https://virological.org/t/discussion-of-on-going-mpxv-genome-sequencing/802
Content warning: contains the term hypermutation
Iâm starting to feel reasonably chill about monkeypox. In particular, it seems like cases are spreading via very close contact, and the explosive growth in cases just reflects bad luck with superspreaders. Thereâs still a reasonable risk that MPX becomes endemic, as it seems to be in Nigeria, which would obviously be bad. But it doesnât seem like weâre facing a nightmare scenario of exponentially increasing cases.
No news is good news on the monkeypox front.
Yeah it seems to spread pretty slowly. I remember when the first covid cases was found in the Czech Republic, there were 3 found at once. Five days later, there were 20.
Four days after the first monkeypox case here, there havenât been any others.
Not sure if I should risk posting a BBC link but Iâm feeling brave.
Monkeypox patients should avoid any contact with their pets for 21 days, according to new advice from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
So far, 106 people in the UK have been confirmed as infected with the virus.
Gerbils, hamsters and other rodents could be particularly susceptible to the disease and the concern is it could spread in the animal population.
The government said no cases have been detected in pets so far and the risk is still low.
âThe worry is the virus could get into domestic animals and essentially ping-pong between them and humans,â said Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick.
âIf you are not careful you might create an animal reservoir for the disease that could result in it spreading back into humans, and weâll be in a loop of infection.â
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Separate advice published by the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) this week said that rodent pets belonging to monkeypox patients should âideallyâ be isolated in monitored facilities and tested for the disease before their quarantine period ends.
The animals should only be put down as a last resort in situations where isolation is not feasible, the document said.
Larger pets, such as dogs, could quarantine at home with regular checks on their health status.
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The problem of COVID was that itâs rapid spread threatened to collapse the health care system. I havenât seen anyone warning about monkeypox being a similar threat.
Counterpoint: actually there are 6
lol @ using Blesk as a source. Theyâre Czechiaâs version of The Sun.
Even if true, itâs still a much slower spread than covid and probably wonât amount to quite as much as it. The bouncing between animal/human is pretty terrifying though.
https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1531492734728544257?s=21&t=QUVOAL25yfQn5ZKc7FJ12A
Cool. Coolcoolcool.
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Another 71 cases of monkeypox have been identified in England over the weekend bringing the UK total to 179, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says.
In the past three weeks there have been nearly 100 cases and 18 human deaths from a rare tick-borne disease in Iraq; a fourth case of the Ebola virus and more than 100 cases of bubonic plague have been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and just two years after Africa was declared free of wild polio, new cases have turned up in Malawi and Mozambique. A dangerous strain of typhus is circulating in Nepal, India and China. There are alarming outbreaks on several continents of mosquito diseases such as malaria, dengue and West Nile virus.
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It has been a bad month for infectious disease, according to the ProMED website, the worldâs largest open surveillance system for reporting outbreaks. Covid and HIV are both still globally rampant, and now animal pandemics are on the march, too. African swine fever continues to ravage the worldâs pigs and several strains of lethal avian â or bird flu â are spreading, forcing the cull of hundreds of millions of poultry. Vets and ecologists have warned this month, too, of mysterious fungal diseases being found in fish and marine life in Australia and in Middle Eastern countries, well as lethal dog and other pet illnesses.
The whole article is paragraph after paragraph of doom.
I feel like we should worry more about monkeypox than the plague.
Climate catastrophe is gonna suck sure but at least weâll get some cool fucked up mutants you know, like the X-Men!
Narrator : The mutants were all bacteria and viruses. It wasnât cool.
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I really donât see much of a difference outside of Covid. Weâre probably just paying more attention now⌠or at least thatâs a big part of it
Anyone care to comment on the practicality of stocking up on N-95s again?
Thank you everyone for this thread. It is sincerely appreciated.
That just sounds like business as usual for the planet. Pre-COVID, no one paid much attention to these flare-ups and spillovers.
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I feel like you should worry about whatever will cause you to worry more.
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Monkeypox cases continue to grow. I canât really tell how much of the reported case growth weâre seeing is actual growth vs better detection, but in either case, R0 < 1 seems very implausible now. I think there are two main questions:
- Can these epidemics be contained with isolation, ring vaccination, etc.? Itâs not looking great so far, and the wide geographic spread is troubling. If the disease gets loose in a bunch of countries that donât have the resources to intensively contain it, then thatâs bad on its own and also creates a risk of reintroducing the disease to countries that are able to successfully contain their cases.
- The critical question is how bad MPX is. The reported CFR for the disease is ~1%, but there have been zero deaths so far AFAIK. That could mean either that the reported CFR is an overestimate (mutations, better treatment in richer countries, better detection of mild cases, etc.). More worryingly, if current cases are still concentrated among young men, it could be that the overall CFR is 1% overall, but itâs much lower in younger adults. If you had 800 COVID cases among people in their 20s and 30s, you would not necessarily have any deaths, but obviously COVID is still a big deal.