Monkeypox Is Baaack

Reality Check: It Never Left

Monkeypox is baaack, and the WHO wants you to be afraid!

Actually, this time there might be actual cause for concern, as this new outbreak appears to be not the STD variant of monkeypox but is related to the more virulent strains known to circulate in central Africa.

The Africa CDC previously said mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year, and more than 96% of all cases and deaths are in Congo. Cases are up 160% and deaths are up 19% compared with the same period last year. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 people have died.

“We are now in a situation where (mpox) poses a risk to many more neighbors in and around central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious diseases expert who chairs the Africa CDC emergency group. He said the new version of mpox spreading from Congo appears to have a death rate of about 3-4%.

Still, let us not lose sight of the fundamental hypocrisy at play: monkeypox has been an ongoing health concern in central Africa since before the monkeypox hysteria of 2022. What made the hysterics over the STD variant of monkeypox particularly galling was that there was a genuine monkeypox outbreak that had been ongoing in Africa and about which the corporate media did not give one tinker’s damn.

Africa, The "Forgotten" Monkeypox Outbreak

Now the more lethal strain of monkeypox is flaring out of control again in Africa. Because it was never really brought under control in the first place.

Meanwhile, the corporate media is performing the ritual pearl-clutching which it does for every new “pandemic” (which is rapidly becoming newspeak for “disease of the week”).

The New York Times is reminding us how two years ago monkeypox was spreading wildly among gay men.

The rapid spread of mpox, formerly called monkeypox, in African countries constitutes a global health emergency, the World Health Organization declared on Wednesday.

This is the second time in three years that the W.H.O. has designated an mpox epidemic as a global emergency. It previously did so in July 2022. That outbreak went on to affect nearly 100,000 people, primarily gay and bisexual men, in 116 countries, and killed about 200 people.

What the Gray Lady neglects to mention is that the 2022 STD variant of monkeypox was from a different Clade than this current outbreak in Africa.

For its part, CNN does a surprisingly good job of breaking down the specifics of monkeypox, although it softpedals the biggest challenge healthcare workers in Africa are facing: bureaucratic impotence.

Also known as a PHEIC, this is a status given by WHO to “extraordinary events” that pose a public health risk to other countries through the international spread of disease. These outbreaks may require a coordinated international response, according to the organization.

“It was unanimous that the current outbreak of mpox, upsurge of mpox, is an extraordinary event,” committee Chair Dimie Ogoina said. “What we have in Africa is the tip of the iceberg. … We are not recognizing, or we don’t have the full picture of, this burden of mpox.”

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared the outbreak a public health emergency of continental security on Tuesday, the first such declaration by the agency since its inception in 2017.

However, what must be kept in mind in all of this is that monkeypox has been a persistent health issue on the African continent for years.

I’ll have a deeper dive on this later when I’ve gathered all the numbers together.

Yes, monkeypox is “back”. But that’s only because it never really left.