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Comment by Hellion | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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