“The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” is a famous quote from Chicken Little Story found in the Grimm Brothers fairy tales. Just Mathias Thiele first published it in the Danish Language in the early 1800s. However, folklore has been around for over two dozen centuries.
Hysteria and disaster are here now or rapidly approaching. Our media must keep its audiences in dire peril. We have seen that almost daily for the past two-plus years with the pandemic.
Is Monkeypox even an issue to get a headline like today – WHO: Monkeypox Can Be Contained if We Act Now from the 27MAY22 article, https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/monkeypox-who-spread-u-s/2022/05/27/id/1071783/?
Monkeypox
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/monkeypox-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-rare-virus-/2022/05. This virus has been around for years. It was first detected in a human in 1970 in DROC (Democratic Republic of Congo). It is rarely seen outside of Central and West Africa.
The World Health Organization reports nearly 300 confirmed cases worldwide. Typical symptoms include fever, body aches, malaise, muscle pain, and lesions or rashes that can form blisters and scabs. It takes about seven or more days for symptoms from the initial infection. The disease is contagious for the entire time a person has it – from initial contact through scabs are fully healed.
Contact with any contaminated material – clothing, bedding, respiratory droplets, body fluids, etc. is enough to infect. Roughly one in twenty may succumb to this virus.
Monkeypox and the United States
https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/monkeypox-u-s-cases-men/2022/05/26/id/1071687/. Yesterday, the U. S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention confirmed nine individuals in seven states – Massachusetts, Utah, Washington, California, Virginia, and New York. All had been traveling internationally. All these confirmed cases in the United States were gay and bisexual men having sex with other men.
Monkeypox Treatment
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/treatment.html. There are no approved medical treatments for Monkeypox. However, antiviral drugs, such as Tecovirimat (TPOXX), Cidofovir (Vistide), and Vaccinia Immune Globulin Intravenous (VIGIV), are approved to treat the smallpox virus and are effective in over 80% of the cases of Monkeypox. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/index.html is a good source of information on this virus.
Conclusion
I think it is a colossal stretch to associate nine cases of Monkeypox in the United States with a headline that we need to act now to combat this new foe. Especially when all these monkeypox cases are associated with gay and bisexual men who traveled internationally to locations where this virus is endemic.
We are told that we should expect more cases as this virus spreads throughout the United States and the rest of the world. Would we have seen this headline and the warning to act now if we were not in the coronavirus pandemic? I believe not.
I think this is a typical response to anything that can potentially be a disaster, even when the likelihood is very close to zero. The sky is not falling.
Live Longer and Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com
