New mutant virus with pandemic potential in Africa

[Wigberto Marciaga]

A mutant virus similar to monkeypox has been detected in the Congo, Africa (called: clade 1b). In fact, it has been classified as a new strain of mpox.

Experts believe that it has the potential to become a pandemic.

Mpox previously caused a global epidemic, highlighting its virulence capacity.

Experts call for quick action to stop the spread of the virus.

Let us remember that the majority of deaths from Mpox are children, despite the virus being related to sexual activities.

Reference: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/mpox-outbreak-kamituga-democratic-republic-of-congo-africa/

Edited April 17 by Wigberto Marciaga

[exchemist]

5 minutes ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

A mutant virus similar to monkeypox has been detected in the Congo, Africa (called: clade 1b). In fact, it has been classified as a new strain of mpox.

Experts believe that it has the potential to become a pandemic.

Mpox previously caused a global epidemic, highlighting its virulence capacity.

Experts call for quick action to stop the spread of the virus.

Let us remember that the majority of deaths from Mpox are children, despite the virus being related to sexual activities.

Reference: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/mpox-outbreak-kamituga-democratic-republic-of-congo-africa/

There was a minor outbreak of monkeypox recently, but I’m not aware it became a recognised epidemic. As I recall, there was no more than a few hundred cases.

[sethoflagos]

31 minutes ago, exchemist said:

There was a minor outbreak of monkeypox recently, but I’m not aware it became a recognised epidemic. As I recall, there was no more than a few hundred cases.

Either of the two main smallpox vaccines can control it, so if it were perceived as important (eg by killing white people instead), it would be easy enough to deal with. 

We get the odd case here from time to time. Nature's way of telling us not to mess around with rope squirrels (suspected wild reservoir).

[exchemist]

4 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Either of the two main smallpox vaccines can control it, so if it were perceived as important (eg by killing white people instead), it would be easy enough to deal with. 

We get the odd case here from time to time. Nature's way of telling us not to mess around with rope squirrels (suspected wild reservoir).

Yes I think I recall smallpox vaccine was the solution last time it started to spread in a few Western countries. But it fizzled out pretty quickly, with or without vaccination. We had a few eyeball-rolling hysterics who thought it was armageddon, but it was a false alarm. It's going to take more than an article in the Daily Batshitograph (as I'm afraid it has now become) to get me to take this new story very seriously.  

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

Yes I think I recall smallpox vaccine was the solution last time it started to spread in a few Western countries. But it fizzled out pretty quickly, with or without vaccination. We had a few eyeball-rolling hysterics who thought it was armageddon, but it was a false alarm. It's going to take more than an article in the Daily Batshitograph (as I'm afraid it has now become) to get me to take this new story very seriously.  

I think there is a distinct difference how the public and how public health are seeing these events. Here is the thing, when mpox started to spread, it was kind of a best case scenario for public health intervention. It is moderately harmful, but not catastrophic, has visible symptoms, diagnostics exists and it requires direct contact to spread.

Especially with elevated public health control still ongoing and rapidly deployed monitoring efforts (including wastewater testing), the assumption was that it should have been easy to mount a rapid response. What actually happened is still being discussed. However, what clearly did not happen was an early containment, it ultimately spread across multiple countries and was declared a so-called public health emergency of international concern in 2022. The case numbers went down in 2023 and the emergency ended, and some consider that an success (around 100k infections in more than 100 countries). 

But critics highlight the issue that the most effective control, early containment, failed utterly, and that just in the wake of the lessons from COVID-19, casting doubts on future outbreak control efforts with more dangerous infections.

[Wigberto Marciaga]

I read that: "98% of the infected people were gay or bisexual, 41% were HIV positive and their average age was 38 years".

This about the current situation, is an update on what is being said on networks.

[exchemist]

38 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I think there is a distinct difference how the public and how public health are seeing these events. Here is the thing, when mpox started to spread, it was kind of a best case scenario for public health intervention. It is moderately harmful, but not catastrophic, has visible symptoms, diagnostics exists and it requires direct contact to spread.

Especially with elevated public health control still ongoing and rapidly deployed monitoring efforts (including wastewater testing), the assumption was that it should have been easy to mount a rapid response. What actually happened is still being discussed. However, what clearly did not happen was an early containment, it ultimately spread across multiple countries and was declared a so-called public health emergency of international concern in 2022. The case numbers went down in 2023 and the emergency ended, and some consider that an success (around 100k infections in more than 100 countries). 

But critics highlight the issue that the most effective control, early containment, failed utterly, and that just in the wake of the lessons from COVID-19, casting doubts on future outbreak control efforts with more dangerous infections.

That's interesting, I had not realised the extent of the outbreak internationally. But it went away on its own, apparently. At least, I don't recall any vaccination effort being publicised. I had thought that was because the transmission process was not such as to enable an exponential spread, so it became self-limiting.   

[CharonY]

50 minutes ago, exchemist said:

That's interesting, I had not realised the extent of the outbreak internationally. But it went away on its own, apparently. At least, I don't recall any vaccination effort being publicised. I had thought that was because the transmission process was not such as to enable an exponential spread, so it became self-limiting.   

Generally speaking, a self-limiting disease would not lead itself to a larger outbreak (essentially, if the effective reproduction number is >1.  Rather, in a typical infection model the limit is based on proportion of immune to susceptible folks and is parametrized by e.g. infectious period and basic reproduction number). 

However, a combination of awareness training, testing and educating/isolating folks have managed to reduce the number of new infections (in the above framework it is basically reducing the effective reproduction number). Without that, it would likely have continued to circulate.

As I said, the fact that it was going down was seen as a public health success, whereas the fact that it circulated to multiple countries was seen as a failure. The latter also showed us (together with the COVID-19 lessons) how badly most of the world is prepared to contain outbreaks.

 

1 hour ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

I read that: "98% of the infected people were gay or bisexual, 41% were HIV positive and their average age was 38 years".

This about the current situation, is an update on what is being said on networks.

These numbers seem to  to come from reports published (I think New England Journal of Medicine) and were from 2022. This particular outbreak was from clade II mpox, but past infections tended to hit younger folks (especially in Africa). 

 

4 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Either of the two main smallpox vaccines can control it, so if it were perceived as important (eg by killing white people instead), it would be easy enough to deal with. 

That is another thing that has been discussed, mpox does occasionally break out, mostly in West in Central Africa. The 2022 outbreak also made headlines probably because it not only reached over 100 countries, but epicenters were in the Americas (especially US, but also Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) and Europe, which also explains the age demographics. Since 2022 numbers in those regions went down, but are still lingering at low numbers in Africa and a small surges in 2023 in South Asia and Western Pacific regions. Just to re-affirm that it is not simply gone.