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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Monkeypox Infection

    So someone told me there monkeypox infection that going around in my hometown (New York City). I beginning to think that we're living in a science-fiction sitcom.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...nmark.amp.html
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    So someone told me there monkeypox infection that going around in my hometown (New York City). I beginning to think that we're living in a science-fiction sitcom.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...nmark.amp.html
    NPR might have some useful information for you to avoid it:
    Monkeypox explained: How to protect yourself and what to watch out for

    Stay safe!
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    *Nod*. The thing to avoid is prolonged skin-to-skin or face-to-face contact with sufferers. While it IS possible for anyone to catch it, the highest risk behavior is unprotected sex with strangers , as NBC news reports, discussing a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    “It doesn’t seem like respiratory droplets or sprays have been an important mechanism of transmission, because if that were the case, you probably should have seen more cases among cisgender women. And by now, we haven’t,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, senior fellow and editor at large for public health for Kaiser Health News. “We also haven’t seen any evidence that monkeypox is transmitted through, say, hugging. So it really does seem to require pretty close, intimate contact to be transmitted.”
    So this is a bad time to start swinging. Otherwise you can wind up like this guy , who did indeed indulge in high-risk behavior and threw a natural 1 on his fortitude save versus disease.

    The good news is that it hasn't actually killed anyone outside of Africa, and there are vaccines. The bad news is , though it won't kill you, it can certainly make you wish it did. Sebastian Kohn, as related in the Guardian article, had a truly terrible time.

    On the other side , it's a good time to be a woman. Apparently only one of the 600+ confirmed is female; all the other victims were men.

    ETA: I'll leave it up to the biologists to explain why anal is so much higher risk than other kinds of recreation. Maybe a sufferer has lesions and sores on the inside, which the equipment gets rubbed on , resulting in contagion? Here is a discussion with suggestions on how to minimize the risk. Although of course the best preventive measure is to know your partner. A monkeypox vaccine would also be a good idea. I daresay they will become more available in short order.

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    Last edited by pendell; 2022-07-26 at 04:40 PM.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    My guess on why it's erupted in the male gay community is that it's more circumstantial than anything. It's not that unprotected anal is any more dangerous than anything else, it's that patient zero was likely a gay man, infected a potential partner for the evening, and it spiraled out of control from there with the most likely people to have prolonged skin to skin contact with the pox being others in the same community.

    Which means at some point it will break out of those circumstantial "limitations".

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    My guess on why it's erupted in the male gay community is that it's more circumstantial than anything. It's not that unprotected anal is any more dangerous than anything else, it's that patient zero was likely a gay man, infected a potential partner for the evening, and it spiraled out of control from there with the most likely people to have prolonged skin to skin contact with the pox being others in the same community.

    Which means at some point it will break out of those circumstantial "limitations".
    It certainly could. Which is why we need to be careful of extended skin-to-skin intimate contact, especially with strangers. And if someone's in a high-risk group, they need to be vaccinated. More and better testing would also be a good thing.

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    Brian P.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Looks like the CDC is being excessively optimistic again

    It's not just "extended skin to skin contact" - any contact with the actual rash is dangerous, no matter how brief.

    And fomite transmission (that is, through contaminated objects or surfaces) is also possible.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by AMX View Post
    Looks like the CDC is being excessively optimistic again

    It's not just "extended skin to skin contact" - any contact with the actual rash is dangerous, no matter how brief.

    And fomite transmission (that is, through contaminated objects or surfaces) is also possible.
    Unlike COVID, this is a thing we know and have protections against. They're handing out vaccines to high risk people already.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
    More and better testing would also be a good thing.
    One would think, this far into COVID, people would be on the ball about getting testing out quickly in something that can spread quickly.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by sihnfahl View Post
    One would think, this far into COVID, people would be on the ball about getting testing out quickly in something that can spread quickly.
    We have massive amounts of Covid tests and vaccines, that's after two years. Covid vaccines and tests don't work for monkey pox, it hasn't been around for long at all, and it isn't lethal, unlike covid, either.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    We have massive amounts of Covid tests and vaccines, that's after two years. Covid vaccines and tests don't work for monkey pox, it hasn't been around for long at all, and it isn't lethal, unlike covid, either.
    I just heard on NPR that it's killed 5 people so far in the current outbreak. Maybe not as deadly as COVID-19, but not non-leathal.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Torath View Post
    I just heard on NPR that it's killed 5 people so far in the current outbreak. Maybe not as deadly as COVID-19, but not non-leathal.
    All of those reported deaths are in Africa, none in the First world. Third world medicare is an adventure all its own.

    Also, the demographics of who gets the disease in Africa are different; in Africa, A significant percentage are young children . Well, 6% isn't all that large but it's still close to the case fatality rate -- which is higher among young children. The part of Africa where this is an issue is tropical rainforest, so more opportunity for the very young and the elderly to become infected. So it's no coincidence that Africa both has younger infections and more deaths.

    By contrast, in the first world these infections primarily hit adult males with access to first world medical care. Thus, the lethality rate is much lower in the first world. It will probably not be zero, but it's probably not going to overwhelm hospitals with critically ill patients either.

    In other news, the US is getting 800,000 more vaccine doses.

    WHO still recommends vaccination and preventive steps , depending on the degree of risk.



    Respectfully,

    Brian P.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    It's not that unprotected anal is any more dangerous than anything else, ...
    As I understand it, yes, your digestive system is at a higher risk, since its whole purpose is to get things into your bloodstream. Usually nutrients, but viruses can exploit this too.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    We have massive amounts of Covid tests and vaccines, that's after two years. Covid vaccines and tests don't work for monkey pox, it hasn't been around for long at all, and it isn't lethal, unlike covid, either.
    Monkeypox has been around for a seriously long time, so unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean...yeah. This subset pf the virus has been around since 2017. The smallpox vaccine also has an 85% efficacy rate against monkeypox.
    Last edited by Razade; 2022-07-31 at 04:46 PM.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Razade View Post
    Monkeypox has been around for a seriously long time, so unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean...yeah. This subset pf the virus has been around since 2017. The smallpox vaccine also has an 85% efficacy rate against monkeypox.
    That's news to me. The first I heard of it was this year, I think that's the first time it got out of Africa too. Since small-pox is ~extinct, it's not a huge surprise that there's not much of that vaccine either, though if cow-pox is still around it shouldn't be that difficult to make some.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    That's news to me. The first I heard of it was this year, I think that's the first time it got out of Africa too. Since small-pox is ~extinct, it's not a huge surprise that there's not much of that vaccine either, though if cow-pox is still around it shouldn't be that difficult to make some.
    This is not the first time it's got out of Africa, it's just the biggest outbreak. There was an outbreak in the US in 2003, another in 2018 in the UK and Singapore. The first documented case of monkeypox was 1970.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post

    Also, the demographics of who gets the disease in Africa are different; in Africa, A significant percentage are young children . Well, 6% isn't all that large but it's still close to the case fatality rate -- which is higher among young children. The part of Africa where this is an issue is tropical rainforest, so more opportunity for the very young and the elderly to become infected. So it's no coincidence that Africa both has younger infections and more deaths.

    By contrast, in the first world these infections primarily hit adult males with access to first world medical care. Thus, the lethality rate is much lower in the first world. It will probably not be zero, but it's probably not going to overwhelm hospitals with critically ill patients either.
    Since adult males don't live on Adult Dudes Only Island, and this disease can be spread by indirect contact with things like bedding, I expect it'll start circulating generally among small children pretty soon if it isn't already. Even if we assumed that none of the current main identified demographic had children of their own (which is incorrect), things like hotel comforters or sofas would be a logical vector since it can apparently live in fabric for an extended period (which is not surprising, since smallpox also was able to be spread this way). Once a single young kid at a given daycare gets it, I assume it'd easily spread among the rest of the kids at that daycare, since small children are pretty much going to trade diseases back and forth at will in general and no small child would have the partial protection of the smallpox vaccine as that hasn't been given out for so long that even their parents wouldn't have had it.

    Soon, we may be able to study how much of that mortality increase in small children is due to conditions faced by small children in Africa versus how much is that the disease is more likely to kill in that age range. I would prefer not to learn this empirically, but I don't see the USA taking the steps right now that might possibly prevent it. (Among other things, I teach k-12 students and so far have not heard a single peep about any strategies we'll be using for monkeypox this fall, and the quarantine period for it is pretty long compared to what we were using for COVID, so, based on what we were doing in the spring I'm confident we don't have the existing infrastructure to handle teaching students who are quarantined that long, nor do our existing leave policies consistently let employees who are parents have enough time off if they need to quarantine themselves.)

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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    That's news to me. The first I heard of it was this year, I think that's the first time it got out of Africa too. Since small-pox is ~extinct, it's not a huge surprise that there's not much of that vaccine either, though if cow-pox is still around it shouldn't be that difficult to make some.
    Fortunately, smallpox vaccine is stockpiled. This is because there has long been fear that somebody just might be stockpiling the disease for use as a bioweapon, despite (or because) it is eradicated in the wild. The CDC has long kept a couple of samples of smallpox just in case it was needed to rapidly produce an improved vaccine.

    The problem is that both smallpox vaccine and the more specific monkeypox vaccine are the type that use a virus directly. And having that specific virus in your system can have long-term ill effects. Not to the same degree as getting the full pox, but it is something to try avoiding.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    My guess on why it's erupted in the male gay community is that it's more circumstantial than anything. It's not that unprotected anal is any more dangerous than anything else, it's that patient zero was likely a gay man, infected a potential partner for the evening, and it spiraled out of control from there with the most likely people to have prolonged skin to skin contact with the pox being others in the same community.

    Which means at some point it will break out of those circumstantial "limitations".
    Not exactly: anal sex is inherently more traumatic - the gut is much less suited to handle a thrusting penis than a vagina, and even microscopic resulting lesions work as a gate for the infection. It also requires sturdier condoms, due to lack of natural lube and other factors I forgot.
    So far all the statistics I saw mention that the virus spreads much faster in communities that practice anal sex, which overlap with gay males.

    That being said, I have trouble wrapping my head around the issue - I can understand Russia, where we literally have no access to US-produced vaccine, but deliberately ignoring them and gleefully embracing sex with strangers without condoms - I can only call that stupidity.
    Well, ok, second part is just as prevalent here, though not less stupid for that.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Sigako View Post

    That being said, I have trouble wrapping my head around the issue - I can understand Russia, where we literally have no access to US-produced vaccine, but deliberately ignoring them and gleefully embracing sex with strangers without condoms - I can only call that stupidity.
    Well, ok, second part is just as prevalent here, though not less stupid for that.
    My understanding is that that the USA doesn't produce monkeypox vaccine either - we imported ours from Europe, although I can't tell if that's in addition to domestic sources or instead of them. (The article I read made me think instead of, but I could easily be wrong since this isn't something I've historically tracked.) We do not have enough of that vaccine to go around, and last I saw we had enough for about 1/3 of the currently considered high-risk population to be vaccinated, which means we can't even attempt strategies like ring vaccination (where you vaccinate all the known close contacts of each person who gets sick - this works with monkeypox because the vaccine can be somewhat protective for a few days after initial exposure, kind of like the rabies vaccine), and there definitely won't be enough to go around if additional groups are identified as high-risk. Currently, vaccine appointments get snapped up within minutes when offered to that high-risk population, because more than 1/3 of that high-risk group would like to be vaccinated. It's not a shot you can just go sign up for because you want one.

    I strongly suspect that, just like with herpes, condoms are not enough to prevent transmission of monkeypox since it can be spread by skin-to-skin contact rather than just through sexual activity itself (compare with HIV, which spreads through fluids rather than skin contact and thus latex condoms are effective at significantly reducing transmission since they create a fluid barrier). This is one reason why public health here is trying to frame it as a disease that is spreading by close contact, which can certainly include sex, rather than as a sexually transmitted disease, although the main reason for that is that it's quite likely to spread non-sexually in other populations that live in close quarters and you don't want people getting a false sense of security and ignoring, say, an outbreak within a summer camp.

  20. - Top - End - #20
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    We do not have enough of that vaccine to go around, and last I saw we had enough for about 1/3 of the currently considered high-risk population to be vaccinated, which means we can't even attempt strategies like ring vaccination (where you vaccinate all the known close contacts of each person who gets sick - this works with monkeypox because the vaccine can be somewhat protective for a few days after initial exposure, kind of like the rabies vaccine), and there definitely won't be enough to go around if additional groups are identified as high-risk. Currently, vaccine appointments get snapped up within minutes when offered to that high-risk population, because more than 1/3 of that high-risk group would like to be vaccinated. It's not a shot you can just go sign up for because you want one.
    Ok, that sounds, well, not fine, but at least reasonable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    I strongly suspect that, just like with herpes, condoms are not enough to prevent transmission of monkeypox since it can be spread by skin-to-skin contact rather than just through sexual activity itself (compare with HIV, which spreads through fluids rather than skin contact and thus latex condoms are effective at significantly reducing transmission since they create a fluid barrier). This is one reason why public health here is trying to frame it as a disease that is spreading by close contact, which can certainly include sex, rather than as a sexually transmitted disease, although the main reason for that is that it's quite likely to spread non-sexually in other populations that live in close quarters and you don't want people getting a false sense of security and ignoring, say, an outbreak within a summer camp.
    Good point too. Although "sleeping with strangers" is still valid complaint, since it also involves simple close contact too.
    Still will grumble about ignoring condoms, even py people I know personally, but at least this outbreak hasn't reached our city yet.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
    Fortunately, smallpox vaccine is stockpiled. This is because there has long been fear that somebody just might be stockpiling the disease for use as a bioweapon, despite (or because) it is eradicated in the wild. The CDC has long kept a couple of samples of smallpox just in case it was needed to rapidly produce an improved vaccine.
    Because. Definitely because.

    Then there's the other reasons.

    Someone at one of the storage areas messes up and comes into direct contact with the samples...

    The more scary versions? Someone finds an old, possibly virulent, sample in an unexpected location.

    Like inside a book. Or an old letter. Or inside vials in a long-forgotten storage area.

    And then there was the explosion at the Russian lab that stored the samples, which fortunately was not near the storage area.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Yet another option was a zoonotic strain hopping to humans. In university we were told that some animals got their -pox versions from humans to begin with, so it was a real possibility. As we see, our teachers were mostly correct.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Sigako View Post
    Yet another option was a zoonotic strain hopping to humans. In university we were told that some animals got their -pox versions from humans to begin with, so it was a real possibility. As we see, our teachers were mostly correct.
    Which would be only logical. Why would people believe it was only one way, from animals to humans, and never humans to animals?
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by sihnfahl View Post
    Which would be only logical. Why would people believe it was only one way, from animals to humans, and never humans to animals?
    Well, I heard about cats exchanging diseases with their owners, so I wasn't surprised.




    At least the good news is that we still have actual pox samples and can simply produce new, up to modern standards vaccine from them.
    Don't know about CDC, but VECTOR's is used from time to time in some sorts of research, for this it must be propagated in some culture, so it is fresh.
    Last edited by Sigako; 2022-08-07 at 09:40 AM.

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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Today I heard in the news that we have the first woman infected with monkey pox in my country.

    Concerning the vaccine the one they want to use is a third generation smallpox one as that seems to work well and it doesn´t give the side effects of the second generation one (which was mostly to have something in case of bio terror using smallpox).
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by Sigako View Post
    Don't know about CDC
    Yeah, they still do the occasional research on it. It's easier to come up with treatments when you have freshly infected tissue samples. Just in case.
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    Default Re: Monkeypox Infection

    Quote Originally Posted by sihnfahl View Post
    Which would be only logical. Why would people believe it was only one way, from animals to humans, and never humans to animals?
    I read in the news about a case, where an owner got her dog infected with monkeypox through a domestic contact.

    Huh, speaking of vaccines: everyone around me thinks that I must be already vaccinated, even though I'm 10 years too young to get the tail end of the global vaccination program. Apparently, I look really old.

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