Monkeypox virus

fun loving criminal

This has been found in England last week from someone coming back from Nigeria. It is a virus similar to smallpox. Two more people have been diagnosed with it since then and they haven't been in contact with patient zero, the person coming back from Nigeria.

They're saying right now, it doesn't spread easily between people but how did two people get it without contact with an infected person?

How concerned should we be or are we even prepared at all if this spreads further?

sam t smith

The pictures aren’t nice. Don’t check them out if you have just eaten.

Beasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058245827/monkeypox-virus

One one way to prevent it spreading further

LOCKDOWN!!!!

Gonna need a new forum as well.......

freshpopcorn

Don't share your ice-cream with a monkey either!

The sick people were damned lucky they didn't land in the likes of China.

On a more serious note we are gonna see a lot more similar cases. Previously if you contracted an illness like this in the regions it would take days to get to the regional city and then same again to the capital. Now thanks to development there is probably a good road from the outlying villages to the provincial city and now an airport with daily flights to the capital and other regional cities.

The days of losing contact with isolated villages and investigators finding everybody dead weeks later are long gone.

By the way i am delighted with the progress and development in west africa and would not turn the clock back for an instant, but changes will have to be made. Something as simple as quarantining for a week in the regional city before onward travel if there are confirmed outbreaks would be the simplest

Edit TLDR. One can travel from an isolated endemic area to anywhere in the world within 48 hours. Remember in the early days of covid, sick Chinese nationals were showing up sick in europe from wuhan via morocco in one example

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119060148#Comment_119060148

Why were they lucky for not landing in China?

Pretty sure China can handle an outbreak of monkeypox. Guess who can't handle an outbreak of monkeypox though? The UK can't. If this spreads further, it can end up here and we won't be able handle it either. Not with a stick your head in the sand approach to covid.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119060161#Comment_119060161

China is a brutal repressive state. See the brutality they used in Wuhan. I could see the sick locked away without medical care. Very effective at preventing spread but not great for the individual. Just look at their recent measures in shanghai

Whatdoesitmatter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119060161#Comment_119060161

So what do you suggest we do

Atlantic Dawn

4 more cases in UK, all 4 linked to having sex with other men...

All four of the new cases self-identify as gay, bi-sexual or other men who have sex with men, the UKHSA said.

https://news.sky.com/story/monkeypox-four-more-cases-of-rare-viral-infection-have-been-diagnosed-in-england-12614730

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072068#Comment_119072068

They seem to be concerned with spread in the community. Apparently close contact but I'm not believing that after the mess they made with covid.

How are they linking gays to this?

Whatdoesitmatter

@fun loving criminal just wear a mask, visor and gloves when out and about and you'll be fine:)

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072119#Comment_119072119

the reported suffers all report having sex with men. 2 have been identified as contacts. Would assume some gay club with loads in close contact has led to this outbreak.

sam t smith

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072068#Comment_119072068

How is ‘other men who have sex with men’ not already covered by gay or bi-sexual?

Atlantic Dawn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072262#Comment_119072262

No idea, Sky would probably need to bring in a multinational, multisexual team of people to correctly write the story so as not to offend someone.

Dante

How do we know they identify as a man? Highly offensive story.

Potential-Monke

Don't have sex with men. Is that the gist of it?

sam t smith

How did the pox transfer from monkeys to humans?

paul71

History might suggest as bushmeat.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072758#Comment_119072758

SEPT 23 1989

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072758#Comment_119072758

how do you think?

sam t smith

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119074788#Comment_119074788

I don’t know, that’s why I asked…

seamus

It's called "monkeypox" because it was first identified in monkeys, but it's not a monkey-spread virus any more than chickenpox is spread by chickens.

Bushmeat (i.e. eating animals from the forest) is one vector, but bites and scratches from animals is a large one too. Mostly rodents.

Human to human spread is mostly limited to bodily fluids. Which is why men having sex with men would be a big risk, as microtears in the anus and head of the penis is pretty common and would allow such infections to transfer easily.

Chickenpox is insanely infectious, you only need to be in the same room as an infected person to come out with it, monkeypox is nowhere near that. Outbreaks are relatively common in travellers from West Africa, we just don't normally make a big song and dance about it except people are easily triggered by talk of outbreaks at the moment.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119072262#Comment_119072262

All explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men

Basically, it's a common clinical term (where precision matters more than it does in general conversation) that recognises that for various reasons, there are men who don't identify as gay or bi that have had, or do have, sex with other men. And that there are gay and bi men who don't have sex with other men. So being gay/bi and being a man who has sex with men do not necessarily mean the same thing.

It concentrates on the mechanics of the sexual behaviour (which may have health risks), rather then the sexuality of the person (which in itself does not have a health risk). One example of non gay/bi MSM would be someone who engages in male/male prostitution for money - they may not necessary be gay or bi (just as a female prostitute who has sex with men for money could well be gay). Remember the episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends where the straight guy wanted to get into working in porn, but couldn't get into the straight industry, and somehow ended up in gay porn instead? He said he wasn't gay or bi, but just did it for the cash. And I assume there's a certain amount of straight men that just give it a go to see what the story is with it for whatever reason, without being sexually attracted to men.

And yeah, you could spend an entire thread debating about whether these people are actually straight or not, but the experts in healthcare who work with vast ranges of people in real life have come across enough examples of such behavior to recognise that it happens, and put a name on it.

fun loving criminal

Seems to be spreading in Spain and Portugal now. Oddly in gay men.

I'm quite worried how it can be spread through respiratory droplets though.

Steviesol

I've read about this monkeypox, I believe it just infects Gay men. Seems strange.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119080814#Comment_119080814

Monkeypox doesn't spread easily between humans. It requires a prolonged period of close proximity to an infected person.

fun loving criminal

What the hell is going on? There's a case in Massachusetts and a few suspected cases in Canada.

Who the hell is riding and flying so much?

Atlantic Dawn

Media isn't helping much, is it getting spread from skin to skin contact, airborne contact like Covid or purely from unprotected sexual contact.

SortingYouOut

Poxy monkeys

bb12

fear fear fear

and just in time for the WHO about to make a huge global power grab

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119060115#Comment_119060115

Where is the monkeypox forum ? We are waiting !

Good news is there is already a vaccine.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083438#Comment_119083438

They're telling us that people need prolonged contact with an infected person. But how did some people catch it in the UK without contact with the initial case?

It is quite worrying to have it spread to a few countries already.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083468#Comment_119083468

Would there not be supply issues with a vaccine that hasn't been used much?

screamer

The UK seems to be a right Petri dish these days. Unfortunately for us, proximity to it is not good.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083483#Comment_119083483

The US and UK already have a stockpile. Would presume the EU have one too.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083430#Comment_119083430

Well, lots of people. Global travel is having a massive resurgence. But monkeypox can't only be caught in Africa. Several types of animals are reservoirs for it.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083469#Comment_119083469

Its likely that there was more than one "initial case"

Amenhotep

So this is the next fearmongering thing now ?

Im surprised I thought it would be some new "deadly deadly variant" of the covid, but now that everyone knows it's a **** cold, they need to dial up the fear ...

Pathethic.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083978#Comment_119083978

Also the symptoms of Monkeypox are quite similar to other diseases such as Chickenpox or Syphilis. Early cases may have been missed due to misdiagnosis

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083994#Comment_119083994

It's odd isn't it? How there's always another crisis ready to replace the last. Covid needed to take a back seat so that the masses could give all their attention to the war, now that war interest is dying down, we're back to another crisis. It's beyond bizarre that a large section of society see all this as being completly normal and organic.

timmyntc

Will we be seeing people hosting monkeypox parties same as chicken pox?

fun loving criminal

Well just ****, contact or airborne HCID? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#classification-of-hcids

Monkeypox is on the airborne side.

My worry is it popping up in people where they don't know where they got it from and in a few countries at the same time. So something changed to have it spread more easily like this.

Hope they act quickly on this before it gets out of control.

Atlantic Dawn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084729#Comment_119084729

If it's airborne it's not going to stay too long exclusively in the gay arena.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084742#Comment_119084742

China had wet markets to blame for covid. Guess the UK had to blame gays and say it's sexually transmitted.

Considering there's clear community transmission at this stage, it will be hard to control.

Will it be a few weeks or months of wash your hands while they get their **** together and maybe, just maybe we might go down the route of N95 or respirator masks or will they continue putting surgical masks on the same level as respirator masks and give people a choice of what mask to wear!! Not like covid prepared us for anything.

igCorcaigh

This decade is truly cursed.

igCorcaigh

Sweden and Italy reporting cases now.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084849#Comment_119084849

Australia and New Zealand will probably shut us off soon enough.

igCorcaigh

Has there been any genomic sequencing to see if there has been a change to the virus?

Atlantic Dawn

Not long before they will be running ads saying you can get it from a phonebox or toilet seat.

It's nothing to be worried about in my opinion. Odd that it seems to be transmitting in the LGBT community as it seems to normally be respiratory rather than sexually trasmitted.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084862#Comment_119084862

The UK have confirmed it's part of a clade that's been in West Africa for years.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084873#Comment_119084873

Well if you're that close to someone, it's safe to say that it could be spreading the respiratory route as well.