Monkeypox During Pride Month

There's still not a single death due to the current Monkeypox outbreak. That's astonishing, given that there's now more than 3700 confirmed cases. Clearly, we're not dealing with the original Monkeypox that had a mortality rate of 10%. This disease may develop in the same manner as the original one, but no-one dies. A few blisters is as bad as it gets.

This may be the reason no-one worries about the exponential rise in cases that has happened during Pride month. We've gone from 700 at the beginning of this month to 3700 cases at present, and the hard core partying has only started.

Monkeypox, cumulative cases, linear plot

By Edouard Mathieu, Saloni Dattani, Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2022) - "Monkeypox". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/monkeypox [Online Resource] - https://ourworldindata.org/monkeypox, CC BY 4.0, Link

Monkeypox spreads almost exclusively among homosexual men, living the Pride lifestyle with little to no restraint. Without the proper venues and arrangements, the disease would not spread nearly as fast as it does. However, the same people who locked us down for the flu are now actively encouraging widespread Pride themed partying over the St. John's weekend.

From what we know about Monkeypox, it takes about 14 days from the day of infection until the disease becomes bothersome to the infected. Hence, there's a delay in the official infection numbers. Any increase in infections over this coming weekend will only be noticed in the statistics around July 9.

We're currently in a phase where cases double every 10 to 11 days, so we can expect about 8000 cases on July 9. If we get numbers much above this, we can assume that the partying during this weekend is to blame. However, if the numbers come in at or below 8000, we can make the optimistic prediction that the outbreak has peaked. With fewer raves and Pride parties, the rate of increase will decline, and the disease may stop spreading altogether.

Monkeypox

By not listed - http://phil.cdc.gov (CDC's Public Health Image Library) Media ID #2329, Public Domain, Link