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Comment by admissionsguy | Hacker News Reader

I am disturbed and worried by the infectious disease alarmism that the 21st century's safetyism has metastasized into.

Agreed, Corona has made us hyper sensitive to fears of illness. I hope this blows over.

For example monkeypox does not have the potential to have even close to an impact like Corona to the population and health system. Simply because most people are not promiscuous. Fears that it will involve to something spreading significantly beyond sexual encounters are unfounded at present. Edit: Like I said: significantly. I know it can spread in other ways but it's not doing so at levels which are harmful to society as a whole.

And I'm not saying it's just an LGBTIQ+ thing either, like most of the media are doing now. But it does spread mostly through sex right now which eliminates it as a risk for most of the population (being monogamous) and thus as the possibility of completely stopping society like Covid did (and i'm saying that as a person who is not monogamous)

I'm not saying it's harmless and yes we have to fight it but it's not another covid.

Illness is a risk and one that we can't ban completely. We just have to deal with it, and it's not worth completely throwing our lives around to have a minor effect on that risk.

> Monkeypox can spread to anyone through close, personal, often skin-to-skin contact, including:

> - Direct contact with monkeypox rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox.

> - Touching objects, fabrics (clothing, bedding, or towels), and surfaces that have been used by someone with monkeypox.

> - Contact with respiratory secretions.

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

And yet if you look at the number of cases separated by sexes, it paints a whole different picture.

That might be skewed due to testing practices, lots of places will only test you if you're a homosexual or bisexual male.

African monkeypox cases, for example, are not concentrated among gay men. 60% of the affected are men and 40% are women:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

I doubt that it's a testing thing. Very few cases are asymptomatic and the disease gives a really painful rash. It is very unlikely to pass unnoticed.

I do agree that it's not just gay men. I'm sure it will/has already spread to swinger clubs etc. But I do think it is related to promiscuity in general, meaning most of the population will not be affected. The cases originating from non-sexual interaction are a really small minority.

I think the men/women disparity is not really due to homosexuality but because due to societal views. A man who is promiscuous is viewed a as a 'cool go-getter'. A promiscuous woman is viewed as a 'slut' (Note: I don't agree with that!!). So it's just more common in men at first.

>I think the men/women disparity is not really due to homosexuality but because due to societal views. A man who is promiscuous is viewed a as a 'cool go-getter'. A promiscuous woman is viewed as a 'slut' (Note: I don't agree with that!!). So it's just more common in men at first.

So women are immune? This theory makes no sense.

Absolutely not.

I'm just saying they are less likely to engage in this kind of activity due to societal stigma, so it will appear in lower numbers and later for them.

But the men if they are not homosexual must be having sex with women, right? Have you seen the proportions? Because this is not a 2:1 kind of thing.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Your theory is that a few select women are massive whores?

> Your theory is that a few select women are massive whores?

You keep putting words in my mouth. And furthering the stigma I'm arguing against.

I will not continue discussing in this thread.

> I doubt that it's a testing thing. Very few cases are asymptomatic and the disease gives a really painful rash. It is very unlikely to pass unnoticed.

It does not matter, testing capability was – still is? – quite limited and if you didn't belong to an at-risk group, test sites would just send you home.

>I think the men/women disparity is not really due to homosexuality but because due to societal views.

Those same societal views make it so women are more likely to underreport their number of sex partners, whereas men are more likely to overreport. Even without taking that into account, the numbers are not that different, with men having more extremely outliers (more zeroes, more super high counts).

The social stigma hasn't been relevant for decades beyond muddying self-reports.

It can yes but it does not do so significantly, that's the difference.

Its current patterns show it's not spreading that way at levels that could be harmful to society.

Bit of a nitpick, but it was not Corona which conducted a psychological operation against the global population, it was people.

Unless promiscuity has gone way way up in recent years, it seems like something else might be going on. There have been previous outbreaks of monkeypox outside of Africa, including in the US about 20 years ago. They all pretty rapidly petered out.

Why is this one different?

Because this one spreads more though sexual contact. It's already been confirmed this is not the same variant that made it out of Africa before.

It appears as alarmism until the evolutionary dice roll lands on "Ebola-like severity with Covid-like infectiousness". Some prudent concern and hard thinking being applied to unpredictable tail risks isn't alarmism.

This isn't a far-fetched as you might think. This damned virus seems to mutate at an alarmingly fast rate.

Which happened with the Spanish Flu. There was a mutation that made it more deadly for young people.

Such concerns also apply in the abstract to some unknown future virus which may work via a different mechanism to Covid and be capable of something far worse in terms of mortality*infectiousness.

>Some prudent concern and hard thinking being applied to unpredictable tail risks isn't alarmism.

That is fine as long as same is applied when it does not suit the $uits.

I think if that happened you'd see people actually taking it seriously.

We definitely would be, but there's also pandemic preparedness which can be worked on now.

I dunno man, I’m doing medical research and I think it’s pretty serious.

Honest question: what is worrying to you? Is it the idea that infectious disease being used as the pretext to create an environment of fear and compliance, such some unwanted social transformation which is actually predicated on ulterior motives can proceed over objections? Is it the idea that people overestimate the degree of control people can actually exert over these diseases, leading to hubristic reactions? Do you object to being alarmed about infectious disease as such?

You were likely similarly disturbed by the climate alarmism in the 90s, 00s, 10s, still right now?

There is something between panic mode and ignore it..

Yep. It all started with the ozone hole alarmism.

I remember acid rain coming before the ozone hole problems.

So long as multinational corporate media controls the messaging, you can expect the fear porn to effectively control the masses. Hitler's Mein Kampf should be taught in school (or perhaps The Myth of the Twentieth Century), as the means by which "the people" can be influenced and their perception of reality guided are still used today.

Agreed.

What most people talking about corporate media and "fear porn" (eyeballs for advertising) fail the mention though is that there's also a ton of independent "fear porn" (fear of government, fear or corporate media, etc.) produced under the guise of anti-corporate or anti-government or anti-random-thing. Meanwhile they're all getting paid by our advertising overlords.

Getting rid of corporate media doesn't suddenly solve this problem. The alarmist torch will continue to burn bright because of advertising.

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