IF, BY some miracle, you have survived the great monkeypox pandemic, you are very lucky. This devastating disease is spreading like wildfire, consuming all in its path, and leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. I’m sure you’ve seen them piled up in your streets awaiting collection, just like they were during covid.
I jest. Monkeypox, always referred to as Mpox by the politically correct Global Health NOW(GHN), is a dud as far as viruses are concerned, as we have been at pains to point that out in these pages. However, that does not stop GHN, the daily bugle of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, from painting a picture of monkeypox as if it were an existential threat to mankind.
Thus, the GHN newsletter of November 3 led with an entry informing us that Mpox was spreading to 17 countries in Africa, causing 17 deaths in two months, and that the latest variant was heading farther afield to places including Malaysia, Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain. These figures were taken from the latest WHO report on monkeypox. Should we be worried? Hardly.
The estimated number of cases in Africa was 2,960 meaning that 0.59 per cent of people who become infected with monkeypox die. According to the report there have been 44,299 confirmed cases of monkeypox to date this year of whom 180 have died giving a case fatality rate of 0.41 per cent over 93 countries. To date, no deaths have been reported in Malaysia, Namibia, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Qatar or the United States. The deaths in Africa occurred in the DRC, one of the worst countries in the world, and in Liberia, Ghana and Kenya, where all the deaths were among people with HIV.
The above tells us almost all we need to know about monkeypox. It may be spreading but it is largely confined to Africa; fatality is associated with places where health and nutrition is poor and HIV is endemic. Those dying are already in compromised states of health and, if not monkeypox, some other infection will likely kill them.
The deaths are tragic, but these are deaths ‘with’ monkeypox as opposed to deaths ‘from’ monkeypox. We saw precisely this phenomenon used during the covid years to exaggerate the lethality of the coronavirus and to whip up fear.
You probably do not need me to tell you what the World Health Organization consider the solution to the monkeypox situation. In addition to the usual ‘surveillance’, they want to expand the monkeypox vaccination programme. This involves two vaccines, MVA-BN and LC16. They do state that this should aim at prioritising high-risk populations.
There are two problems with this approach. One is the poor efficacy of the monkeypox vaccines to date, when the correct assessment is made of the absolute risk reduction to individuals who are vaccinated. The other problem is that, even if vaccinations were effective, they do not address the underlying problems arising from poor nutrition, lack of clean water and sanitation in places such as the DRC.
How many vaccines must we keep on injecting to fight diseases in war-torn and impoverished countries when what they need is food and water? This is obviously the case regarding monkeypox when its almost complete lack of lethality in developed countries is considered. And, it should be noted, the lethality of monkeypox even in underdeveloped African countries is not that worrying a prospect.
What are we to make of the monkey pox con(undrum)? When outlets such as GHN should be reassuring us that monkeypox is nothing to be worried about, we are regularly presented with headlines indicating doom and gloom. How refreshing it would be, even once, to see an article headed ‘Monkeypox? Relax!’
But that is never going to happen. Global health busybodies have a world population to keep in a state of heightened anxiety about what is likely to kill them next, and Big Pharma have vaccines to sell. After all, remove the ‘k’ from ‘monkeypox’ and you have ‘moneypox’.
