Why You Don't Need to Panic About Mpox

Protect yourself.

Photo by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Unsplash

Well, it's back.

Barely a day after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern, its strongest warning, mpox has turned up in Europe and elsewhere. Is this the same mpox from 2022?

No.

It's a new clade of the virus, compared to the previous version that corporate media spent all of 2022 dismissing as an STD. They did that despite warnings that we should take the virus seriously and do our best to eradicate it before it mutates. They didn't listen. They called us fearmongers. Now, here we are. As a study published in Nature indicated just recently, the mpox virus has mutated. Also, more than half of the patients in the recent outbreaks were women. It gets worse.

Even more recently, it's infecting children and infants.

We should probably start off with a disclaimer. For those of us who've been masking and investing in clean indoor air, this doesn't change much in terms of our behavior or mental state. We already know we're living in a new era, one defined by the rapid spread and unpredictable behavior of zoonotic diseases. We realized this years ago, and we're the ones who've been behaving appropriately.

Let's tell the truth this time:

It's not an STD.

We're up against a deadlier version of mpox with a mortality rate of roughly 5 percent, one that previously only infected people "who eat infected bushmeat, with transmission largely confined to the affected household." Contrary to public misinformation, the virus poses a special risk to children and infants. Here's a recent example showing how the virus is spreading:

“The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox and has now been in our care for four weeks. He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed at the time.

That's from an epidemiologist and mpox expert in the DRC. Roughly 70 percent of the DRC's 15,000 mpox cases are happening in children under 15, and a large number of those cases are occurring in children under five. This outbreak has nothing to do with people sleeping around. It has everything to do with a failing public health infrastructure forcing infections on people.

So we have a new, mutated version of a virus that infects children, going global just as kids in the U.S. head back to school, in classrooms without air purifiers or mask policies, and in many cases even without tests. Some of these schools have already had to return to remote learning after Covid outbreaks.

It didn't have to be this way.

You're not hearing any of this from corporate media. As a recent New York Times article shows, American media in particular continue to remind everyone that the last outbreak "affected primarily gay and bisexual men." And it's not just the NYT. The CNN also recently ran a story saying the virus "can spread through close contact such as touching, kissing, or sex, as well as through contaminated materials like sheets, clothing, and needles." They're doing their best to frame the disease as a risk to marginalized groups, without looking like they're doing it.

As you can imagine, none of these pieces mention clean air or masks. They exclusively talk about vaccines and stockpiles. They're saying absolutely nothing about the high numbers of children being infected. Of course, as we'll see, mpox never posed a threat to a single demographic. It was always a universal threat.

The CDC is insisting that mpox is "not likely airborne."

They're wrong.

Overlooked research has confirmed that mpox can go airborne, especially the clade I version that has mutated and triggered the WHO's emergency warning. According to a 2023 article in The Lancet, "aerosols carrying MPXV could be present in environments where patients have resided," and their research shows "that airborne transmission of MPXV can occur." As the authors go on:

As to the stability of the virus in air, it was reported that the viability of the airborne MPXV was maintained for 90 h under artificial test conditions in a rotating chamber.

A 2013 study in the Journal of Virological Methods carried out in a BSL3 lab found that mpox indeed remains infectious in the air for up to 90 hours. We already know that other viruses remain infectious in the air for several hours, so you can count on mpox being airborne or becoming airborne.

Another article in a 2023 issue of The Lancet confirmed that clade I of mpox has shown airborne spread. Here, the authors review decades of research on mammals to show that mpox can infect animals without direct contact.

The authors make an especially important point. They say thoughts on viral transmission and spread have been "dichotomized." As they argue, that's not how it works. It's not either/or. Instead, viruses live on a continuum. Most of them can infect you via surfaces (fomites), droplets (coughing, sneezing, close talk), or aerosols (airborne). They might prefer one or the other. They might be better at one or the other, or they could be good at them all. They can all happen.

The authors of this study did a comprehensive review of all the available evidence on mpox transmission. Here's what they concluded:

In the absence of more definitive data, public health authorities have recommended broad respiratory transmission reduction strategies, including both source control (containing infectious particles that a person breathes, coughs, or sneezes out) and respiratory protection (filtering out infectious particles in inhaled air), as an adjunct to other protective measures focused on reducing transmission through close contact. Specifically, the UK Health Security Agency and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that people with mpox wear a well-fitting medical mask if close contact with others cannot be avoided, and that contacts of an individual with mpox wear a respirator or well-fitting medical mask when in proximity with infected people for longer than a brief encounter.^62, 63 Furthermore, it is also recommended that health-care personnel wear a respirator with N95 or higher-level filters, in addition to a gown, gloves, and eye protection, when entering the rooms or care areas of patients with suspected or confirmed mpox.^63, 64

Yet another study in The Lancet examined the prevalence of mpox in the air in Spanish nightclubs during a pride celebration. They found that "high viral loads in the air were detected in the dark room but also in bar areas, sometimes even at higher concentrations... Carbon dioxide concentrations were very high in all nightclubs, indicating poor ventilation and high risk of airborne transmission."

To summarize, we should assume that mpox can go airborne, even if it doesn't always go airborne, depending on the clade or strain. Scientists believe in taking proactive strategies to reduce airborne transmission.

That includes effective masks.

During the 2022 outbreak, corporate media latched onto the false, misleading idea that DNA viruses don't go airborne because they're bigger and heavier. Aerosol scientist Linsey Marr won a MacArthur Genius Award for overturning these incorrect assumptions about viral transmission. As she has said, "How far a virus can travel is determined by the size of the droplet/aerosol carrying it, not the size and weight of the virus itself." According to her, it's important to acknowledge the possibility and potential of mpox to spread via aerosolized droplets, not dismiss it.

The research indicates the likelihood of airborne spread.

Either way, why risk it?

On top of the airborne potential, the mpox incubation period lasts for 1-2 weeks on average, and sometimes it lasts even longer. The CDC themselves insist that someone isn't contagious until their symptoms appear.

Then they contradict themselves.

Later on, the CDC admits that "Some people can spread mpox to others from 1 to 4 days before they have symptoms."

Furthermore:

A 2023 study in Emerging Infectious Diseases found that "asymptomatic monkeypox infections were likely underestimated and were comparable in magnitude to symptomatic infections, highlighting the need to improve testing accessibility...."

A 2022 study in The Lancet concluded that "asymptomatic infection can substantially contribute to the transmission chain and should be clearly addressed in public health policy to contain monkeypox virus transmission."

So contrary to what you're going to hear in the media and from the CDC, we have a virus that's likely airborne, with an incubation period of 1-2 weeks, that's absolutely capable of asymptomatic transmission.

We should take it seriously.

Doctors in Africa are telling everyone to get ready.

From The Guardian:

“Everyone should get prepared. Everyone should be able to detect the disease as early as possible. But more important, everyone should support the local research and local response so that it doesn’t spread.”

We should've already been doing all this. But instead of eradicating diseases and normalizing mitigations, our leaders have wasted the last several years by nurturing a false sense of security, trading preparedness for cheap, superficial political wins and economic victories that have left us more vulnerable than ever.

We knew last time that mpox had the potential to spread through the air, but the CDC continued to insist it was only transmitted through direct contact, specifically through "kisses" and "needles," evoking prejudice without naming it. They didn't call mpox an STD, but they treated it like one, and that's what matters. The Biden administration bungled things further, missing a chance to order vaccines and then promoting thinly veiled stereotypes. Fortunately, public health activists took up the government's slack and did their job for them, quelling the outbreak. Nevertheless, mpox continued to spread at low levels, under the radar.

To make matters worse, the WHO confidently declared the mpox emergency "over" in May 2023. They reduced testing and surveillance, squandering an opportunity to eradicate the disease altogether. They just didn't care.

The response to mpox in 2022 got everything wrong. The mistake wasn't identifying the population facing the most immediate risk. It was insisting that nobody else had anything to worry about.

That was irresponsible.

A 2023 article in Health Science Reports highlights the irresponsibility of the prevailing corporate media narrative, originated and reinforced by agencies like the CDC. As the authors state very clearly, "Framing the mpox outbreak as exclusively or primarily occurring among MSM and spreading through sexual activity could make things worse, reminding us of what occurred in the 1980s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic." As they further state, "Anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, can spread mpox."

Driving it home, they add:

So, it is essential to understand that not just men who are MSM or only male persons or only human immunodeficiency virus‐positive persons, or only persons from a specific category are at risk for mpox.

And for the win:

The initial subconscious positioning of mpox infections among LGBTQ and MSM communities is a big problem for most preventive measures. People other than the above communities do not care for mpox infection and are unwilling to follow most health safety guidelines. However, mpoxvirus can spread in different ways like other IDs, and everybody is at equal risk of getting this disease as LGBTQ and MSM communities.

I'm going to emphasize that last point:

Everyone is at equal risk of getting the disease.

That's what we were trying to say in 2022, and we were attacked for it. The same irresponsible journalists who attacked us then are attacking us harder now. They don't know when to stop.

The WHO has made a number of catastrophic failures this decade. As public records now show, they knew Covid was also airborne all the way back in 2020. They suppressed that information, while upgrading their own HVAC. With public health emergencies that come after the fact, they have wounded their credibility as an agency dedicated to the proactive surveillance and control of diseases.

Even Forbes called out the WHO for their incompetence:

Aerosol researchers started warning that "the world should face the reality" of airborne transmission in April 2020. Then in June, some claimed that it was "the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19". In July, 239 scientists signed an open letter appealing to the medical community and governing bodies to recognize the potential risk of airborne transmission. That same month (by coincidence, not as a result of the letter), WHO released a new scientific brief on transmission of SARS-CoV-2... On 30 April 2021, almost 10 months after WHO said it would review the research on airborne transmission, it finally updated its Q&A page.

During interviews, biosafety expert Phillip Alvelda told Lynn Parramore at INET that along with the CDC, The WHO "knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that. They didn’t feel like it would be advantageous, to be honest." They protected themselves. They threw us to the virus. They're doing the same thing with every other disease.

That includes mpox.

The corporate media reluctantly admits that this time, there's something "different" about mpox. According to epidemiologists, clade I poses a much bigger threat. It's "up to 10 times more deadly, particularly among population groups with weakened or developing immune systems such as children under the age of 5, pregnant women, and immunocompromised people."

Let's focus on that last point: It's more dangerous to those of us with developing or compromised immune systems.

That should worry everyone.

If you've stayed on top of public health news, you know that Covid damages your immune system. We're seeing renewed comparisons between Covid and HIV, "two diseases separated by a common lymphocytopenia." As one paper confirms, scientists who studied HIV and Covid, "observed a comparable reduction in B cells in both diseases and a more severe reduction in the total amount of T cells in Covid-19 as compared to AIDS patients." Compared to AIDS, Covid depletes your CD8+ cells even faster. In other words, it's worse. Your CD8+ cells play a major role in your body's initial response to pathogens. If they're depleted, then you're much more vulnerable to infections (like mpox). That paper is just one of dozens of major studies linking Covid to weakened immune systems.

There's a lot we should be doing, but we won't do any of it if politicians and media continue to reinforce misinformation about the threats we're facing.

The discourse and news cycle around public health threats follow a predictable pattern, regardless of the virus. News reports stoke fear. Public health activists remind everyone that all we need are masks and clean air. The minimizers jump on board, telling the public there's "no cause for alarm."

Through their own denial and wishful thinking, these overpaid, fake public health experts genuinely don't seem to understand the role they continue to play in sabotaging public health. They ensure that we're never prepared. They make fortunes off writing the same bad articles over and over again, going on CNN or MSNBC to make the same blanket statements that keep the public misinformed.

By the way, you know what the elites are doing? They're not encouraging precautions like masks and air purifiers.

They're buying stock in companies like Bavarian Nordic, "one of the few companies with an approved mpox vaccine."

They're not prepared, either.

The Danish vaccine maker can only deliver 300,000 doses of vaccine right now. They promise they can deliver millions of doses by the end of 2025, a year from now. By then, unmitigated spread will have harmed countless people.

There's a larger context here:

As Ed Yong wrote more than two years ago in The Atlantic, we're living in a different era now, one characterized by increasing spillovers of diseases from animals to humans as we continue to destroy their habits and compete for space in a world that's becoming increasingly uninhabitable. Scientists at Georgetown modeled the future, and they found "the coming decades will see roughly 300,000 first encounters between species that normally don't interact, leading to about 15,000 spillovers wherein viruses enter naive hosts." That's an optimistic take.

Here's more from the article:

“I don’t think they’re overstating the problem,” Raina Plowright, a spillover expert at Montana State University, told me. The effects of climate change are compounded by habitat loss and other destructive forces in unpredictable ways, she said, which could force species to move and mingle even more radically than Iceberg simulated.

Updated studies and simulations actually suggest that the pandemicene scientists predicted for future decades is happening now.

It arrived early.

Every study on public health, disease, and climate is screaming at us to change our ways. We can't live like it's 2019 anymore. There's no prepandemic normal to go back to, because we didn't just live through a rare pandemic that happens once a century. This decade, we entered the pandemicene.

We should be acting like it.

We have to stop this tedious news cycle where corrupt news media regurgitate tired propaganda every time a new disease starts spreading. This summer, it was bird flu. Now it's mpox. Meanwhile, there's other diseases causing outbreaks and epidemics all over the world, all the time. We just don't hear about it.

Living in the pandemicene means normalizing mask wearing. It means installing air purifiers, developing safe Far UVC light, and upgrading ventilation in public spaces. It means developing vaccines, tests, and treatments ahead of time. It means using new technology, including artificial intelligence, to help us predict and track disease.

Are we doing any of that?

So far, not really.

Even when we have the tools, politicians and media convince the public not to use them. Americans and westerners have lived in fear of masks and lockdowns for going on four years, desperate to reclaim a lost normal. They take their anxiety, fear, anger, and depression out on anyone who doesn't play along. The old normal is never coming back, and it's also highly romanticized in the minds of minimizers. The pathological need to relive it is dimming the future for all of us.

Our techno-optimistic leaders could be using AI to help identify and respond to threats like this one. Instead, they're using it to increase profits and cut their workforces. They can't wait to replace humans with robots, even if humans are ultimately cheaper. They're using it to implement surge pricing at stores. They're using it to produce bad art, bad music, and deep fakes. That's their focus.

The propaganda isn't going to stop, so once again it falls to us, the sentinels, the Cassandras, to try and reach our friends and families. We're not asking them to live in fear. We're asking them to make wiser, more responsible choices.

We don't have to live in fear while clinging to the past.

That's a choice.