Nostalgic for panic, America? Welcome to monkeypox hysteria!
The World Health Organization is convening a second emergency meeting to debate whether this virus — which causes fatigue, lesions and in some cases death — constitutes a global emergency. The CDC is issuing warnings and advisories.
Woke epidemiologists are claiming this outbreak could have been avoided if only more money had been spent on pet lefty causes. Local health departments across the country are tallying cases and clucking about spread.
It all feels familiar: the machinery of elite anxiety spinning up into action, just like it did over COVID. (After a brief stutter-step during which our public health “experts” assured us that worrying about the virus at all was deeply racist.)
There are a few key differences this time. The first is sheer scale.
Since this outbreak began in January, it’s brought just 9,200 cases across 63 countries, with three deaths. That’s a .03% mortality rate so far, on the back of overall tiny numbers. (America alone had seen millions of COVID cases by this point in 2020). The bug simply isn’t that transmissible, requiring prolonged close contact to spread.
Also, vaccines are already available. And with good health-care standards, like those in the United States and Europe (where this outbreak is concentrated), the virus is unlikely to cause more than rash, fever and lethargy.
Yet the panic-mongers seem to be trying as hard as they can to whip up a frenzy, with dire warnings about public pools (the virus can spread from contact with infected skin) and summer vacations.
But no-one — mercifully — appears to be paying attention.
Why? We’ve been inoculated (so to speak) by our experience of COVID overreaction.
The past two years saw massive, unprecedented changes in America in the name of public health. We closed schools, inflicting lasting damage on kids. Businesses choked off, destroying lives and livelihoods. Funerals, graduations, birthdays: forbidden, missed and ignored.
What did these draconian efforts get us? Nothing. The virus ripped through our population, killed more than a million, and receded as viruses do. COVID is now endemic and no real threat (except to the most vulnerable groups, like the elderly, around whom protective efforts should always have been narrowly focused).
Why, even Yale public health prof and notorious COVID alarmist Gregg Gonsalves (who has called for the WHO to declare an emergency) demands that we allow people to manage their own risk of monkeypox without shutting down society.
We’d call him a hypocrite, but it’s a waste of breath. The nation should just be glad that these fanatics have lost most of their power.
