Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surge | Hacker News Reader

Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surge

theguardian.com

117 pointsjasonhansel110 comments

Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category of emergency since it was defined 2009[1], so a little more frequently than every other year. Likely only one of those emergencies significantly affected most people in developed countries. I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Emergency_of_I...

Is it hard to believe that the WHO declaring something a global health emergency might be the direct cause of reduced infections/spread of these diseases?

Well, yes.

> Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category of emergency since it was defined 2009

I too read the second sentence in this article.

> Likely only one of those emergencies significantly affected most people in developed countries. I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

This declaration isn't calling for you to change your behavior. On the contrary, it's for international health communities to start coordinating before the disease has a chance to become widespread so that you can continue with your unchanged behavior.

I thought it was a pretty important sentence.

Mainly I wanted to balance out the comments on this thread a bit as there were many which seemed overly cautious/mildly alarmist and there were too many comparisons to covid which is not particularly similar except for being a virus and causing one of these declarations.

6 mos ago when this pathogen entered the news cycle, virologists reassured that monkey pox was a stable, well-researched dna virus that didn't mutate rapidly like Covid does. Except, come to find out a few mos and a few thousand cases later, it does. https://www.dw.com/en/monkeypox-virus-mutations-challenging-...

> I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

That's irrelevant.

According to the CDC:

> Infections with the type of monkeypox virus identified in this outbreak ... are rarely fatal. Over 99% of people who get this form of the disease are likely to survive. However, people with ... a history of eczema ... may be more likely to ... die.

https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html

I feel simultaneous relief and terror. While I do feel that the eczema part I've highlighted is probably some standard language around risk to people with immune conditions, I do wonder how much of a higher risk eczema poses in cases like this.

Monkeypox is a disease that is deadlier for children than adults. It's estimated to kill 15% of children.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478203/

Depends on which strain. The strain in this outbreak appears mild.

“Appears mild” when we don’t know a damn thing about Long COVID yet is quite the stretch.

Unlike Covid, which is a relatively new family of virus to us, humans have hundreds of years with this family of disease

We have a much firmer foundation of understanding monkeypox and it’s long term effects

Erm, we've been dealing with coronovirus since the Spanish Flu at least. It seems that any new strain can contain surprises.

Spanish flu is an orthomyxovirus, not a coronavirus. There are some cold-causing coronaviruses though.

My understanding is that we don’t know for sure wha kind of virus caused Spanish flu (it occurring before our ability to analyse this kind of thing). What are you badi by your assertion that it was an orthomyxovirus on?

Scientists have been able to retrieve genetic material from the remains of those who are confirmed to have died during that pandemic. They've effectively sequenced the genome even to know how it relates to other flu viruses https://www.news.vcu.edu/article/Genetic_sequencing_of_deadl...

You might be thinking of the 1889-90 "flu" pandemic which has been theorized to be from a coronavirus known now as OC43, but it's not certain.

Could explain a little more what you mean. I have come to understand that covid belongs to the family of corona viruses that are responsible for about 15% of all colds. This monkeypox virus also belongs to a family of viruses that most of us got infected with as a child and that also has some long term effects as it can cause shingles. This monkeypox virus could also have unexpected long term effects with, for example, very severe forms of shingles.

No, monkeypox is unrelated to shingles/chickenpox. Despite the dual confusing names (chickenpox/varicella zoster) shingles is not an orthopoxvirus, but a herpesvirus. The herpesviruses do tend to cause chronic dormant infection which can reactivate.

Monkeypox isn't new. There have been hundreds of human infections since the 1950s before this recent outbreak, and it is closely related (enough for complete-cross immunity) to the other orthopoxes, which are some of the most studied viruses ever. So we know a fair bit. Pox viruses do not cause a chronic and permanent infection. A person usually either recovers and becomes immune, or dies.

the strongest predictor for long Covid is having a previously diagonosed anxiety disorder, hinting that long covid is mostly placebo effect

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905

Anxiety is generally correlated with systemic markers of inflammation though, so there could be some hidden variables there. Perhaps having an overly sensitive immune system predisposes one to both anxiety and long Covid, or perhaps the physical effects of anxiety on the body predispose people to maladaptive immune responses to Covid, or etc. etc.

Physical (as in, clinical?!) anxiety can be the cause of what you know as anxiety.

Having had a doctor write me off as a hypochondriac because of physical anxiety I was experiencing due to a toxicity issue...I can safely say your medical beliefs are potentially dangerous to others.

...because mostly adults have been infected so far, in whom the virus is not very deadly.

No, because there are two distinct lineages, and the lineage that's is spreading right now is the less deadly lineage.

That said, there have been additional mutations, that may be responsible for it spreading so much, or not, or may have other effects.

Monkeypox mutates much more slowly than, say, flu or SARS-CoV-2, so it seems unlikely to have a quick change in its effects, but (nearly) everything is possible in biology.

Wow, thank you for pointing this out. I have eczema and would've never though it would increase my risk against *Monkeypox*. Wild, but glad I'm better informed.

Eczema appears to be a major risk factor for serious complications from the standard smallpox vaccines. Presumably this is related.

I'm less worried about fatality and more worried about long-term health consequences.

COVID worries me, but not because it might kill me. I'm more worried about long-term brain fog and respiratory problems. I'm more worried about being permanently disabled. I'm worried about having to life a kind of life where I feel like I'm substantially less than I once was.

But back to the point, I'm curious what the odds are of getting monkeypox and never quite fully recovering from it.

The thing that worries me about COVID-19 is the accumulative effect, too. It's a highly-contagious diseases, i.e. without measures you're gonna have it repeatedly, i.e. several times per year, it spreads so fast, it mutates so fast, and each time you go thru it results into a lasting damage, which over several infections, could turn debilitating or fatal. I puzzle how much people misunderstand it and still compare it to the flu!

The same could be with monkeypox, which I think would scare people more due to the possible scarring - people only care about things they can see! They can't see the brain/kidney/heart damage, so, they totally ignore it! But, man, these boils are terrifying and the scars would be terrifying, too, so, I expect people to take it way more seriously than COVID-9!

See also subsequent reemergence, similar to Shingles. Herpes infections are forever hiding from your immune system among the neurons.

Just because covid turned out to be a global disaster doesn't mean everything will be. There were multiple SARS outbreaks in the ever so pleasant 2000's. Oh Ebola might have gone airborne in the 90's and has made some cameos since then.

We all dropped the ball on covid, but that doesn't mean everything is going to get the same foothold. I guess what I'm saying is that I will wash my groceries again if something crazy shows up but let's not assume global pandemics are just going to kick off constantly.

> The director-general noted that the WHO's Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulation was "unable to reach a consensus" on whether to make the declaration itself (he actually over-ruled the committee which voted 9 to 6 against the declaration), compelling Tedros to make the declaration on his own.

> “For all of these reasons I have decided

Interesting that he chose "I" over "we". I wonder if there was internal dissent during the forming of the resolution.

It's because the International Health Regulations confer the power to declare a PHEIC on the WHO's Director General alone, rather than the WHO as a whole (or any Emergency Committee established under it).

I wish there was more accountability for International Institution.

Saying "WHO Director Declare X" is obviously more accountable than "WHO said X must do Y" with a shadow comity deciding for 7 billion people and claiming it's not their fault when they are wrong...

Seems to be mainly affecting the LGBTQ+ community.

Which in the U.S. would be perceived to be quite a major issue:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/147824/adults-estimate-american...

(This is one of my favorite stats.)

No doubt due to the fact that LGBTQ characters are dramatically over-represented in US media.

Likely because of significant overrepresentation in today's media/news.

For similar reasons, Americans consistently overestimate blacks and Hispanics' share of the US population. They estimate on average that 33% are black and 29% Hispanic when the true figure is less than 13% for each. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3ncaz8/til_th...>

Mostly the G community

Once again not caring about spending time with people in person turns out to be the ultimate survival life hack.

I don’t know, social isolation also carries some pretty substantial risks -

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-old....

> Dr. Cacioppo’s research found that being alone and loneliness are different but related. Social isolation is the objective physical separation from other people (living alone), while loneliness is the subjective distressed feeling of being alone or separated. It’s possible to feel lonely while among other people, and you can be alone yet not feel lonely.

Alone but not lonely, life hacked.

As long as you don’t have anal sex with them you can meet up with whoever you like https://www.eugyppius.com/p/urgent-monkeypox-alert-some-new-...

Defeats the purpose of meeting up with them then

Monkeypox is transmitted via close and extended contact, that's not limited to anal sex by any stretch of the imagination.

I would hope that the spread would slow down by now with more news and education about how it spread but no dice. Sigh...

What’s the r0

Historically it was about 1. Presumably it has been a little larger with this outbreak.

I wonder, is public WCs (like in the office) a potent vector for this disease?

I’m skeptical. I feel after agencies declare global health emergencies such as for COVID, they become more willing to declare another one for something not as severe. I see no cause for alarm until I actually hear of local cases.

I do know a few people who've had COVID. I don't know a single one, not even a FOAF, who's had MP.

Does anyone?

They’re declaring it an emergency so you don’t know folks next month who’ve had it. That’s the point?

Didn’t everyone say that when Covid started? Now you’d be hard press to find someone who doesn’t know someone who had it (or had it themselves)

I think when it (lockdown, not the initial spread) started everyone knew a friend of a friend who heard about someone with it. Degrees of connection.

Indeed there were posts on this forum in the early days about it with first hand accounts. No such accounts with this so far?

Personally, a school friend was one of the first cases in the country.

If you have any friends in queer community, ask them and you’ll find a plenty data points.

I think I have it now. Not 100% sure though.

Time to lock up again. Can't let it to start to spread. We must learn from Covid.

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