Hacker News Reader

Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

...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.

“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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com