again) a high-risk group, they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. In contrast, the last time the general public has had an issue with a pandemic has been so long ago that deniers and downplayers had an easy game with their bullshit. Had wearing fucking masks not been that politicized, I'd wager a very good portion of the 6.6 million people that died to COVID would still be alive. And to come back to my gay friend, at least in his community there were almost no COVID cases.
  - delecti 4y ago
    > they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. Also vaccination drives. I'm good friends with a few gay guys, and they all rushed to get vaccinated, even despite being in committed long term relationships. There was, metaphorically speaking, absolutely no fucking around with this one.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Great point, and yes that sort of behaviour change and awareness was hugely important.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    I started wearing a mask pretty early on. The first one was a fabric one my mother in law made as it was still at a time when PPE for healthcare workers was a bigger priority. I kept wearing a mask until the overwhelming majority of people around me had long given up. I believed it was the right thing to do regardless but I'm not sure I'm as optimistic as you regarding their effectiveness.
    - galdosdi 4y ago
      Think back to early 2020. A lot of the serious deaths/damage were not due to covid per se, but due to (1) covid being so novel we didn't know how to treat it very well, eg using ventilators in cases that could have just used O2 tanks (2) covid spreading so fast that it was effectively a denial of service attack against the local hospitals. Both of these factors were improvable even by small measures that don't prevent infection but just reduce the severity or probability, slowing down ("flattening the curve") the pandemic and postponing more of the cases till later when there was more capacity as well as better treatment knowledge. As someone who suffered a lot in 2021 due to an illness that was totally unrelated to covid, but that was only so bad because of insufficient medical care available due to the pandemic (literally, some simple better care and tests earlier on would have definitely caught and resolved it, but getting care during the pandemic was a shitshow), I take this aspect quite seriously. I think covid was best understood as a crisis for the medical system than for individuals (relatively speaking) EDIT: fwiw I'm not even disagreeing with you on anything (yes, on HN, I know), just riffing :)
      - VancouverMan 4y ago
    - ajmurmann 4y ago
      I've been wearing masks from early on and only recently stopped wearing them regularly. Now I only wear them when in a crowded situation. I feel how masks were handled was completely botched in many ways. There is the politicization and communication errors. However, I also remain somewhat shocked how we never made any effort to address the biggest, obvious issues with masks to make them more effective. I saw so many studies that showed that a properly fitted mask makes a massive difference in how protective it is compared to other mask types. Where can I get a mask fitted? Never even saw anything about fitting masks other than "it makes a huge difference and we do this for nurses". Clearly much of the air goes around the mask. Sure a little metal piece at the bridge of the nose makes this a little better, but why did nobody seem to work on a proper solution for this? How about a mask with a rubber seal that goes around it? This kind of stuff could have saved thousands of lives, yet we seem to not even have tried. I think the fatality of COVID was just right to create a societal mess. Fatal enough to kill tons of people. But not fatal enough to get everyone on the same page that some sacrifices need to be made to rein it in. At the same time some people also had practically no symptoms, creating more opportunity for disagreement.
  - georgeburdell 4y ago
    I’m glad the community was able to find a solution, and luckily monkey pox was not inherently deadly, but they did not comply with some efforts to mitigate the disease, particularly contact tracing https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-all-but-gives-up-on-contact-tracing-for-17360529.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-all-but-give...
    - _jal 4y ago
      Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked horribly everywhere in the US, as far as I know, outside of more or less defined communities where penalties could attach. And even there is mostly failed when they didn't. Did I miss an instance where it worked well enough to be worth the effort? Add in the fact that the gay community has reasons to be less than thrilled with medical disclosure of this sort and I'm not the least bit surprised.
      - georgeburdell 4y ago
        The CDC is still recommending contact tracing (for Covid), so I imagine they have data to back up its employment.
        MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Or they simply don't want to relinquish whatever funding they may have been allocated for contact tracing, or may receive in the future. Don't trust government agencies to tell you what they need, they'll always ask for a Moon mission.
      - xienze 4y ago
        > Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked horribly everywhere in the US Well yeah, it’s hard to recall the dozens or hundreds of people you may have interacted with over the course of days or weeks. It is however much easier to contract trace sexual partners, unless of course you’re engaging in repeated anonymous sexual encounters...
  - thrwawy4privcy 4y ago
    As a bisexual man I think the LGBT community is getting far too little credit for how they reacted to this. Men getting vaccinated essentially saved the world from more spread at a very critical time. It wasn't just personal responsibility and willingness to get vaccinated and reduce number of partners. Gay men shouted from the rooftops at public health authorities to get them to step up testing, treatment, and vaccination campaigns very early, when many doctors were ignorant, unable or unwilling to take it seriously.
    - hanselot 4y ago
      Are you suggesting that the LGBTQ Community is more at risk for propaganda than other sectors? I ask this as a gay man with some awareness of the history of AZT.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    People are strange... good handwashing standards are likely as important as masks for preventing Covid transmission, but that never got politicized or became controversial for some reason. Also, wearing non-N95 masks appears to be most effective as a means of preventing aerosolized droplets from infected people from spreading to others in public situations. The full PPE system is more for protecting nurses and doctors working with severely ill patients from getting infected.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > People are strange... good handwashing standards are likely as important as masks for preventing Covid transmission, but that never got politicized or became controversial for some reason. It's obvious isn't it? Handwashing isn't a badge you can wear. Meet somebody in public and you'll know if they're wearing a mask or not, but you won't know if they've washed their hands recently.
      - photochemsyn 4y ago
        I don't know if that's enough to explain the hysteria... for example, people have published studies on the effectiveness of handwashing without fearing being attacked on Twitter as agents of misinformation (results are mixed, though generally beneficial, alcohol rubbing seems somewhat less helpful than soap and water, and a good scrubbing is better): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250256/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250256/ > "To develop clear and simple guidance for the public, further work should focus on identifying the specific times when HH should be performed in different communities and situations. In the meantime, current guidelines should be followed and should be based on evidence summarised here. Resources to support frequent hand washing, if hand washing facilities are available, or alternatively ABHR, should be provided in schools, workplaces, and public spaces and HH should continue to be promoted" There are some more recent studies (2022) that take a similar evidence-based approach to masking effectiveness, noting for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9017682/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9017682/ > "The author pointed out that with active COVID-19 patients, who may contaminate the environment, a mask will not protect healthcare workers or other people if they are not accompanied by hand hygiene, eye protection, gloves and a gown." The autopsy of the governmental and medical responses to the pandemic (and the original source of the outbreak) will make for interesting reading for years to come.
  - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
    > we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as important as is my life That's a nice sentiment I guess. Meanwhile my gay friend didn't stop "socialization" during the pandemic except first few early months. According to him he must've had COVID at least 4 times by now. If you add natural immunity, vaccine and asymptotic transmission he was getting exposed to COVID pretty much all the time. This is nothing against gay community. This is against idolozation of certain communities and demonization of certain other communities to fit certain political narrative. Reality is more complex and nuance.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Meanwhile my gay friend didn't stop "socialization" during the pandemic except first few early months. Assuming he is a young man, then caution for the first few months meant he was cautious until mortality statistics revealed that the risk to himself, and presumably his partners, was minimal.
  - VancouverMan 4y ago
    Masking was never inherently a political issue, even if some people tried to make it one. From a purely scientific perspective, and regardless of one's political leanings or preferences, it was obvious from the start that widespread everyday masking simply isn't effective, nor is it practical. If such masking was even just somewhat effective, the entire situation would have been over by mid-2020 at the latest. That clearly wasn't the case. Even in large regions with strictly-enforced masking (even outdoors, in some cases!), combined with numerous other onerous restrictions, we still saw massive case number spikes. Those would not have happened if masking worked. Of course, there are also the numerous harmful effects of masking that must be considered. It causes many accessibility problems, it causes childhood development problems, it causes social strife (including discrimination), it enables abusive policing, and so forth. Hopefully, society as a whole has been reminded how masking just doesn't work, and that's exactly why we didn't bother with it until this recent debacle.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      I'm curious, when you say "masking works" what do you mean? Because you seem to mean it as "prevents 100% of transmission", and therefore anything less than that means masking isn't effective. And that's simply untrue. Masking does, really, truly, assist with covid spread. It doesn't prevent 100% of transmission, because nothing does, especially something that requires active participation, but yeah it helps a lot if people actually do it. It's likely a large part of the reason that I've never caught covid, despite a fairly active social life and continued in-person office work for almost a year now. And why the social events I attend, where you can have a hundred people in close quarters breathing on each other haven't had recorded transmissions, despite recorded isolated cases. > It causes many accessibility problems, it causes childhood development problems, it causes social strife (including discrimination), it enables abusive policing, and so forth. There's no evidence for any of these claims, and in fact you'll find the accessibility community strongly favors masks as immunocompromised people exist. Widespread seasonal masking has been common in other countries for decades (since SARS-1, two decades ago), and there's no evidence that it causes childhood development issues. There's, like, one academic paper whose conclusion is that mask wearing makes it difficult for preschoolers to detect the emotion of a person wearing a mask. But any extension of that to impacts on childhood psychological development isn't academic, it's you making things up.
unixfg 4y ago
The hardest hit community was downright enthusiastic about the MPV vaccine. That makes a HUGE difference.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  The gay community?
Izkata 4y ago
Except it didn't, it fell off the news cycle before the peak in August and people just stopped talking about it. New cases are still happening: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.h...
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I didn't do exhaustive research but the first link I clicked suggested it had dropped by 85%.
- thrwawy4privcy 4y ago
  Community spread is now minimal and decreasing. 7D moving average for US cases was over 400 in August and now it's 29. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/mpx-trends.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/mpx-tre...
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  Yes, it did. It’s down 95% from its peak.
qzx_pierri 4y ago
Monkeypox was always a money grab perpetuated by fear mongering media conglomerates. Those companies found some other "boogeyman" to chew on for the time being. And I'm not denying Monkeypox was real, it was just completely overblown and being used to scare people into clicking on spooky headlines.
- michaericalribo 4y ago
  I think this is needlessly pessimistic. A virus spreading uncontrolled in one of the world’s largest cities? It would be journalistic malpractice _not_ to report on it in the current climate
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    Sometimes the tinfoil hat mindset is appropriate but sometimes it also eats holes in your brain.
    - qzx_pierri 4y ago
      Tinfoil hat mindset? I never denied Monkeypox was real. Unless you're denying that the media consistently designs their content to scare people and spread worry. It's a tried and true business strategy - This fact isn't debatable.

It was handled well by global public health authorities, with education campaigns, targeted vaccinations, early warning, treatment, and growing immunity in the most at-risk populations.

mschuster91 4y ago
Additionally, most of the most-at-risk population has lived through the AIDS horror. A good gay friend of mine roughly summarized it as "we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as important as is my life". Once it was clear that MSM were (once again) a high-risk group, they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. In contrast, the last time the general public has had an issue with a pandemic has been so long ago that deniers and downplayers had an easy game with their bullshit. Had wearing fucking masks not been that politicized, I'd wager a very good portion of the 6.6 million people that died to COVID would still be alive. And to come back to my gay friend, at least in his community there were almost no COVID cases.
- delecti 4y ago
  > they all went back to either reducing contacts or at least wearing condoms. Also vaccination drives. I'm good friends with a few gay guys, and they all rushed to get vaccinated, even despite being in committed long term relationships. There was, metaphorically speaking, absolutely no fucking around with this one.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Great point, and yes that sort of behaviour change and awareness was hugely important.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I started wearing a mask pretty early on. The first one was a fabric one my mother in law made as it was still at a time when PPE for healthcare workers was a bigger priority. I kept wearing a mask until the overwhelming majority of people around me had long given up. I believed it was the right thing to do regardless but I'm not sure I'm as optimistic as you regarding their effectiveness.
  - galdosdi 4y ago
    Think back to early 2020. A lot of the serious deaths/damage were not due to covid per se, but due to (1) covid being so novel we didn't know how to treat it very well, eg using ventilators in cases that could have just used O2 tanks (2) covid spreading so fast that it was effectively a denial of service attack against the local hospitals. Both of these factors were improvable even by small measures that don't prevent infection but just reduce the severity or probability, slowing down ("flattening the curve") the pandemic and postponing more of the cases till later when there was more capacity as well as better treatment knowledge. As someone who suffered a lot in 2021 due to an illness that was totally unrelated to covid, but that was only so bad because of insufficient medical care available due to the pandemic (literally, some simple better care and tests earlier on would have definitely caught and resolved it, but getting care during the pandemic was a shitshow), I take this aspect quite seriously. I think covid was best understood as a crisis for the medical system than for individuals (relatively speaking) EDIT: fwiw I'm not even disagreeing with you on anything (yes, on HN, I know), just riffing :)
    - VancouverMan 4y ago
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    I've been wearing masks from early on and only recently stopped wearing them regularly. Now I only wear them when in a crowded situation. I feel how masks were handled was completely botched in many ways. There is the politicization and communication errors. However, I also remain somewhat shocked how we never made any effort to address the biggest, obvious issues with masks to make them more effective. I saw so many studies that showed that a properly fitted mask makes a massive difference in how protective it is compared to other mask types. Where can I get a mask fitted? Never even saw anything about fitting masks other than "it makes a huge difference and we do this for nurses". Clearly much of the air goes around the mask. Sure a little metal piece at the bridge of the nose makes this a little better, but why did nobody seem to work on a proper solution for this? How about a mask with a rubber seal that goes around it? This kind of stuff could have saved thousands of lives, yet we seem to not even have tried. I think the fatality of COVID was just right to create a societal mess. Fatal enough to kill tons of people. But not fatal enough to get everyone on the same page that some sacrifices need to be made to rein it in. At the same time some people also had practically no symptoms, creating more opportunity for disagreement.
- georgeburdell 4y ago
  I’m glad the community was able to find a solution, and luckily monkey pox was not inherently deadly, but they did not comply with some efforts to mitigate the disease, particularly contact tracing https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-all-but-gives-up-on-contact-tracing-for-17360529.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-all-but-give...
  - _jal 4y ago
    Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked horribly everywhere in the US, as far as I know, outside of more or less defined communities where penalties could attach. And even there is mostly failed when they didn't. Did I miss an instance where it worked well enough to be worth the effort? Add in the fact that the gay community has reasons to be less than thrilled with medical disclosure of this sort and I'm not the least bit surprised.
    - georgeburdell 4y ago
      The CDC is still recommending contact tracing (for Covid), so I imagine they have data to back up its employment.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Or they simply don't want to relinquish whatever funding they may have been allocated for contact tracing, or may receive in the future. Don't trust government agencies to tell you what they need, they'll always ask for a Moon mission.
    - xienze 4y ago
      > Contact tracing in the Covid context has worked horribly everywhere in the US Well yeah, it’s hard to recall the dozens or hundreds of people you may have interacted with over the course of days or weeks. It is however much easier to contract trace sexual partners, unless of course you’re engaging in repeated anonymous sexual encounters...
- thrwawy4privcy 4y ago
  As a bisexual man I think the LGBT community is getting far too little credit for how they reacted to this. Men getting vaccinated essentially saved the world from more spread at a very critical time. It wasn't just personal responsibility and willingness to get vaccinated and reduce number of partners. Gay men shouted from the rooftops at public health authorities to get them to step up testing, treatment, and vaccination campaigns very early, when many doctors were ignorant, unable or unwilling to take it seriously.
  - hanselot 4y ago
    Are you suggesting that the LGBTQ Community is more at risk for propaganda than other sectors? I ask this as a gay man with some awareness of the history of AZT.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  People are strange... good handwashing standards are likely as important as masks for preventing Covid transmission, but that never got politicized or became controversial for some reason. Also, wearing non-N95 masks appears to be most effective as a means of preventing aerosolized droplets from infected people from spreading to others in public situations. The full PPE system is more for protecting nurses and doctors working with severely ill patients from getting infected.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > People are strange... good handwashing standards are likely as important as masks for preventing Covid transmission, but that never got politicized or became controversial for some reason. It's obvious isn't it? Handwashing isn't a badge you can wear. Meet somebody in public and you'll know if they're wearing a mask or not, but you won't know if they've washed their hands recently.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago
      I don't know if that's enough to explain the hysteria... for example, people have published studies on the effectiveness of handwashing without fearing being attacked on Twitter as agents of misinformation (results are mixed, though generally beneficial, alcohol rubbing seems somewhat less helpful than soap and water, and a good scrubbing is better): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250256/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250256/ > "To develop clear and simple guidance for the public, further work should focus on identifying the specific times when HH should be performed in different communities and situations. In the meantime, current guidelines should be followed and should be based on evidence summarised here. Resources to support frequent hand washing, if hand washing facilities are available, or alternatively ABHR, should be provided in schools, workplaces, and public spaces and HH should continue to be promoted" There are some more recent studies (2022) that take a similar evidence-based approach to masking effectiveness, noting for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9017682/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9017682/ > "The author pointed out that with active COVID-19 patients, who may contaminate the environment, a mask will not protect healthcare workers or other people if they are not accompanied by hand hygiene, eye protection, gloves and a gown." The autopsy of the governmental and medical responses to the pandemic (and the original source of the outbreak) will make for interesting reading for years to come.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
  > we gays know how bad diseases can get, and fuck it my dating life even after 2 years of pandemic is not as important as is my life That's a nice sentiment I guess. Meanwhile my gay friend didn't stop "socialization" during the pandemic except first few early months. According to him he must've had COVID at least 4 times by now. If you add natural immunity, vaccine and asymptotic transmission he was getting exposed to COVID pretty much all the time. This is nothing against gay community. This is against idolozation of certain communities and demonization of certain other communities to fit certain political narrative. Reality is more complex and nuance.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Meanwhile my gay friend didn't stop "socialization" during the pandemic except first few early months. Assuming he is a young man, then caution for the first few months meant he was cautious until mortality statistics revealed that the risk to himself, and presumably his partners, was minimal.
- VancouverMan 4y ago
  Masking was never inherently a political issue, even if some people tried to make it one. From a purely scientific perspective, and regardless of one's political leanings or preferences, it was obvious from the start that widespread everyday masking simply isn't effective, nor is it practical. If such masking was even just somewhat effective, the entire situation would have been over by mid-2020 at the latest. That clearly wasn't the case. Even in large regions with strictly-enforced masking (even outdoors, in some cases!), combined with numerous other onerous restrictions, we still saw massive case number spikes. Those would not have happened if masking worked. Of course, there are also the numerous harmful effects of masking that must be considered. It causes many accessibility problems, it causes childhood development problems, it causes social strife (including discrimination), it enables abusive policing, and so forth. Hopefully, society as a whole has been reminded how masking just doesn't work, and that's exactly why we didn't bother with it until this recent debacle.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    I'm curious, when you say "masking works" what do you mean? Because you seem to mean it as "prevents 100% of transmission", and therefore anything less than that means masking isn't effective. And that's simply untrue. Masking does, really, truly, assist with covid spread. It doesn't prevent 100% of transmission, because nothing does, especially something that requires active participation, but yeah it helps a lot if people actually do it. It's likely a large part of the reason that I've never caught covid, despite a fairly active social life and continued in-person office work for almost a year now. And why the social events I attend, where you can have a hundred people in close quarters breathing on each other haven't had recorded transmissions, despite recorded isolated cases. > It causes many accessibility problems, it causes childhood development problems, it causes social strife (including discrimination), it enables abusive policing, and so forth. There's no evidence for any of these claims, and in fact you'll find the accessibility community strongly favors masks as immunocompromised people exist. Widespread seasonal masking has been common in other countries for decades (since SARS-1, two decades ago), and there's no evidence that it causes childhood development issues. There's, like, one academic paper whose conclusion is that mask wearing makes it difficult for preschoolers to detect the emotion of a person wearing a mask. But any extension of that to impacts on childhood psychological development isn't academic, it's you making things up.

unixfg 4y ago

The hardest hit community was downright enthusiastic about the MPV vaccine. That makes a HUGE difference.

nonethewiser 4y ago
The gay community?

Izkata 4y ago

Except it didn't, it fell off the news cycle before the peak in August and people just stopped talking about it. New cases are still happening: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.h...

VBprogrammer 4y ago
I didn't do exhaustive research but the first link I clicked suggested it had dropped by 85%.
thrwawy4privcy 4y ago
Community spread is now minimal and decreasing. 7D moving average for US cases was over 400 in August and now it's 29. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/mpx-trends.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/mpx-tre...
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Yes, it did. It’s down 95% from its peak.

qzx_pierri 4y ago

Monkeypox was always a money grab perpetuated by fear mongering media conglomerates. Those companies found some other "boogeyman" to chew on for the time being. And I'm not denying Monkeypox was real, it was just completely overblown and being used to scare people into clicking on spooky headlines.

michaericalribo 4y ago
I think this is needlessly pessimistic. A virus spreading uncontrolled in one of the world’s largest cities? It would be journalistic malpractice _not_ to report on it in the current climate
- uni_rule 4y ago
  Sometimes the tinfoil hat mindset is appropriate but sometimes it also eats holes in your brain.
  - qzx_pierri 4y ago
    Tinfoil hat mindset? I never denied Monkeypox was real. Unless you're denying that the media consistently designs their content to scare people and spread worry. It's a tried and true business strategy - This fact isn't debatable.