• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Monkeypox / Monkey Pox

None of these alleged facts are true.

Monkeypox was first identified when shipments of monkeys from Singapore to a Copenhagen lab were observed to present symptoms of a pox-like disease in 1958 - prior to any of the monkeys being used in any trials.

Initial and subsequent investigations (late 1950s through the 1960s) demonstrated these (and other, later) monkeys were infected with a virus that resembled - but was different from - both the variola (smallpox disease) and vaccinia (smallpox vaccine) viruses. The new virus was determined to be closer to variola than vaccinia. Decades later, after more sophisticated genetic testing, it is believed the monkeypox and variola viruses are cousin strains, both descended from cowpox. There is no basis for believing monkeypox represents a derivative from the vaccinia virus - i.e., any smallpox vaccine being used from the late 1950s onward.

As early as the initial investigations it was demonstrated that inoculating monkeys with smallpox vaccine (i.e., vaccinia) prevented the presentation of any visible monkeypox symptoms. This alone rules out the claim the first monkeypox-infected monkeys presented with infections after being involved in smallpox vaccination trials.

The first confirmed human monkeypox infection involved a child in 1970. There's no basis for claiming humans hadn't been infected with monkeypox until that time. Owing to the close similarity between the monkeypox and variola viruses, as well as the limited diagnostic resolution of serological testing of that era, there's a high probability that any earlier monkeypox infections in humans were simply attributed to regular smallpox.

Monkeypox isn't limited to monkeys. Some monkey species don't even present symptoms when inoculated with the monkeypox virus. The most widespread populations of wild species known to exhibit traces of exposure to, and to harbor, the monkeypox virus are rodents rather than monkeys.

See, for example:

Monkeypox Virus (a 1973 summary of everything learned over the preceding 1.5 decades since first discovery)
https://journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.1128/br.37.1.1-18.1973

A review of experimental and natural infections of animals with monkeypox virus between 1958 and 2012
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3635111/
Both of those papers do not deal directly with how the monkeys came to contract monkeypox. Both of the papers I originally read was research into whether the trialed smallpox vaccine was connected to 2 monkeypox outbreaks or not. The conclusion of both papers was inconclusive. No direct link could be established.

I can't find either of those papers now and I have my browser set to delete my browsing history every time I close the browser so I couldn't find them again that way either.

It worth remembering these monkeys were kept in isolated and controlled conditions, having been shipped in controlled conditions, and were already tested and known to be disease free. According to the links you gave the first group of monkeys contracted monkeypox after 2 months and the second outbreak occurred 4 months after that. The incubation time of monkeypox from being first infected is 7 to 14 days but can range from 5 to 21 days and not from 2 months to 6 months.

So how did they contract monkeypox? The question isn't that they contracted monkeypox because they did. The question is 'how'?

I also have had a quick look through all the references given in both papers and none of the abstracts deal with how the monkeys came to contract monkeypox.

Whether or not the monkeys were at the time being used in trials, I twice read that they were. Again I can find no reference to that in the links you gave that conclusively says yes or no. I may of course have missed it.
 
Last edited:
Hawaii Health Department says a military personnel at Tripler Military Hospital In Honolulu could have monkey pox.

Hawaii officials think this is an isolated situation with no threat to the public.
 
There were 71 new cases reported of monkey pox reported in England over the weekend bring the number to 179.

The UK Health Service put out a message don’t have sex if one displays monkey pox symptoms.
 
Oh god is this how the future is panning out - waves of pandemics one after the other? A few non-fatal ones to soften us up and then maybe a killer one down the line. Maybe i will hang on to the masks for a while.

What is the panic about monkey pox?

There have been a handful of cases. lf you are catastrophically unlucky, and somehow contrive to catch it, you will be plukey and itch like buggery for a while. That’s it.

Remember when dog attacks became “fashionable” for lazy hacks, and every paper, every day, had to have its “Devil Dog!” headline?

Remember “Ritual Satanic Abuse!” ?

Remember “Bogus Social Workers!” ?

This too shall pass.

maximus otter
 
What is the panic about monkey pox?

There have been a handful of cases. lf you are catastrophically unlucky, and somehow contrive to catch it, you will be plukey and itch like buggery for a while. That’s it.

Remember when dog attacks became “fashionable” for lazy hacks, and every paper, every day, had to have its “Devil Dog!” headline?

Remember “Ritual Satanic Abuse!” ?

Remember “Bogus Social Workers!” ?

This too shall pass.

maximus otter
What will be the next craze?
 
The UK Health Service put out a message don’t have sex if one displays monkey pox symptoms.
We're doomed.

8b1ce8-20140711-planet-apes.jpg
 
What is the panic about monkey pox?

There have been a handful of cases. lf you are catastrophically unlucky, and somehow contrive to catch it, you will be plukey and itch like buggery for a while. That’s it.

Remember when dog attacks became “fashionable” for lazy hacks, and every paper, every day, had to have its “Devil Dog!” headline?

Remember “Ritual Satanic Abuse!” ?

Remember “Bogus Social Workers!” ?

This too shall pass.

maximus otter

The point is, while it's easy to get over monkey pox, its a lot more difficult to get over Ebola, for example, and this outbreak can be used as a test case for some worse disease that may hit us in the future and may not be as easy on our systems. Plus Covid has made everyone paranoid to varying degrees.
 
There were 71 new cases reported of monkey pox reported in England over the weekend bring the number to 179.

The UK Health Service put out a message don’t have sex if one displays monkey pox symptoms.
If you’re covered in weeping pustules all over your body then not having sex should be fairly straightforward. One would expect.
 
As world wide monkey pox cases jumped from 700 to over a 1,000 over night, the American CDC declared level 2 of caution.

Level 2 means start to consider keeping distance from people.
 
As world wide monkey pox cases jumped from 700 to over a 1,000 over night, the American CDC declared level 2 of caution.

Level 2 means start to consider keeping distance from people.

I've heard they're lobbying for a two-week moratorium on interspecies intercourse in order to flatten the curve.

It's going to be hard to stay away from Bubbles; he's my prime mate.

That, ahem, aside, is there yet any suggestion that this strain of Monkey Pox is able to be transmitted by some irregular means, or that it is more contagious that usual?

All the reports I've read suggest that caee numbers should be fizzling or bubbling away at a low level, not rapidly growing.

Although, it must be said, there was speculation that it could have been spreading undetected or misdiagnosed for a while and that the relative boom in numbers reflects a similar boom in awareness among thr public and physicians.

In other words, we're now more vigilant and spotting more cases.
 
Last edited:
I've heard they're lobbying for a two-week moratorium on interspecies intercourse in order to flatten the curve.

It's going to be hard to stay away from Bubbles; he's my prime mate.

That, ahem, aside, is there yet any suggestion that this strain of Monkey Pox is able to be transmitted by some irregular means, or that it is more contagious that usual?

All the reports I've read suggest that caee numbers should be fizzling or bubbling away at a low level, not rapidly growing.

Although, it must be said, there was speculation that it could have been spreading undetected or misdiagnosed for a while and that the relative boom in numbers reflects a similar boom in awareness among thr public and physicians.

In other words, we're now more vigilant and spotting more cases.

Indeed.

mjbub.jpg
 
Watch out for those prairie dogs and other animals as monkeypox finds new reservoirs and vectors.

Eleven days after being bitten by one of her pet prairie dogs, a 3-year-old girl in Wisconsin on 24 May 2003 became the first person outside of Africa to be diagnosed with monkeypox.

Two months later, her parents and 69 other people in the United States had suspected or confirmed cases of this disease, which is caused by a relative of the much deadlier smallpox virus. The monkeypox virus is endemic in parts of Africa, and rodents imported from Ghana had apparently infected captive prairie dogs, North American animals, when an animal distributor in Texas housed them together.

The outbreak now underway has affected more people outside of Africa than ever before—nearly 1300 cases as of 7 June, on multiple continents, many of them men who have sex with men. But like the 2003 episode, today’s surge has raised a possibility that makes researchers gulp: Monkeypox virus could take up permanent residence in wildlife outside of Africa, forming a reservoir that could lead to repeated human outbreaks.

No animal reservoir currently exists outside of Africa, but the U.S. outbreak of 2003 was a close call, some scientists suspect, especially because nearly 300 of the animals from Ghana and the exposed prairie dogs were never found. “We narrowly escaped having monkeypox establish itself in a wild animal population” in North America, suggests Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who long has studied the disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In the end, however, surveys of wild animals in Wisconsin and Illinois never found monkeypox virus, none of the infected humans passed on the disease to other people, and worries about this exotic outbreak evaporated. ...

https://www.science.org/content/art...k-will-establish-virus-animals-outside-africa
 
Back
Top