What fresh hell has 2022 done brung us? Monkeypox.

First case this year of mysterious monkeypox virus reported in US

And…

UK confirms more cases of monkeypox

And…

Portugal finds 5 monkeypox cases in men as outbreak spreads

And…

Monkeypox alert in Spain after 23 people show symptoms

Monkeypox is a relative of smallpox, but less utterly horrifying (one straight is 10% fatal, the other is 1% fatal). At least in its current form. What a future mutation will bring… shrug.

How serious is monkeypox and what are the symptoms?

It can be transmitted through the air, riding on respiratory droplets, but it seems like a lot of the current cases were transmitted the old fashioned way: bangin’. Under normal circumstances, this disease would be fairly straightforward to stop transmitting… but given that the bulk of the people who have been determined to have caught the disease caught it via male-to-male bangin’… well, I’m old enough to remember the 80’s, and how telling people to Stop Doing That wasn’t even allowed *then,* and *that* disease was 100% fatal. Time from infection to display of chickenpox-like symptoms – fever, lesions, etc. – is about ten days, so a bit of self control would go far in shutting this one down.