Monkey Pox As An STD

Western Rifle Shooters Association recently linked to a piece from the Rintrah blog on "Global cognitive decline." The author relates: "What I notice is that people in recent years don’t really seem to be adjusting their worldview to new information anymore, they increasingly react on new information based on existing information they already had." And then he gives examples of people being too stupid to believe the experts--e.g., not believing in climate change even though Europe is having the worst drought in 500 years (I wonder what caused the drought of 500 years ago?), and not selling off Tesla stock because the company is facing stiffer competition and still hasn't perfected its driverless technology (like all those rubes that held on to their Apple stock after the IBM PC came out, and after Windows 3.0 was released, and after Samsung introduced the Galaxy smart phone).  He then addresses the monkey pox (or "chimples" as John Wilder refers to it):

And then there’s the monkeypox situation. When monkeypox broke out in 2003, it was treated as an emergency and human to human spread was prevented. We’re now faced however, with a CDC that has simply resigned itself to the ongoing uncontrolled spread of this virus.

After comparing the reaction to the monkey pox to when there was a threatened Ebola outbreak, he continues:

    But now that we have a new plague spreading across the United States, smallpox version 0.1 alpha, the far right consensus consists of making petty jokes about “moneypox” and how gay men must be raping children and dogs who got infected. People are responding, based on how they responded to COVID. The nervous system is no longer evaluating new situations independently, it tries to fit them into its pre-existing cognitive architecture.

    ... For angry white males it also means pretending that monkeypox is a nothingburger, as they settled on COVID being a nothingburger and they’re taking that same cognitive architecture and now cramming monkeypox into it.

In other words, even though in the United States 98% of monkey pox cases are gay men and most of the remaining 2% involve bisexual men, the author is saying that you are stupid if you don't believe the public health authorities when they say that all of us are at risk of contracting monkey pox. (This, by the way, was the same lie peddled about AIDS in developed countries in the 1980s). 

    Apparently some scientists didn't get the memo. NBC is reporting that "Sex between men, not skin contact, is fueling monkeypox, new research suggests." From the article:

    Since the outset of the global monkeypox outbreak in May, public health and infectious disease experts have told the public that the virus is largely transmitting through skin-to-skin contact, in particular during sex between men. 

    Now, however, an expanding cadre of experts has come to believe that sex between men itself — both anal as well as oral intercourse — is likely the main driver of global monkeypox transmission. The skin contact that comes with sex, these experts say, is probably much less of a risk factor.

    In recent weeks, a growing body of scientific evidence — including a trio of studies published in peer-reviewed journals, as well as reports from national, regional and global health authorities — has suggested that experts may have framed monkeypox’s typical transmission route precisely backward.  

    Reconceiving the primary risk factors for transmission is crucial because of how it may affect guidance on reducing the risk of infection, including the question of whether demanding that people with the virus self-isolate has any substantial impact on transmission.

    “A growing body of evidence supports that sexual transmission, particularly through seminal fluids, is occurring with the current MPX outbreak,” said Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, medical director of the University of Chicago Sexual Wellness Clinic, referring to monkeypox and to recent studies that found the virus in semen.

    Consequently, scientists told NBC News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities should update their monkeypox communication strategies to more strongly emphasize the centrality of intercourse among gay and bisexual men, who comprise nearly all U.S. cases, to the virus’ spread.

    On Aug. 14, Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease physician at the University of Southern California, and Dr. Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz, a resident physician in global health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, published an essay on Medium in which they reviewed the science supporting the argument that during the current outbreak, monkeypox is largely transmitting through anal and oral intercourse between men.

    “It looks very clear to us that this is an infection that is transmitting sexually the vast majority of the time,” Allan-Blitz said.

After quoting a WHO official who admits that researchers don't know how the current strain is spreading, the article continues:

    In an interview, Klausner, who has submitted a version of his and Allan-Blitz’s essay to a scientific journal for publication, distilled the evidence that he said supports the hypothesis that sex itself fuels the global outbreak into four major points. 

    First, he noted that, according to the WHO, more than three quarters of global monkeypox cases are among men 18 to 44 years old. This is a typical age breakdown for diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections among gay and bisexual men, he said. What’s more, in recent studies of pooled monkeypox cases among this demographic, 17% to 32% of those diagnosed with the virus received a sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnosis at the same time.

    Second, during the global outbreak, atypical to what has historically been seen in the 11 African nations where the virus has become endemic since first being identified in humans in 1970, monkeypox lesions have in the majority of cases occurred in men’s genital and anorectal areas. This, experts told NBC News, suggests that these were the sites where the virus first passed into the body.

    In a study of 197 monkeypox cases in London men published July 28 in The BMJ, the British Medical Association’s journal, researchers found that 56% had lesions in the genital area and 42% had them in their anorectal regions. And in a study published July 21 in The New England Journal of Medicine, a global team of researchers pooled 538 monkeypox cases — also all in men — from around the world and found that 73% had lesions in the genital or anorectal areas. 

    Third, researchers have found monkeypox in semen and have been able to culture that virus, which suggests it could transmit through ejaculation. Also, the authors of two recent studies have detected the virus after taking anal swabs among men who had monkeypox but were asymptomatic, which indicates that the virus might transmit from the anorectal area during anal intercourse before people develop symptoms. Experts say more research is needed on both these fronts.

    Referring to bodily fluids such as semen, vaginal fluids and blood, the WHO’s Lewis said, “Research is underway to find out more about whether people can spread monkeypox through the exchange of these fluids during and after symptomatic infection.”

    Finally, Klausner noted that scientists have identified an association between specific sexual acts and the location of monkeypox lesions. 

If--and that is a big "if"--the monkey pox develops into the second coming of small pox, it won't be because "angry white males" noticed that it was only being spread between gay and bisexual men and thought that fact important, but because the same health authorities that had no problem with locking down whole populations and forcing people to choose between their jobs and taking an unproven vaccine (and which now appears to be causing significant long term health problems), refused to shut down gay pride orgies and close saunas (fka Turkish bathhouses) to avoid stigmatizing gay men.