I know most of ya'll probably think I'm going all Chicken Little, but just to share some awareness:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/monkeypox-canada-global-outbreak-1.6461880?cmp=rssExerpts:
Five cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in Quebec and Canada's chief public health officer said Friday provinces are continuing to investigate "a couple dozen" possible cases throughout Canada — with more likely to be confirmed in the days and weeks ahead.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday there are currently about 80 confirmed cases worldwide, with another 50 pending investigation and more likely to be reported as global surveillance expands.
West and Central Africa typically see thousands of endemic cases reported annually, but monkeypox cases outside of Africa are rare and largely tied to travel. What sets this global outbreak apart is the rise in cases with no known travel origin.
"What we're seeing right now is unprecedented. We have multiple geographic locations across the globe that are reporting cases … What is the epidemiological link between these cases and is there anything that is related back to changes within the virus?"
The current strain circulating globally appears to be the West African, but genomic sequencing is currently ongoing in Canada and around the world to determine whether it has any distinct genetic mutations.
"There's always that question of, have things changed?" said Kindrachuk.
William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-director of its Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, says the strain looks closely related to what has circulated in West Africa in 2018, but more research is needed.
"It's certainly behaving differently in the sense that it's much more widespread. Because up until very recently, there had been a handful of countries outside Africa to which it had been introduced," he told CBC News.
"There's obviously something different going on here. Now, what's making that difference is currently unknown." Hanage said the current strain of monkeypox circulating in at least 11 countries, including Canada, appears to be more transmissible, with a reproductive number likely above one, given that the global outbreak is continuing to grow in unknown size.
If COVID should have taught us anything, it's that virus' mutate. What we (the world) thought we knew about virus' can be obsolete.
Of course, the anti-vax crowd is now jumping on this saying it's just shingles, and a way to force the shingles vaccine on everyone. You know what you clowns, go and get shingles then, and enjoy that torture.