So you are saying that the Neanderthals in Florida imported Monkey Pox as part of their overseas cross-species sex excursions.
Well in further news on the Monkey Pox front... Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe https://www.wral.com/expert-monkeypox-likely-spread-by-sex-at-2-raves-in-europe/20295645/ A leading adviser to the World Health Organization described the unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox in developed countries as “a random event” that might be explained by sexual behavior at two recent raves in Europe. Dr. David Heymann, who formerly headed WHO’s emergencies department, told The Associated Press that the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission among men at raves held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals. “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann. That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates and outbreaks have not spilled across borders. Health officials say most of the known cases in Europe have been among men who have sex with men, but scientists say it will be difficult to disentangle whether the spread is being driven by sex itself or merely close contact. Anyone can be infected through close contact with a sick person — or their clothing or bedsheets. “By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person’s sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission,” said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London. On Monday, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control Director Andrea Ammon said “the likelihood of further spread of the virus through close contact, for example during sexual activities among persons with multiple sexual partners, is considered to be high.” To date, WHO has recorded more than 90 cases of monkeypox in a dozen countries including Britain, Spain, Israel, France, Switzerland, the U.S. and Australia. On Monday, Denmark announced its first case, Portugal revised its total upwards to 37 and Italy reported one further infection. Germany has four confirmed cases linked to exposure at “party events ... where sexual activity took place" in Spain's Canary Islands and in Berlin, according to a government report to lawmakers obtained by the AP. Madrid’s senior health official said Monday that the Spanish capital had 30 confirmed cases. Enrique Ruiz Escudero said authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna. The monkeypox cases so far have been mild, with no deaths reported. Typically, the virus causes fever, chills, rash and lesions on the face or genitals. Most people recover within several weeks without requiring hospitalization. Vaccines against smallpox, a related disease, are effective in preventing monkeypox and some antiviral drugs are being developed. In recent years, the illness has been fatal in up to 6% of infections. Heymann chaired an urgent meeting of WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease threats on Friday to assess the outbreak and said there was no evidence to suggest that monkeypox had mutated into a more infectious form. The U.N. agency said the outbreak is “a highly unusual event” and said the fact that cases are being seen in so many different countries suggests the virus may have been silently spreading for some time. The agency’s Europe director warned that festivals and parties could accelerate spread. Still, at a public session on Monday, WHO officials described the outbreak as “containable” and cautioned against stigmatizing affected groups, saying the disease can infect anyone. Authorities in Britain, Spain and Portugal have said most of the cases identified so far were in young men whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics. Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection. “It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann hypothesized. “And then there were these international events that seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S. and other European countries.” He emphasized that the disease was unlikely to trigger widespread transmission. “This is not COVID,” he said. “We need to slow it down, but it does not spread in the air and we have vaccines to protect against it.” Heymann said studies should be conducted rapidly to determine if monkeypox could be spread by people without symptoms and that populations at risk of the disease should take precautions to protect themselves.
@Tsing Tao will be happy to know that the CDC has an additional vaccine available for him... CDC releasing some smallpox vaccine doses for monkeypox https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...jynneos-smallpox-vaccine-doses-for-monkeypox/ Officials for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday said the agency is releasing doses of a smallpox vaccine in response to the few recent cases of monkeypox that have been detected in the U.S. Jennifer McQuiston, the deputy director for the CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said during a press briefing that more than a thousand doses of the Jynneos smallpox vaccine are currently available in the U.S., with more doses expected to become available as production ramps up. Jynneos, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019, is manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, a biotechnology company headquartered in Denmark. The vaccines will be designated for people who are most likely to benefit from them, McQuiston said, including those who are known to have had close contact with monkeypox patients, health care workers and people who would be at high risk of developing a severe case of the disease. The Jynneos vaccine is administered in two 0.5 mL doses four weeks apart. McQuiston confirmed that there has been a request for the release of the Jynneos vaccine from the U.S. national stockpile for high-risk contacts and said it was “actively happening right now.” Apart from Jenneos, more than a million doses of the older-generation ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine are available, though CDC officials noted on Monday that this shot has some potential side effects that warrant discussion before widespread use. On Monday, the CDC also reported that there is currently one confirmed case of monkeypox — reported in Massachusetts — and four probable cases, all found in men. Among the presumptive cases of monkeypox, one was detected in New York, one in Florida and two in Utah. The CDC officials stressed that the risk to the general public remains low, with McQuiston noting that there have been only a handful of likely cases detected in the U.S. so far. “RIght now, the case count is low. So I don’t think that there’s a great risk to the general community for monkeypox right now in the United States,” said McQuiston. “I think that we need to pay close attention to the communities in which this might be circulating so that we can communicate effectively with them and help bring this outbreak under control.” On Sunday, President Biden said “everybody” should be concerned about the monkeypox cases. “They haven’t told me the level of exposure yet, but it is something that everybody should be concerned about,” Biden said while departing from South Korea. “We’re working on it hard to figure out what we do and what vaccine, if any, may be available for it.” Bavarian Nordic announced last week that it had already secured a vaccine order from an unidentified European country for a supply of its smallpox vaccine, marketed as Imvanex in Europe.