CDC ups alert level, makes a joke of ‘following the science’ on monkeypox (opinion) – SILive.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Here’s a perfect example of why some people have trouble trusting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it comes to guidance on public health threats.
The CDC has raised the monkeypox alert status to Level 2 and has recommended that people wear masks when traveling in order to safeguard themselves from the disease.
Here we go again.
The CDC rang this particular alarm bell after the number of monkeypox cases worldwide grew to 1,000.
That’s 1,000 cases out of a global population of about 8 billion people. You can do the math yourself and decide what kind of threat monkeypox poses to you. The word that comes immediately to my mind is “infinitesimal.”
The CDC said that wearing a mask can help protect us from many diseases, including monkeypox.
The debate over the actual, real-world efficacy of masks aside, it’s puzzling why the CDC would recommend face coverings to protect against monkeypox when we’ve been told that it’s not an airborne illness. Monkeypox requires close, personal contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedding in order to spread.
On top of that, you could follow this general CDC guidance to its logical end and simply wear a mask any time you’re out in public. After all, you never know when you’ll run into somebody on a bus, train, plane or ferryboat who’s got something contagious.
And if you want to wear a mask around the clock, be my guest. I’m not ready to go there yet, and certainly not over monkeypox. At least not until something radically changes with the disease.
Monkeypox is not like COVID, which came at us out of nowhere. We’re already well familiar with monkeypox, which is endemic in certain parts of Africa. We already know how it spreads. The symptoms, including lesions and rashes, are obvious. There are already two vaccines available that can battle the disease.
The recent increase in monkeypox cases has been traced to Europe and was sparked by raves and festivals where people, including gay men, had sex.
So avoid prolonged, intimate contact with people with lesions and rashes. Avoid having indiscriminate sex while you’re at the rave or the festival. Take care if you’re a sexually active person. Wear a mask, if you like.
Unlike COVID, which can spread through the air and can be spread by asymptomatic people, it sounds like you almost have to go out of your way to put yourself at risk from monkeypox. Don’t do it and you should be OK.
The CDC and other experts haven’t always covered themselves in glory during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We got conflicting information on mask-wearing as well as non-sensical advice on indoor dining practices. We were told that vaccines would stop the spread of the virus, which turned out to be less than accurate.
Much of what we were told early on about COVID-19 evolved and was updated, leading some to wonder whether the experts were really as expert as they said they were.
It mattered because elected officials used that guidance to make public health policy for billions of people. Entire economies were shut down. Students lost irretrievable years of schooling. The world will never be the same.
And now they want us to be on guard over monkeypox. They want us to start wearing masks again for an illness that has affected a relative handful of all the humans on Earth and which is frankly easy to avoid.
The next CDC alert level, number 3, brings with it a caution against non-essential travel to certain destinations.
We all know how slippery this slope can be.