Gestalt #96 – Monkey Pox

monotreme1000

May 20

Monkeypox virus (MPV), is a human orthopoxvirus. This family of viruses includes variola virus (smallpox) and several other viruses associated with animals such as camelpox. As everyone knows, smallpox is one of the most feared viruses on Earth. It was eradicated with an effective vaccine program (back when most people believed vaccines work).

Bioweapons experts have long been concerned that smallpox could be weaponized or even just released in its natural state since few people today have been vaccinated against it. Government contingency plans for a smallpox epidemic include surrounding affected communities with barbed wire and guarding access points with armed soldiers until everyone can be vaccinated.

So, is a pox virus epidemic serious? Yes, it is.

Monkeypox, in the past, was primarily transmitted from animals to people. Despite its name, the natural host of monkeypox is thought to be rodents. It got its name because it was first identified after a colony of monkeys were infected.

 Human-to-human transmission of monkeypox has occurred before the current outbreak, but it was rare and involved very close physical contact. Monkeypox can be spread by direct skin-to-skin contact, fomites and respiratory droplets. Symptoms include: fever, swelling of lymph nodes, headache, backpain and muscle aches. Later, the skin may erupt into rashes that change to pus filled vesicles that may appear on the face, hands, feet, mouth, genitals and eyes. The fatality rate is between 1 and 10%. It causes more severe symptoms in children.

The current outbreak of monkeypox is concerning because the virus is behaving differently than it has in the past. Monkeypox is endemic to Africa and the current outbreak is thought to have originated there, although there is no proof that this is true. However, it is true that travelers to Africa have returned to Europe with the infection.

What is surprising about the current outbreak is that the virus is being transmitted human-to-human-to-human with some apparent efficiency. Much has been made about the transmission between men who have sex with men. Focusing on this fact appears to me to be intended to decrease concern among the general population. I wonder: have the people pushing this narrative forgotten about AIDS? One of the biggest concerns when the AIDS pandemic started was: would HIV ever evolve the ability to be transmitted via respiratory droplets? It didn’t. However, monkeypox has started with the ability to be transmitted with respiratory droplets. What is not often reported is that some of the current monkeypox patients include families of heterosexuals.

We are told that monkeypox is much milder than smallpox. This is true. However, smallpox started as a milder disease that got more severe as it infected more people and was selected to evade the immune system. Sound familiar? The soothers won’t tell you this.

The soothers also won’t tell you that monkeypox has never spread to so many countries so quickly. Or passed human-to-human-to-human from Africa to the UK to Australia. Or passed human-to-human-to-human from Africa to Canada to the US. The soothers also won’t tell you that the Soviet Union had an aggressive bioweapons program that sought to weaponize monkeypox through genetic manipulation. Let that sink in. We are currently in a proxy war with Russia. They have talked about Ukraine having bioweapons which everyone who understands Russian propaganda means that the Russians are thinking about using bioweapons. Now a virus that the Russian government has previously selected as a candidate bioweapon is spreading in NATO countries in an unprecedented fashion. This could be coincidence. But shouldn’t the possibility that there is something unnatural about this virus be given just a teensy-teensy consideration, just to be safe?

A draft sequence of the monkeypox virus genome from a patient in Portugal has recently been released. The authors should be congratulated for doing this so quickly. Analysis of this sequence and publication of sequence from other patients would be useful and should be released as soon as possible.

This outbreak may sputter and extinguish itself. But then again, it may not. I don’t like the way this one “feels”.