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Medicine

WHO Declares Global Health Emergency Over Monkeypox Outbreak (reuters.com) 149

Reuters reports: The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization's highest level of alert, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday.

The WHO label — a "public health emergency of international concern" — is designed to trigger a coordinated international response and could unlock funding to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments. Members of an expert committee that met on Thursday to discuss the potential recommendation were split on the decision, with nine members against and six in favour of the declaration, prompting Tedros himself to break the deadlock, he told reporters. "Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners," Tedros told a media briefing in Geneva.

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WHO Declares Global Health Emergency Over Monkeypox Outbreak

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    No seggs for two weeks and we can stop the spread folks!
    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2022 @11:22AM (#62729404)
      The name "Monkey Pox" is racist. I propose changing it to Watermelon Measles.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday July 24, 2022 @09:45AM (#62729186)

    The WHO panel actually decided 9-6 AGAINST declaring Moneypox a global health emergency [statnews.com].

    But the WHO leader override that vote, and decided all by himself it was.

    So this is basically the equivalent of promoting some panic blog.

    The other reason Monkeypox is not really a global health emergency is it's spread only by contact, and mostly sexual contact - since when has an STD been a global health emergency? So far only five people have died around the world and 95% of the people who have contracted Monkeypox are men having sex with other men [nbcnews.com], which makes sense since only men are gross enough to have sex with someone even when they are covered in large nasty pustules.

    I guess maybe the WHO should promote a slogan to compete Monkeypox - "Don't Be Gay". That should go over well.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday July 24, 2022 @09:47AM (#62729192)

      You’re right about the slashdot crowd being safe from sexually transmitted diseases.

      • But wont someone think of the GNAA? :-)
        (old time ./ users will understand)
      • That sounds like a compliment. You're saying this is a group of wise and rational people who think with their heads, not their gonads.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's more fear and paranoia to distract from inconvenient political shortcomings.

      Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is in the back pocket of political leaders that could use some distractions.

    • by haruchai ( 17472 )

      From the fine article:

      Previously, Tedros has typically endorsed expert committee recommendations, but two sources told Reuters earlier on Saturday said he had likely decided to back the highest alert level due to concerns about escalating case rates and a short supply of vaccines and treatments

      • two sources told Reuters earlier on Saturday said he had likely decided to back the highest alert level due to concerns about escalating case rates and a short supply of vaccines

        You know what's not going to help the vaccine supply? declaring it a global health emergency and not mentioning you are really only at risk if you are a gay male.

        Because it's declared an emergency, lots of countries and people will stockpile or vaccines they will never actually need.

        If the WHO had announced Monkeypox was not a glo

        • declaring it a global health emergency and not mentioning you are really only at risk if you are a gay male.

          Is that true? Seems other people have sex besides gay males.

          • Unless you're fucking a male who recently had sex with other males, or a female who had sex with a male who had sex with other males, the probability you contract this thing is beyond miniscule.

        • by haruchai ( 17472 )

          The people who control the vaccines know who's at risk, the WHO has a page of facts and Q&A and major news outlets discuss who are the most at risk, for example, WaPo

          https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

          Tedros said that one of the reasons he moved to declare a global health emergency is the potential for stanching the outbreak, which is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men.

          “That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups,

    • Be gay all you want, but stick to one partner for at least every 3-6mo stretch. That should greatly reduce the risk. Lesbians dont go to bathhouses looking for strangers to hook up with. Thats why men are the most likely spreaders.
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      A 9-6 split sounds more like a matter of opinion to me -- that's 60% - 40%.

      As to how it can be a matter of opinion, you can't really criticize declaring or not declaring a state of emergency without knowing what that *means*. It's not as if putting a tag on a situation magically changes anything. What it does is trigger a set of organizational contingency procedures. So the question isn't "Is this *really* an emergency?" It's "are the procedures we've laid out for emergencies useful here?"

      In order to ju

  • It seems to be a sexually-transmitted disease, but that has not been mentioned in any of the other popular media.

    What has been put out so far has caused a large run on the relatively-rare treatment. Proper phrasing would reduce that need to people needing treatment.

    But that seems to be impossible now.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Sunday July 24, 2022 @10:08AM (#62729264)
      Its not exclusively sex. But close contact. Two children now have it. In both cases dad was a gay man, who in all likelihood, did the stranger hookup on occasion. Those dads spread to their kids doing normal parent thing like hugging.
      • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Sunday July 24, 2022 @10:43AM (#62729326)
        Why is it "in all likelihood" a stranger hookup? A gay man hugging another gay man is out of the realm possibility for men but not children?
        • If hugging were a significant vector, the non-sexual incident rate would A) be much higher and B) show up with a greater infection rate of women in general and in case tracking specifically with other women in their social groups since on average women are extremely touchy-feely with one another in public settings compared to men. Instead, the vast majority of known female cases come from women who have had sex with men who have had sex with other men. While non-sexual contact is possible, as a significant

          • If hugging were a significant vector, the non-sexual incident rate would A) be much higher and B) show up with a greater infection rate of women in general and in case tracking specifically with other women in their social groups since on average women are extremely touchy-feely with one another in public settings compared to men.

            Except for the fact that is has been established to be a vector as the OP already conceded. You seem to be ignoring that this exact case goes against your point.

            Instead, the vast majority of known female cases come from women who have had sex with men who have had sex with other men. While non-sexual contact is possible, as a significant vector in the disease's spread it is a nonentity.

            And how that that factor into the OP's suggestion that a homosexual male who happens to be a father must have gotten it from stranger sex while his children must have gotten it from hugging? It is spread by close contact. A gay man can have close contact with someone without sex. And by "nonentity", you seem to be forgetting that the case in questio

            • "Established as a vector" Well, no, no it hasn't. Theoretically possible, yes. Shown to be a transmission vector in any case in the US or Europe, negatory. As I noted not two posts down, very young children and infants like to stick their hands places and then stuff their hands in their mouth and suck on it. Including up the nose or in the mouth of whoever's holding them. Which IS a viable transmission vector for the virus. So would attempting to get the kid to eat in the case of the infant by eating their

              • Again you missed the point. Three people in a household have monkeypox. One adult male and two children. The OP lept to the conclusion that the father must have had stranger sex and then transmitted it to his children possibly by hugging. Why is that the most likely scenario? As you have pointed out, young children are generally unsanitary. Is it not also possible that the children got it first? Is is possible that no stranger sex was involved and all three got it through close contact.

      • Those dads spread to their kids doing normal parent thing like hugging.

        You know this how?

  • I almost have to wonder if this is a message from God to tell us humans to straighten up and fly right. God did some seriously bad shit in scripture in the past, He's probably pissed off at humanity for destroying His world like we have with constant pollution, and this is our wake-up call to fix our shit.

  • if you don't know who declared the global monkeypox emergency don't go asking us. That's your job.
  • ..keeping my pangolins and bats in separate cages on the way to the wet market - now I have to keep my monkey separate too.
  • by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Sunday July 24, 2022 @11:49AM (#62729462)

    I guess we're going to see a LOT of this, since Covid.

    It's like the media are just begging to find the "next big story" in terms of a pandemic.

    The reality? - for the _vast_ majority of people, this is a total NON-ISSUE.

    If you aren't in the habit of being extremely promiscuous, having multiple sexual partners etc. - the chances of getting this virus are vanishingly small.

    It requires, pretty much, the swapping of bodily fluids.

    Sure, you may get super unlucky and in public, have a cut which brushes up against someone with the infection - hell, I don't know, on public transport or something, but hell, the chances of that are so ridiculously slim.

    And even if you are unfortunate enough to get this virus, for the vast majority, the symptoms are mild.

    I frikkin' HATE the media, most of the time - bunch of ass-hats trying to sow panic.

  • Awesome. A new pandemic.

    Better tell all of the leaders to ignore it as SOON as possible.

    Death is political!

  • Gonna go ahead and not worry about this one.

I THINK THEY SHOULD CONTINUE the policy of not giving a Nobel Prize for paneling. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

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