Goodbye smallpox vaccination, hello monkeypox (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Goodbye smallpox vaccination, hello monkeypox (2010)

nationalgeographic.com

35 pointstosh40 comments

This makes it sound like we (perhaps inadvertently) screwed up and might now be facing pathogen that kills 1 to 10% of the infected and against which we're poorly prepared. You're better off reading something from 2022 by the same author (Ed Yong), a science reporter and Pulitzer winner for his COVID-19 coverage.

https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1527356834260013058

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/monkeypox...

Rehashing smarter people’s arguments:

- monkey pox really doesn’t transfer easily between people. There have been cases of it being brought to Europe/Us before but very little onwards transmission

- a common transmission vector this time appears to be men having sex with men - close contact indeed

- it’s a DNA virus so it doesn’t mutate anywhere near as fast as an RNA virus like flu or Coronaviruses

- people are infectious when symptomatic

- a vaccine already exists, just isn’t in use, and the disease is fairly well understood

Additionally, with a long-ish incubation period of 1-3 weeks, it is likely that cases will still keep going up for a while while awareness increases.

But all in all, it seems like much more easily avoidable than Covid. Even so, it feels like it’s being taken seriously, which is quite reassuring.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/monkeypox-cases-confirmed...

> a common transmission vector this time appears to be men having sex with men - close contact indeed

Wouldn't it be equally likely if a man had sex with a woman? Why has the transmission been more likely for two men to have sex?

Possibly the same reason HIV is more transmissible that way.

I think it'd be more accurate to say "anal sex," rather than sex between men. There's a lot of ways to have gay sex. Men practicing oral sex and frottage are much less likely to transmit HIV, and heterosexual couples can do anal too.

If that is indeed the mechanism, the 'same way as HIV' covers all that.

> monkeypox is not highly transmissible and smallpox vaccine is effective against it. And we have a lot of smallpox vaccine

- commenter in thread

So what's the big deal?

Cases and transmission outside Africa have happened before, but usually in low-single-digit numbers, eg someone contracts the disease in Africa, some household members catch it, end of story. Now we’re easily in double-digits, perhaps into three now across Europe, seemingly from a single original case.

Plenty of reasons not to be too concerned, equally it is rising quickly if things are left as is.

At the end of the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeypox#2022_outbreak

they mention the monkeypox virus being used by Russia in their bioweapons program. I don't believe it would make any sense for them to use it now, but on the other hand, Putin hasn't been behaving rationally for a while.

The Wikipedia article is frequently edited now and this part seems to have been removed

The vaccine isn't used anymore. We'll have to vaccinate younger people from the start.

and the live vaccine is only 85% effective with higher risk of adverse effects (for example for people with eczema https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/eczema/childhood/health-... )

It's weird in hindsight that we didn't develop a vaccine against monkeypox, if it still can be deadly. (Or did we and I am misinformed?) I guess now that we have outbreaks all over the world, it's probably too late to start another COVID like effort.

Because monkeypox is not highly transmissible and smallpox vaccine is effective against it. And we have a lot of smallpox vaccine.

https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1527358140941234176

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/monkeypox...

The USG just ordered 13 million doses of Monkeypox vaccine: https://fortune.com/2022/05/19/monkeypox-vaccine-purchase-20...

BARDA officials say the order was not related to the monkeypox cases.

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/20/smallpox-vaccine-order-monk...

There is one vaccine JYNNEOS that is effective against monkey pox

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