The Politicization Of Public Health Continues Notwithstanding

For proof that the official response of the public health establishment to COVID was a debacle, we need to look no farther than the fact that states like Florida and Texas that didn't enforce lockdowns, masking, and other controls had statistical results no worse than those that imposed the strictest ones. Even the most visible spokespeople for such controls, Drs Birx and Fauci, have recently been backing off the recommendations they issued in 2020 and 2021, maintaining they never said vaccines prevented transmission and, now, masks didn't work because everyone wasn't wearing the right ones.

So why didn't Dr Birx say vaccines didn't prevent transmission back then, or why didn't Dr Fauci tell everyone to get an N95 mask right off the bat? They're implying that things would have gone better if they'd been honest back then -- so why did they fudge things and make the pandemic worse? And of course, they're backtracking now because they recognize that if they're right, in failing to do so then, they damaged the credibility of their colleagues and their institutions for the next public health emergency.

But as far as I can see, nobody's learned a thing. They're following the discredited COVID playbook with Monkeypox:

Despite a WHO panel not having consensus on labeling the sickness a global health emergency, WHO leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus directed the organization to declare it a “public health emergency of international concern.”

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” Tedros told the press.

The disease, which primarily spreads among men who have sex with men, joins both COVID and polio as the other diseases designated as international emergencies by the global health organization.

COVID and polio, of course, affected the population at large, and both could be fatal, while polio could also be massively disabling if it didn't kill people. But according to NBC News,

No one has died of monkeypox infection outside of Africa during this outbreak. And for many people, the disease is relatively mild and resolves on its own in a few weeks without any need for medical intervention.

And of course, people outside one particular demographic have almost no chance of contracting it. At the same link,

Now infectious disease specialists are developing an increasingly refined understanding of the predominant conduits of monkeypox transmission, as well as the typical disease course patterns.

“These data point clearly to the fact that infections are so far almost exclusively occurring among men who have sex with men,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, of the new study, which was published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. “And the clinical presentation of these infections suggest that sexual transmission, not just close physical contact, may be helping spread the virus among this population.”

Even those who aren't gay adult males apparently contract it because they're in the same household. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Two children have tested positive for monkeypox in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Friday.

One is a toddler from California; the other is in an infant who is not a U.S. resident and was 'transiting through' Washington D.C. Neither had contact with each other.

. . . It is thought both children likely caught the virus from 'household contacts'.

Dr Rochelle Walensky said the children both had contact with gay or bisexual men — the community where most cases are being detected in the current outbreak.

But the WHO isn't backing down:

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took the “unprecedented” measure this weekend of ignoring the agency’s special advisory committee to declare the spread of monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern” – despite his lack of medical background and his own admission that the risk of it spreading was “moderate” at worst.

. . . Concerns regarding Tedros’ actions on monkeypox posit the opposite problem – that he overreacted to a situation, even as the medical experts tasked with assessing the risk did not believe it merited the label of public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

. . . “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” Tedros declared. He added that the fact that the disease was not spreading widely among a generalized population did not diminish the PHEIC, but rather meant “that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”

So, what are the right strategies in the right groups? Oddly, this isn't clear -- the group for which the right strategies would apply is clearly identifiable, but, well, if we identify them, we'll increase stigma and discrimination or something. This is the conundrum, which is entirely political:

During the China Flu pandemic, we were shamed for leaving our homes, going to the beach, opening schools, gathering to worship God, standing together, hugging, attending funerals, visiting nursing homes, allowing a mask to slip under our nose, and showing up at a political rally that didn’t involve burning and looting (because health officials assured us burning and looting do not spread the virus).

During the coronavirus pandemic, and for two whole years, every facet of normal life was condemned as the equivalent of committing mass murder.

. . . Now there’s monkeypox. . . [ellipsis in quote]

But there’s no behavior-shaming…

Even though, according to what we now know. . . [ellipsis in quote]

Gay sex is the chief spreader of monkeypox.

. . . If the government had a single standard when it comes to spreading a virus, gay bars and bathhouses would be shuttered, police would be knocking on doors to break up gay sex parties, the media would celebrate a costumed Specter of Death walking through gay neighborhoods, gay men would be told to stay home, and any gay gathering would be smeared across the media as a selfish superspreader event attended by serial killers.

But that’s not happening, and it shouldn’t happen, but that’s what happened for two years to those of us who are not among the left’s protected class.

I think the point here is that Monkeypox is mostly the occasion of public-discourse kabuki: there will be the usual denunciation of stigma and discrimination, but as with AIDS, even closing bath houses will be a tough call if it's ever made at all -- and unlike Monkeypox, AIDS killed people. The subtext will continue to be that gays are a special protected class, and that's about it. Nobody's gonna demand that gays wear not only condoms but hazmat suits during sex, but if Dr Fauci has his way, the rest of us will be back not just to masks but N95 masks.

People aren't stupid, and they see pretty clearly what's going on. Dr Birx at least had the sense to skedaddle as soon as she was caught celebrating a normal Thanksgiving with her family. Dr Fauci is playing the odds that the public health establishment won't need to fight a real epidemic with its credibility badly damaged, at least during his lifetime. For that matter, the odds are that Dr Walensky will be fired before that happens, too. But that's the game they're all playing.

Let the next generation fix the problem they've created. .