You covered an enormous amount of ground in your report. Where to start? Worst of times best of times in our public health infrastructure. Need more funding stat. Numbers of new cases could explode in the U.S. by late next week to six figures and still an undercount. I hope I'm wrong but we're in fairly early stage and growth is not …
You covered an enormous amount of ground in your report. Where to start? Worst of times best of times in our public health infrastructure. Need more funding stat. Numbers of new cases could explode in the U.S. by late next week to six figures and still an undercount. I hope I'm wrong but we're in fairly early stage and growth is not linear now. People will continue to turn blind eyes: wrongly using lethality as a metric, and s NIMG attitude. Continuing roadblocks from anti-vaxxers and anti public health folks. Usual mess.
Can't say I disagree with you that when politics enters the picture it usually isn't to anyone's long term benefit. But PC isn't the bogeyman in public health that it's often made out to be. We learned with Covid that there were underserved BIPOC communities, etc. So good mixed with the bad as usual.
It's hardly an issue of political correctness, although Osterholm (UMn) wants to emphasize the risk to the MSM subgroup. That group's already aware of it. I'm much more worried that, by overemphasizing that aspect, others will decide there's no risk to the rest of the community and will avoid precautions.
One consideration is the lack of vaccine doses. We're missing about 90% of the on-hand doses we need at this point. For the cases we know about. I suspect, thanks to a lack of testing, we have yet to understand the degree of community spread. Also, this virus isn't presenting in the same manner it has in the past. In the MSM community, (and speaking relative to the clinical evaluations) there's discussion that it's been seen and diagnosed for some time as one of the more common STDs. Often, only a single lesion has presented. A single lesion on a hand or arm might well go unnoticed and serve as a vector for more dissemination. Also, during the early onset of illness, "viral" symptoms predominate, and the virus can spread by air. At this time, the current thought is large-droplet transmission as we know fomite transmission is viable. The prolonged contact time I've seen so far is 3 hours (vs 15 min for COVID).
While we have not seen the spillover, it may have simply not been recognized. This was a discussion we had in my organization 2 weeks ago: How many would have recognized and had a high index of suspicion for MPV 3 months ago? The answer: None of us. But since we're all also engaged in public health work, our index of suspicion is now elevated. CDC and all the primary care organizations are trying to get more info out to increase awareness.
Sadly, Mr. Reines's comment seems to be an indication of how the right wing intends to weaponize this issue. Just as they have done with SARS-Cov-2 and attempted to do with Ebola. SS, DD.
"Political correctness appears to be costing lives not more vaccines..." It may appear to you that way, and I have a pretty good idea why. But in reality, no.
But, of course, this is how I expect the far right to approach this: blame it all on the LGBTQ community, spread anti-vaccine lies and then, when the problem gets worse, use that as an excuse to persecute the LGBTQ community.
Find or create a problem, do everything you can to make it worse, and then blame it on Democrats, liberals, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, scientists, educators, Muslims, BLM, "antifa," and miscellaneous other bogeymen, real or imagined.
Huh - its clear by the YLE article that this is happening -
QUOTE
But resources, vaccine messaging, and education need to be laser focused on the MSM network. However, we cannot pigeonhole ourselves to this group, because we need to prevent stigma and because the situation may change. That’s challenging to communicate. UNQUOTE
Preventing Stigma is not a reason to avoid addressing any issue at all.
Actually, no, nothing in that quote indicates that "Political correctness appears to be costing lives not more vaccines..." We know where the majority of the cases are showing up right now. This was initially true of HIV infection as well, and for the same reason: sexual contact is an important means of transmission. Gay men were the proverbial canaries in the coal mine on that one. It looks like they might be again.
So, yeah, we need to make sure that the word gets out to the most vulnerable population. But we need to do it in a way that insures that people like you won't see it as a political weapon and decide that this is just a gay male issue and ignore the reality of how it can be spread. Just as the right wing did with HIV. And we all know how well that worked out.
Here's the CDC article linked from Dr. Jetelina's article the goes into more details on transmission methods: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html You will note that any close physical contact will do it.
You covered an enormous amount of ground in your report. Where to start? Worst of times best of times in our public health infrastructure. Need more funding stat. Numbers of new cases could explode in the U.S. by late next week to six figures and still an undercount. I hope I'm wrong but we're in fairly early stage and growth is not linear now. People will continue to turn blind eyes: wrongly using lethality as a metric, and s NIMG attitude. Continuing roadblocks from anti-vaxxers and anti public health folks. Usual mess.
Michael - Do you think that addressing the problem head on would benefit everyone and save lives?
Political correctness appears to be costing lives not more vaccines...
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure - Benjamin Franklin
Can't say I disagree with you that when politics enters the picture it usually isn't to anyone's long term benefit. But PC isn't the bogeyman in public health that it's often made out to be. We learned with Covid that there were underserved BIPOC communities, etc. So good mixed with the bad as usual.
It's hardly an issue of political correctness, although Osterholm (UMn) wants to emphasize the risk to the MSM subgroup. That group's already aware of it. I'm much more worried that, by overemphasizing that aspect, others will decide there's no risk to the rest of the community and will avoid precautions.
One consideration is the lack of vaccine doses. We're missing about 90% of the on-hand doses we need at this point. For the cases we know about. I suspect, thanks to a lack of testing, we have yet to understand the degree of community spread. Also, this virus isn't presenting in the same manner it has in the past. In the MSM community, (and speaking relative to the clinical evaluations) there's discussion that it's been seen and diagnosed for some time as one of the more common STDs. Often, only a single lesion has presented. A single lesion on a hand or arm might well go unnoticed and serve as a vector for more dissemination. Also, during the early onset of illness, "viral" symptoms predominate, and the virus can spread by air. At this time, the current thought is large-droplet transmission as we know fomite transmission is viable. The prolonged contact time I've seen so far is 3 hours (vs 15 min for COVID).
While we have not seen the spillover, it may have simply not been recognized. This was a discussion we had in my organization 2 weeks ago: How many would have recognized and had a high index of suspicion for MPV 3 months ago? The answer: None of us. But since we're all also engaged in public health work, our index of suspicion is now elevated. CDC and all the primary care organizations are trying to get more info out to increase awareness.
Sadly, Mr. Reines's comment seems to be an indication of how the right wing intends to weaponize this issue. Just as they have done with SARS-Cov-2 and attempted to do with Ebola. SS, DD.
"Political correctness appears to be costing lives not more vaccines..." It may appear to you that way, and I have a pretty good idea why. But in reality, no.
But, of course, this is how I expect the far right to approach this: blame it all on the LGBTQ community, spread anti-vaccine lies and then, when the problem gets worse, use that as an excuse to persecute the LGBTQ community.
Find or create a problem, do everything you can to make it worse, and then blame it on Democrats, liberals, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, scientists, educators, Muslims, BLM, "antifa," and miscellaneous other bogeymen, real or imagined.
Also Her Emails and Hunter Biden's Laptop.
SS,DD.
Huh - its clear by the YLE article that this is happening -
QUOTE
But resources, vaccine messaging, and education need to be laser focused on the MSM network. However, we cannot pigeonhole ourselves to this group, because we need to prevent stigma and because the situation may change. That’s challenging to communicate. UNQUOTE
Preventing Stigma is not a reason to avoid addressing any issue at all.
See the data.
Actually, no, nothing in that quote indicates that "Political correctness appears to be costing lives not more vaccines..." We know where the majority of the cases are showing up right now. This was initially true of HIV infection as well, and for the same reason: sexual contact is an important means of transmission. Gay men were the proverbial canaries in the coal mine on that one. It looks like they might be again.
So, yeah, we need to make sure that the word gets out to the most vulnerable population. But we need to do it in a way that insures that people like you won't see it as a political weapon and decide that this is just a gay male issue and ignore the reality of how it can be spread. Just as the right wing did with HIV. And we all know how well that worked out.
Here's the CDC article linked from Dr. Jetelina's article the goes into more details on transmission methods: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/transmission.html You will note that any close physical contact will do it.