"What happened to monkeypox?" asks the Washington Post. Here's the answer in the US:
This is why you hardly hear about monkeypox anymore. It peaked in mid-August and it's been fading away ever since. Right now the infection rate has fallen by more than half from its peak, and in the entire time since June only one person has died from monkeypox (a man who was already severely immunocompromised by HIV).
Part of me wants to say I told you so. Things worked out OK and now the disease is ebbing away. There was no need for panic.
And that's true. On the other hand, although most European countries peaked the same way we did (but earlier), they've since declined far faster than us. Compared to our daily infection rate of 200 per million residents, most European countries have infection rates between 0-50 infections per million residents.
This is not because they had bigger supplies of the vaccine than us. They didn't. We've administered about 800,000 doses (in a population of 330 million) while Europe has administered 330,000 doses (in a population of 450 million). In other words, our vaccination rate is more than 3x their rate.
So even though we're doing OK, I would really like to know why most European countries apparently handled things so much better even though their outbreak was just as bad. It might be a reporting issue. Or it might be a timing issue and we just have to wait a few weeks to get to the European level. I'm not sure and I haven't been able to find a good discussion of all this.
The infection rate, per capita, might be more informative...
Europeans are gayer, but less Woke. That's why they have better weathered the soiboi contagion.
Give it up to Andrew Sullivan!
I wonder if Europeans continued to vaccinate against smallpox longer than we did?
Just caught a report this afternoon that says vax uptake here varies tremendously among subpopulations and apparently the rate really lags among Black and Hispanic men. That, and Honeyboy Wilson's suggestion, could account for a lot of the difference.
Though honestly I'm not sure about the smallpox vax. I can't tell you for sure that I didn't get it myself growing up in the 50s and 60s but I've met several contemporaries from Europe and the variolation scars are obvious.
Perhaps the Europeans are more willing to partake in self-denial.
If there were a multivalent vaccine that could protect people from every single disease that was primarily spread via sex, it would be vehemently opposed by every conservative religious group.
I lol'd-- so spot on
Michelle Bachmann driving her 2012 presidential primary campaign on the strength of opposition to even elective use of Gardasil proved that.
Since the disease is not taken very seriously, my guess is that only a minority of cases are reported. Also you can't track it through medicine use since there is no treatment and only symptoms and secondary infections are alleviated. I live in Europe and see no scare about it at all. I wouldn't be surprised if Sweden's 8x lower per capita rate than Spain, and Bulgaria's 200x lower rate, turn out to be fictitious, and if Europe's lower rate than the US is fictitious too.
This may in some way be connected to vaccination rates against small pox since the small pox vaccine protects against monkey pox.