Another disease is beginning to make headlines

We’ve been so consumed for the past two years with COVID-19 that other diseases and ailments don’t seem to get a second thought anymore.

We heard very little about the flu season, other than being encouraged to get inoculated against it. However, in recent weeks, a strange-sounding malady has made headlines: monkeypox.

What is it and why is it getting attention now? According to a CNN report, monkeypox is extremely rare and a cousin of smallpox.

Cases began to crop up in the United Kingdom, but now the disease has been found in the United States, as well. A patient who’d recently traveled to Canada via private transportation was reported to have it and is hospitalized in Massachusetts.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that two people who traveled to the United States from Nigeria had it.

The disease is found mostly in Central and West Africa, but other cases have been documented in the UK and Europe, as well as other parts of the world, in recent years. The cases are usually linked to international travel or animals that have been imported and are infected with monkeypox.

Spain, on Thursday, confirmed seven cases and another 22 that are being investigated. Italy confirmed it has one case — its first; and Canada is investigating 17 suspected cases in Montreal.

The incubation period for the disease is seven to 14 days and initial symptoms are flu-like: Exhaustion, headache, fever, chills and muscle weakness, followed by swelling of the lymph nodes. The swelling is followed by a widespread rash on the body and face, to include inside the mouth and on the soles of a person’s feet and on the palms of their hands.

It sounds like chickenpox and is probably just as uncomfortable and miserable, especially since painful, fluid-filled poxes crop up after all the other symptoms. After a period of two or three weeks, the disease eventually resolves and the lesions scab over.

Before the pandemic, it would be normal for us to pay little attention to those cases overseas, or to the one case in the US, but considering how COVID-19 spread and how many have been affected, the news about monkeypox is a bit unnerving.