'Monkeypox Panic： Let's follow the science with monkeypox'
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
205.20581
Summary
Monkeypox has been around for a while, but it hasn t been as well-studied as it is today. Is it really a pandemic? Is it even a thing? And why is it being spread in the gay community?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We're talking about monkeypox, yeah, or mpox, as they like to say.
00:00:04.900
Authoritarians, they're eager to return to the heady days of national emergencies
00:00:08.280
with some sort of infectious disease to keep everybody afraid.
00:00:12.000
They've been desperately seeking a new pandemic for a couple of years,
00:00:16.360
I mean, the bird flu failed to captivate the developed world
00:00:21.460
and now the establishment's trying again, and this is the second round of it,
00:00:24.920
to convince the world that monkeypox is indeed going to surge and threaten us all.
00:00:30.300
We can't go a day without seeing a news item on monkeypox
00:00:35.460
but the statistics just don't justify the attention it's gathering.
00:00:39.580
I mean, monkeypox came and went a couple of years ago, but it had very little impact.
00:00:43.080
There's now apparently a new strain we must watch for.
00:00:45.280
Yes, of course, doesn't it sound familiar, the new strain?
00:00:47.480
Currently, the number of people diagnosed in Canada with this new strain is zero.
00:00:52.040
Whether you're looking at the old strain or the new strain,
00:00:54.140
the death count in Canada for both strains remains consistent at zero.
00:00:57.880
You have as much chance of dying of monkeypox in Canada as you do of leprosy,
00:01:02.560
but you wouldn't know it from watching the news.
00:01:04.980
You know, like I said, we're supposed to call it M-pox,
00:01:07.160
since monkeypox is apparently insensitive to monkeys or something.
00:01:10.380
I'm going to keep simple and keep to the term monkeypox.
00:01:12.900
I don't think too many monkeys read my columns anyways.
00:01:15.740
All that said, monkeypox does exist, and it does sound like a nasty disease to catch.
00:01:19.780
Even if it isn't fatal, it's going to make you pretty sick,
00:01:21.880
and your body could be covered with oozing lesions that might scar,
00:01:26.120
The news is also warning us that monkeypox could come without symptoms.
00:01:31.480
because people without symptoms don't get tested for monkeypox.
00:01:39.540
Asymptomatic COVID, I mean, that swept the world as well.
00:01:41.780
Diseases have become so sneaky, we can't even tell that we have them anymore.
00:01:45.380
Now, part of the issue with monkeypox is that it's being predominantly spread
00:01:50.020
That adds a political sensitivity element to the whole issue,
00:01:54.100
which tempts folks to try and claim this disease threatens everybody,
00:01:58.840
But that's a dangerous and stupid approach to take with an infectious disease.
00:02:03.280
That approach to a novel disease was done before,
00:02:07.840
You've got to remember, for those of us old enough,
00:02:09.280
when AIDS first came upon the scene in the early 80s,
00:02:11.380
the first reports were blunt, and it was pretty frightening.
00:02:13.540
A new disease was sweeping the gay male community,
00:02:17.380
It was called gay-acquired immune deficiency initially.
00:02:24.680
I'm pretty insensitive, but it really got to the point, didn't it?
00:02:31.640
But as it became evident how horrible and dangerous this disease was,
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the strategy became one of trying to tell everybody
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we were told that it would sweep the heterosexual community.
00:02:42.660
Within years, we'd all know somebody with AIDS.
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It was a frightening scenario for those of us entering our 20s,
00:02:50.380
Thankfully, the warnings of the transmissibility of the HIV virus
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The disease wasn't that easy to transmit through conventional sex.
00:02:59.220
And while the spread was devastating to those impacted,
00:03:03.880
It remained predominantly within the gay, male, and IV drug-using communities.
00:03:09.900
It killed millions of people, and it's still killing people today.
00:03:12.640
But what if instead of pretending the disease was hitting everybody equally,
00:03:15.240
we'd set aside political correctness and targeted prevention and treatment
00:03:20.560
Good lives have been saved if more outreach was directed
00:03:22.680
to the gay, male, and IV drug-using communities
00:03:24.720
rather than pretending it was a risk for everybody?
00:03:27.780
Resources for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment
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surely could have been better utilized and more effective
00:03:32.560
if they'd been directed to the areas where they were needed most.
00:03:35.160
Instead, our medical experts and social services were running around
00:03:42.100
The disease never spread as they said it would,
00:03:46.320
Now, monkeypox isn't the threat that the panic porn pushers
00:03:50.560
but it still can be terrible for those affected.
00:03:59.300
Again, this is being predominantly spread in the gay, male, community.
00:04:02.040
If we want to prevent it from spreading and harming people,
00:04:04.200
let's target prevention, diagnosis, and treatment
00:04:07.740
It's not a slight against the LGBTQ community to do this.
00:04:13.780
this was a widespread problem outside of the community
00:04:16.480
and spread the resources too thin all over again.
00:04:22.740
Well, it's time we set political correctness aside
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when it comes to dealing with infectious diseases.