Monkeypox: Another ‘public health failure’
Even as we grapple with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, “we are face-to-face with a new health crisis,” said Sanjay Gupta in CNN.com. Since the first U.S. case of monkeypox surfaced in May, cases of the once-rare disease have steadily risen, and California, New York, and Illinois have declared monkeypox a health emergency. Nearly 6,000 U.S. cases have now been reported, almost all among gay men who contracted the illness through sex. The virus spreads primarily through intimate skin-to-skin contact, but can also pass via shared bedding, towels, and clothing. No American has died from the disease, which typically causes a fever, body aches, and painful, pus-filled lesions that can last weeks— and fears are growing that it may be “too late” to contain the outbreak.
We’re looking at America’s “next public health failure,” said Scott Gottlieb in The New York Times. As with Covid, health officials were too slow to react, failing to expand testing capacity even once it was clear monkeypox was spreading domestically. The government had an effective vaccine but only 2,400 doses, and officials didn’t act quickly enough to generate more, leaving us with a shortfall until October, when the manufacturer will deliver an additional 500,000 doses. What makes our failures all the worse, said Katherine Wu in The Atlantic, is that this should have been an easy one. Monkeypox is a “known entity” that’s relatively easy to contain; tests, antivirals, and vaccines already existed. The Covid pandemic should have exposed our public health “weak points” and increased our readiness.
“Some of the most glaring errors have been in communication,” said Kelsey Piper in Vox. Globally, 98 percent of cases are among gay or bisexual men, but health officials are wary of labeling monkeypox a “gay disease.” To avoid that stigma, they have emphasized that it can strike anyone instead of warning sexually active gay men that their risk is “highly elevated.” The virus won’t “spread like wildfire” the way Covid did, said Leana Wen in The Washington Post, but it may yet become “a broader threat.” Cases have been reported among women and two children suspected to have gotten it through household contact. Public health officials need to “urgently ramp up their efforts, because an infectious disease that begins in one community almost certainly won’t stay there.”