And still, amid ringing alarm bells, the United States “underreacted,” Varma said, again and again. Infections were also concentrating in communities of men who have sex with men-networks that sexual-health experts know to be “dense, and where infectious diseases propagate very fast,” he said. Multiple nations were already involved the upcoming summer travel season posed a high risk. So when case numbers began to erupt in several parts of Europe in May, indicating that the epidemic was already widespread, “it should have been obvious” that the epidemic had massive potential to expand, Varma told me. And though in many places the virus has infected indiscriminately, striking communities in close physical proximity to wildlife, a 2017 outbreak among young men in Nigeria hinted that sex could pose a particular risk. Decades of sporadic outbreaks in Central and West Africa had made the virus’s toll clear: It can cause a painful, debilitating sickness, with bouts of fevers and rashes, and in numerous cases leaves permanent scars behind on occasion, certain strains of the pathogen can even kill.
might have once seemed like one of the nations best equipped to stop and prevent outbreaks, it is, in actuality, one of the best at squandering its potential instead.įor years, the warning signs about monkeypox have been there. It’s confirmation that, although the U.S. Monkeypox, the country’s second infectious crisis in three years, isn’t just an unfortunate fumble. Instead, the lackluster response to monkeypox is making clear that the country’s capacity to deal with infectious disease may be even worse than it was at the start of 2020. Years of similar snafus surrounding SARS-CoV-2-a far, far more difficult virus to fight-should have taught the U.S. “It didn’t have to be this hard,” Varma told me. But as the outbreak grows, so, too, does the challenge of combatting it. Controlling the virus isn’t yet out of reach, says Jay Varma, the director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response.
Infections, most among men who have sex with men, have been documented in 46 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico New York State and San Francisco have declared the outbreak a health emergency, as has the World Health Organization, on a global scale. Two months later, global counts have crested above 21,000 confirmed cases, nearly a fourth of which are in the United States, which now ranks first among countries keeping track. “If there was one virus that would lend itself to containment,” says Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, a virologist and infectious-disease physician at Emory University, this should have been it. resources and ensure they go to those most at risk, send aid abroad, and knock it out of the park. It wasn’t hypertransmissible, moving mainly through intimate contact during the disease’s symptomatic phase previous epidemics had, with few interventions, rather quickly burned themselves out.
Unlike SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox was a known entity, a relative softball on the pathogenic field. Tests and antivirals for the virus already existed the government had stockpiled vaccines. When the monkeypox outbreak was first detected in the United States, it seemed, as far as infectious-disease epidemics go, like one this country should be able to handle.
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