monkeypox is not a goddamn STD, and it's not only us fags!

[solarbird]

Well, this is nightmarish. The moronic handling of monkeypox combined with rightist propaganda pushing lies is leading everyone to believe it's an STD and only us queers can get it.

That's what people like MTG are explicitly telling their followers, and she is far from the only one.

Now it's likely going to be Pandemic 2 - and they will blame us. Thank fuck it's not nearly as contagious as COVID.

That said, it's still pretty contagious. It's not airborne to the degree COVID is, though if someone's sick enough with it then it's possible to get it from large droplets. But as I understand it, they're too big to stay in the air for long. [ETA: And apparently this particular variant is worse than that. Still not as contagious as COVID, but worse than original/wild type. See comments.] And it's much more durable on surfaces. Don't think doorknobs, but do think smallpox blankets. Stuff like that.

Thread with photos and discussion on Twitter.

Comments

[kathmandu]

Unfortunately yes. People have warned this was coming since a month ago.

You would think they would grasp that Death is no respecter of persons, and anyone with skin can catch this, but apparently SOME people just don't learn.

[solarbird]

I was hoping the disinformation wasn't as effective as it seems to be, mostly because compared to COVID it's visibly icky. People are way more likely to respond to something visibly icky.

[dewline]

Organized bigotry-crime is a determined collection of creeps, of course, so the facts of the disease weren't going to be allowed to matter anyway. As per usual.

[armiphlage]

1980s all over again. Until some famous straight white cismale gets it.

[solarbird]

When kids start getting it, and sharing it around schools, and MAGAts and QAnons are going to assert that it's happening because queers are raping children en masse, and then it's going to get very, very violent.

[randwolf]

It appears that smallpox can sometimes be transmitted by aerosols; possibly monkeypox can be, too. It probably isn't the main mode of transmission, but there is a paper arguing otherwise.

This is not the original African monkeypox, mainly transmitted from animals to humans, but a variant that is more transmissible between humans.

It has been known in Nigeria for five years, but the Nigerian CDC has been soft-pedaling it. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/28/1114183886/a-doctor-in-nigeria-tried-to-warn-the-world-that-monkeypox-had-become-a-global-t

There are two vaccines: a new one specific to monkeypox that is in short supply and not yet approved for pediatric use, and the old smallpox vaccine, slightly risky and of unknown effectiveness against monkeypox, but available in large quantities. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/clinicians/smallpox-vaccine.html

No Nigerian has yet been vaccinated.

[solarbird]

This is not the original African monkeypox, mainly transmitted from animals to humans, but a variant that is more transmissible between humans.

Well, fuck.

[randwolf]

Yeah. We had five years of warning and it’s only been sequenced recently.

As a world we seem unable to deal with emergent pandemics.

Wait, I just re-read your entry.

[kathmandu]

Important: Monkeypox is airborne, too. Maybe not as enthusiastically airborne as covid, but it has been documented with breath-borne contagion in the past. Here is the CDC's Travelers' Health page on it, from two years ago.

Here is a study from PubMed, from 2013, showing it can remain suspended in air (aerosolized) for OVER 18 HOURS. The percentage of active virus declines a lot during the first 18 hours, but then holds mostly-steady for up to 90 hours.
Paragraph three from the introduction, to give you an idea:

"The pathogenic viruses contained in the Poxviridae family are known to remain infectious for prolonged periods of time in the environment (Essbauer et al., 2007; Wolff and Croon, 1968), yet little is known about the long term stability of these viruses in aerosols. Considering the relatively low infective dose required for disease induction with many of the pathogenic members of this viral family, it is of uttermost importance to define the potential of a virus such as the MPXV to retain its infectivity over time when airborne. This virus was selected for this study for two major reasons. The first is its hardiness which makes it a good candidate for aerosol longevity studies. The second is the public health importance of this virus and other Poxviridae."

And it has an up to three-week incubation period, in which people are already contagious; it's just more enthusiastically and effectively touch-contagious once the symptoms begin.

My take is that airborne spread similar to covid is actually a silver lining: maintaining good mask protocols works against both diseases. The problem is that monkeypox does have touch-contagion and it can linger on surfaces, especially fabrics. Touching other people's clothes, or sitting on a fabric seat they used, can be a problem.

In 2021 someone wrote that covid was plague on easy mode, and that future plagues would be harder to deal with. I really didn't want them to be right.

Re: Wait, I just re-read your entry.

[solarbird]

Well, that's just fuckin' great.

Pandemic 2 ahoy.

Re: Wait, I just re-read your entry.

[randwolf]

That study is more ambiguous than definitive; for one thing it doesn’t discuss how the virus responds to sunlight. I’ve seen another study that suggests it requires a very sick patient for aerosol transmission of smallpox in the wild. But we really don’t know and we need to be cautious.

[we_are_spc]

It's sometimes gone as far as people *not* being tested because they're *not* gay/other type of queerfolk. One of whome was a massage therapist (Which I am BTW) and could've caught it at work.

That scares the shit out of me/us (Multi system here) because if that one wasn't tested...what about me?

Not to mention the 21 day isolation needed, and I feel like were screwed.

-T~

[solarbird]

Oh yeah, check the linked twitter thread. It's terrible.