Sources are now reporting that the World Health Organization has just announced this morning that Monkeypox is now in health emergency mode with the virus spreading rapidly around the world and now infecting hundreds of thousands. A global health emergency is the first step toward declaring a global pandemic.
The elderly and immunocompromised are likely to die from it unless they get emergency medical support upon diagnoses.
Unlike its cousin, smallpox, Monkeypox is spread through kissing and sexual activity and can be deadly to at least a quarter of the of the population.
Like COVID 19, Monkeypox is a tropical virus that spreading toward the poles and is expanding the number of species that can serve as hosts. The spread of both viruses and the mutations that helped them to spread were caused directly by Global Warming which is also called Climate Change.
As the planet heats up from fossil fuel consumption, virologists and ecologists have warned that more and more new and deadly diseases from the tropics could start infecting and killing people in the northern hemisphere.
In just the last few weeks Monkeypox has infected tens of thousands of people in half the world. Most of the current cases are mostly men who sexual intercourse with other men. But they are not the only cases.
This is the second time in two years that WHO has declared a global health emergency.
The emergency was declared by WHO's director, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who overruled a stalemated panel of medical advisors who were not able to agree on the threat that Monkeypox poses to humanity.
Global emergencies have been used only twice in the agency's history. The first was with polio and the second was just a couple years ago with COVID 19. This would be the global organization's third health emergency declaration.
In the US the virus has been spreading rapidly through the LGBTQ and sex worker communities. Sex workers are the second highest source of victims of Monkeypox.
In the announcement, Dr. Ghebreyesus stated, "We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria for declaring a global health emergency."
The declaration of global health emergency tells the world's governments to really pay attention because combatting a virus requires close international cooperation. It is used to tell governments to invest substantial resources to conrol outbreaks and provide more funding for communities dealing with viral outbreaks and develop new vaccines.
According to the New York Times there have been 7 new Global Health Emergencies since 2007 including both COVID 19 and Monkeypox. Just last month the organization's panel of experts said that monkeypox had not yet reached emergency status. The fact it did so just a couple of weeks later indicates it heading into pandemic territory.
First discovered here1958, the virus originated in Africa among monkeys, hence its name. Symptoms from the original virusare believed to be mild. However in the last 4 weeks alone a mutated and more lethal version of the virus spread to humans around the world at a rate of 16,000 new cases globally per day. Currently 75 countries including the United States have reported a high number of monkeypox cases to the World Health Organization. That is more than 5 times as many as when WHO's panel of medical experts met in June to discuss the disease.
Currently most Monkeypox patients are gay men who engaged in recent sexual liaisons. Due to this factor many governments have been slow to deal with the threat which is very unlikely to remain confined to the LGTBQ community. In Southern California a couple of White Hetero women got the disease, apparentlywhile attending abortion related rallies and protests. Though it is unclear how exactly they got it.
American healthcare professionals said the virus will infect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans before it can brought under control which they said can take up to two years. They expect a Monkeypox Pandemic to be officially declared in the US by the end of the year.
There were 3,000 new cases in the US in just the past 5 days but researchers say the numbers could be double to triple that number. The 3,000 new cases include a small number children, several of which have died from the virus. Most of the world's cases are currently among White people in Spain and Britain which has led to some colorfully nicknaming the disease "Africa's Revenge". Most of the new cases were unable to identify a source of infection which indicates undetected community spreading of the virus. That in turns means that kissing and sex are not the only means of transmission and that aerial transmission cannot be ruled out. WHO advises people to continuously wash their hands at least onceevery 30 minutes when at work or out and about. Or just use hand sanitizer.
According to WHO the people most at risk currently are males who have frequent sex with males, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the immunocompromised as if the latter group did not have enough to worry about but that it is very likely to spread to other populations soon.
It took the same panel of experts several meetings to declare that COVID 19 was a global health emergency but by that time it had already become a pandemic.
Most US communities have said they have either run out of or are running out of monkeypox vaccines. LA County health care facilities are ill prepared for the coming Monkeypox onslaught as they deal with another surge of COVID 19 cases. The US was one of the few countries to develop a vaccine out of a concern that small pox and its monkey pox cousin could be weaponized and artificially made more lethal. The vaccine was developed during the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. Russia has stockpiles of the vaccine.
In the current health emergency one symptom of Monkeypox are lesions on your genitals and extremely painful lesions inside the throat, the urethra, and the rectum. Many patients describe excruciating pain when using the restroom. Some have reported respiratory difficulties after getting the virus though it is unclear if that was caused directly by the virus or by some other factor. Other people have reported more mild symptoms such as a slight fever.
Virologists who are investigated the new epidemic say the monkeypox virus is now mutating as rapidly as the COVID 19 virus and possibly faster. Given the rapid rate of mutation among this new version of Monkeypox, it would be wise to continously wash or sanitize your hands and maintain the 6 foot distances that you were advised to follow for COVID 19.
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