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Something Normal or The Start of a New Pandemic: Monkeypox

In May, cases of Monkeypox became increasingly frequent in the United Kingdom. By now, cases have been reported on every populated continent, leading to the World Health Organization classifying it as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”— a label that COVID-19 also received. The viral disease has strains from areas of Africa, but can be mainly traced back to West and Central Africa. Dr Fauci has issued a public warning that Monkeypox needs to be taken more seriously than it is, and public health officials should keep an eye on the disease. Conversely, the former head of the FDA has said that the “window for containing” Monkeypox has closed and that the best course of action is damage control. The CDC has predicted that Monkeypox cases will continue to rise in August, as they have been for the past two months. Currently, in the United States, New York has the most cases, with an estimated 480+ out of the 1,800+ documented in the nation. New York was also an early hotspot during the pandemic, but unlike at the beginning of COVID, there’s already a Monkeypox vaccine available.

It’s hard to read about Monkeypox and not get deja vu: Spanish Flu, AIDS, COVID-19, Ebola— all were global pandemics that killed people of all ages, all came from other countries, and all came with a warning. If public health officials aren’t careful, Monkeypox could be added to that list. Public health officials have been quietly warning of the disease, and have made it clear that it’s past time to act. If we learned anything from COVID, it’s that early and strong action is necessary. If some experts are right, we may have missed the early action deadline but waiting even longer for a full outbreak would be catastrophic. Since there are no public health directives regarding Monkeypox, it’s up to the cities with the most cases to handle it, and for the sake of the world, we must hope that they do. 

A new pandemic or another overdramatized flu? Monkeypox has begun spreading in the United States with over 1800 cases confirmed so far. With almost 330 million citizens in the U.S., this number seems fairly insignificant. However, recently Dr Fauci, Chief medical advisor of the White House, warns we should take precautions to prevent another epidemic. This is due to the ease with which monkeypox is spread. Someone merely needs to be in close contact with an infected person to become contaminated. With the U.S. still reeling from the Coronavirus pandemic, it is understandable that some would advocate precaution in regard to another disease. However, there have been no deaths due to monkeypox in the U.S. and most people recover just fine from it. It seems that those crying wolves are affected by past mistakes, but this is a new virus with new risks that are nowhere near as deadly as the Coronavirus. This point is further proven by the government’s reaction to pox. The amount of red tape described by doctors in order to identify and treat Monkeypox displays its low priority on the medical front. In addition to this, there is already a vaccine for Monkeypox so if it did start to spread horrendously throughout the U.S. there would be a much easier way to squash a would-be pandemic. Overall, it seems that Monkey Pox is not as dangerous as the Coronavirus was.

I worry that in a time where the country is so highly polarised that trusting medical experts is considered a “party behaviour” we genuinely have no chance if there is an outbreak of Monkeypox. Even as COVID was killing thousands, a decent portion of the country didn’t care, and spent their waking hours complaining about having to wear a piece of cloth to stop the spread of the disease; so how do we convince those same people to take a disease that has less than 2,000 cases seriously? In my opinion, we can’t— and we shouldn’t waste our time trying. There must be efforts at the federal and state level to increase the ability of public health officials to do what is necessary in order to stop something like COVID from ever happening again. A larger portion of state and city funding needs to be given to the public health department, and there needs to be a clear mission for public health officials across the country. A far more difficult fix but a more effective one, however, is fixing the healthcare system. Costs are horribly price gouged without having the quality to back it up, our infrastructure is wildly outdated, and our system was and still is inefficient. 

Written by Ashlyn Hill 

There has been heavy criticism by some governments over their response to monkeypox. They have been accused of moving too slowly to prevent the spread of the disease as well as sporadically tackling it. Yet one aspect of the defence against monkeypox has not been highly critiqued. That is their focus on the gay and bisexual male community. While researching the virus almost every article mentioned this community as being high risk. More vaccines have been sent to where there are high concentrations of this community; yet, in every article, there was no justification for this assumption. The gay community does not engage in sexual activities any more than heterosexuals and yet it is presumed they are more susceptible to its transmission. The only justification I found was that gay males with HIV were immunocompromised and therefore needed more protection against Monkeypox. This argument also is nonsensical since there are heterosexual males and females with HIV as well as many other demographics with the compromised immune system. This boils down to prejudice against gay and bisexual males. This type of prejudice should not be affecting medical decisions and yet it is. The epicentre of the monkeypox outbreak, New York City, received only 10% of the vaccines although they have 25% of the cases in the United States (Diamond). This prejudice is leading to an underestimation of the possible outbreak of monkeypox and is likely a primary reason for the government's slow distribution of the vaccine. There are currently 780 thousand doses of the vaccine sitting in a warehouse in Denmark waiting to be inspected by the FDA before they are sent to the United States, yet the facility was inspected by European officials last year(Diamond). The slow movement of the government to properly address Monkey Pox due to prejudice is unacceptable. Although the disease itself is not as deadly as Coronavirus the fact that the condition has long-lasting painful effects should be enough reason for vaccine distribution for those who want it in the United States.

Written by Alexis Walker  

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