Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Monkeypox

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

You may be worried we’re headed into another global health crisis in the form of Monkeypox. But it’s not new, and we already know quite a bit about it. Dr. Sydnee explains what it is, how to treat it, and the recommendations at the moment from the CDC, all compared to COVID (which is now unfortunately our standard for how to relate to potential public health threats).Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We were sawed through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guide in medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy I didn't know that. I was supposed to sing. I'm Sydney McAroy. Perfect. Okay, you got, you saw exactly the resolution to the melody that I was going for there. Oh, boy. Perfect. Okay. You got, you saw exactly the resolution to the melody that I was going for there.

That was great. That's going to be the new intro. No. I don't think so. Um, Sydney, I'm so excited to be back here with you. Although I wish contextually, um, I just can't believe we're back here. I can't believe we got a new, I just can't believe we're back here. I can't believe we got a new thing. I just can't believe there's new things said. Before you talk, before you say anything.

Not a new thing. Before you say anything about monkeypox, can I just ask something to Gaia or the universe? Okay. Or Jesus Christ, could we not, just, could we not? I saw monkey pox, and they're like second case confirm, all the, I feel like the terminology

that has become so loaded, you know, cases and confirmed cases and all that stuff, but it's not about COVID, It's about monkey pox. So here's the thing I'm asking everybody and everything and that all the multiverse, could we not? Could we just not do this one? Could we not do this one? Well, okay, first of all, monkey pox isn't new.

This isn't a novel virus. Then why is Alexa on my back about it? Well, I mean, Hey, Jamie, did you hear the news about monkey box? Stop it. Well, it's existence in the multiple countries that we are seeing outbreaks. Well, I shouldn't even say outbreaks, cases.

And that is new. It is in countries it has not previously been. Yes. But it's the existence of monkey boxes is new. It is in countries it has not previously been. Yes. But it's the existence of monkey pox isn't new. I should say, I think it's important to say that, and I'll talk about it more, but there are people who have been dealing with monkey pox for quite a while.

They just don't live here. So we didn't pay as much attention to it. Very classic. Classic, classic America, and I'll be honest, classic me. So I am, and now it is a big deal because I've been alerted to it as I think a lot of people can relate to. Now, here's what I'm gonna say.

I don't know what your research is on this. I don't know how you're gonna catch this, but I'm gonna tell you straight up, I'm gonna be reading the alarm bells for the entire episode because, hear me out. Because we did it. We did it with COVID and we had to add on our face. I feel like this time, we go hard on the alarm bells,

really freaking people out. If it doesn't turn into a bad thing, everyone's relieved. No one gets mad at that person. Who they get mad at is the person who's like, I think by Easter, the churches will be filled with people again, wouldn't that be lovely? Because you all can't get any yet.

So I just say I'm gonna go hard monkey pots. It's a very bad thing and it's extremely bad. Well, I don't think we should alarm people on that ship sale. But you're right in the sense that it's interesting to see as stories of this have been reported. One of the major themes are like reporters asking government officials in multiple countries, will there be nationwide quarantines

and or like lockdowns or shut down? Like is that and it's so weird to think, can you imagine asking that question in 2019? Can you imagine talking about, you know, a rare virus that has occurred in, you know, not a huge number of people in a few parts of the world? Can you imagine a reporter at a press conference asking, will we have a nationwide shutdown in response to this in 2019? No, but we're all very good at it. I know.

Well, it's interesting because you can immediately see that knee jerk that COVID has sort of done to us. Yes. So I understand. And knee jerk may not be. And I know maybe that's a good, a positive repercussion of it is that it's something we're a little bit more plugged into, which is a fun way of saying freaked out about. The interconnectedness of the world and all the people in it is something that I hope we are all

much more tuned into and how are our actions or in actions, you know, greatly influence, not just those immediately around us, but everyone. Yes. And in a positive way, how making good decisions for yourself and those immediately around you can have a ripple effect, a positive one. So anyway, let's talk about monkey pox. It's a pox virus. Makes sense. Orthopox virus, genius.

It's in there with good old smallpox. Good old smallpox you says. Which bad, it's bad. Smallpox is bad. Smallpox is much worse than monkeypox. Okay. That I can say definitively. There is not a smallpox outbreak. That's good. As far as we know, smallpox exists only in a couple labs. Maybe we should start doing episodes about the things that aren't happening. That would be kind of nice, wouldn't it? We don't have a smallpox vaccine.

We seem to have polio pretty well licked. Like, that would be nice. Let's do that. This would be some good apps. Polio's licked in some places. There's a lot. So this is a box virus along with smallpox and calpox, which we have talked about extensively on the show that hit of smallpox and calpox and their relationship to vaccines

We have known about this box monkey pox since 1958 There were some outbreaks of a strange illness among there were two groups of monkeys that were in like captivity and they saw this Spreading throughout these monkeys. They called it monkey pox because you have to found it in monkeys. That's actually not the like reservoir of monkey pox, meaning the animal that carries it around. They get it, but a rodent probably carries it. It always my deep seated fear of rodents, it always pays off. It's always on the money.

My gut is always right. You're right to stay away, forbred it. The person who identified it was Preben von Magnus, was the Danish virologist. Good name. Yeah, it is a good name. He researched the polio vaccine, the flu, and also, of course, he was the first one to confirm. This is Monkey Pox.

They were actually a crab eating macaque monkeys, in case you're curious. I was. Yeah. And so that was when we figured out monkey pox in 1958, like, hey, this is a thing monkey's get it It looks like smallpox. It looks like cowpox. It looks like all the pox's in there with other pox's we get it and then in 1970 we diagnosed a case in a human so that's when we figured out like oh, oh like cowpox it can get we can get cowpox as humans

and so This was actually during the, this would have been during the era of like smallpox elimination. Remember as we were trying to wipe that. Remember when we eradicated a virus? That was cool. Remember when we could,

Remember when we worked together as a planet to rid the, rid humanity of a deadly scourge. I can survive. You know what, it's sad, but I did think that COVID would like rat. I thought it would heal us in a sense in a way. I know I didn't predict it would be yet another dividing line. I really did think that there would be a sort of like he saw after September

11th, like a sort of like, what have we been doing? Like let's try to work it out. Well, I wouldn't say that was everyone's experience after September 11. Certainly not, but there was a healing. We call them freedom fries. Remember? Yeah. Remember? Remember there's that we also, we also, we also, we also, we also, the mission was a complex advantage of that to, to use the government. Yeah, yeah, later.

That was a good, unprecedented manner, invade the privacy of citizens. And detain. You all remember people, we are still on the space. On perhaps their skin color or nation of origin, or ethnicity, or the language they speak or the religious practices. But they fall in college.

Do you remember that part? I was in college so at the time it seemed to me that the nation is healing. Right. Of course. Of course. Anyway. You don't know. Since then, okay, so they found a case in a human in 1970 when they were working

on the smallpox program and they found a case of monkeypox. And since then, most of the cases have been in certain African countries, either in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There have been some in Cameroon in the Central African Republic, Gabon, Nigeria. Sort of like we know where monkey pox cases have been occurring. Occasionally, you would see like a travel related case outside of these countries, but it was very, very clearly like someone came from one of those places where they got monkey pox there, but we diagnosed it somewhere else. So it was it was pretty clear where sort of the reds of war like what like I said, it was probably some sort of rodent

There's a couple different rodents that can get it and then it would pass from them to like a non-human primate or to a human and There you go monkey pox. The symptoms so that you know what we're talking about And there you go, monkeypox. The symptoms so that you know what we're talking about, that so first of all, they show up within a week or two from exposure, but it can be up to three weeks. That's always tricky as we've learned for like contact tracing, right? Because you got a large period of time

and you're not gonna identify somebody who's sick immediately. And the initial symptoms are pretty non-specific. You get a fever, you get some chills, a headache, some muscle ache, some fatigue, probably some swollen lymph nodes. That's a pretty distinct thing that you could notice. But generally, you're probably just gonna think like you got the flu or something

until a few days after those initial symptoms when the rash starts. The rash, and if you look up pictures of a monkey pox rash, it looks very similar to if you've ever seen historical pictures of a small pox rash It starts on the face typically it can spread It's more on the extremities in the face than it is on the central part of the body and it has a very predictable Evolution of the lesions it goes from Maccule to papule to vesicle to pustule to scab

Which is something I memorized a long time ago in medical school and I've never forgotten. And it can't appear on the palms and soles, which is, that's a unique feature to some rashes that can help you distinguish it from other rashes. Are you looking at pictures? I said I shouldn't remember. So it starts with like a flat, that's a macule, something like a flat lesion that you can see, but not really feel, it goes to aules, who are raised lesion, a vesicle is when it's filled with fluid, like a

clear fluid, a push-jewels when it's filled with like a an opaque... Push. Push. Yeah, purulent fluid. And then it usually will umbilicate, meaning there's like a little dot in the top of it, you can see that on some of them, and it's kind of firm, and then that will scab and crust over. And then once the scabs fall off, that's when you're no longer contagious, but also it can scar. Much like spa pox, you know, famously was known to do to scar people. These can as well, they don't, not every single one, but they can. And it's typically pretty painful. The rash itself, it will become itchy towards the scab phase but it can be painful initially. It lasts two to four weeks.

Historically, depending on which there's two clades of the virus, there's another classification basically and clade? A clade. Okay. And one clade is known to be a little more severe, a little more transmissible than the other, but it can be up to 10% fatal. So it's big, big number. Now, of course, this also depends a lot on how quickly you identify it and what other complicating factors

for that patient themselves and what supportive, sort of like medical interventions you have, what resources you have near. There are some cases that have lists that where medical resources are a little more thin, right? Exactly. So it plays into that, right? Precisely. So is that, is that number related to the virus itself or is it related to a lack of resources? It depends. It's passed by large respiratory droplets. This is different than COVID.

I feel like for such a long time, we're gonna be comparing everything we talk about to COVID, which we don't normally do. Well, we didn't do that previously, right? It wasn't like every time we talked about a virus or bacteria, we naturally compared it to one single thing. Because this is so unlike COVID. It's so far from COVID, but we're gonna compare it because it to one single thing. Cause this is so unlike COVID. It's so far from COVID,

but we're gonna compare it cause it's on our minds. It has passed by large respiratory droplets. So unlike COVID, which we knew, eventually you could get from just being in the same room with someone. With monkeypox, it really requires some prolonged like face-to-face contact for transmission. I mean, either that or like some bodily fluids,

or like this virus can actually live on surfaces longer than COVID, like it actually, you know, we, that was one of our concerns initially, why we wiped down all of our groceries and stuff in the beginning of the pandemic. With smallpox or with monkeypox, withpox viruses, both monkeypox in this case, if you sleep in a bed and you've got some of these lesions,

some of that material can get into the bedding and then somebody else sleeping in that bed can be inhaling some of that, I mean, you can pass it that way. So it can live on surfaces longer. And so like contaminated bedding is a way that you could pass this, which wouldn't be true for COVID. With animal to human transmission, which obviously occurs, scratches or bites, or if you're eating meat from one of these animals, and it isn't prepared properly that kind of thing. There's could all be ways that it can be that you can get it.

But again, all of this is harder to get. It is harder to get monkey pox much, much harder than it is to get COVID. Okay. That's good. You can pass it human to human, but not as easily by any stretch as other viruses like COVID. There is no specific treatment at this time for monkey pox. A lot of it would be supportive. And I should say most people are going to have a self limited course.

They're going to get sick. They're going to get better. That's it. Okay. For most people, they won't require a lot of medical intervention or support during that time period. Some are going to have more severe disease. It could be because they have an underlying illness or immunocompromise that kind of reason. There are some things that we've used in these cases like medications

that were developed for smallpox. It can work for monkeypox to an extent. They're not specifically for monkeypox, but you can use them. And again, a lot of supportive medical care can help to prevent this from being a fatal illness for the majority of patients. There is a vaccine. Oh. Interesting, right? Yeah. That's why this isn't novel. There is a vaccine. It is a vaccine that is probably around 85% effective. We haven't had these large-scale outbreaks of monkeypox, right? Right. But it's a smallpox vaccine. It's a vaccineeavirus, which is what we use for the smallpox vaccine. It's all in the same...

Is it a vaccinee of the same root, do you know? It was called the vaccineeavirus, because it was used for vaccines. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, or, well, or vaccine came from the vaccine virus I should say okay. Vaccine virus reverse that I said that wrong vaccine is named for the vaccine virus got it yes so anyway they're all in that same orthopox virus genus all in there together and you can use the same vaccine to protect you against both okay but most of us certainly haven't gotten the smallpox vaccine. Some people have to pay down what your age is.

Some people were vaccinated as children. We wouldn't have gotten that. And it's important to know that unlike the COVID vaccine, which is incredibly safe and effective. The smallpox vaccine, which can be extremely effective, certainly as does have some risks for some people. Okay. And this monkeypox vaccine in deciding like,

the reason we don't just vaccinate everybody, right? Why don't we just keep doing this? If we have a vaccine and a virus exists, let's just give everybody that too. Well, one of the reasons you might not decide to do that other than like it's not very common there, would be are there any risks to the vaccine? And in this case, there are some risks to the vaccine. They're extremely rare, but there are some pretty serious things that can happen in specific patients. And so it's a conversation, right?

Now, if you've been exposed to monkeypox, it's not as much of a conversation. If you've been directly exposed to some of monkeypox, you probably should, there's a time, like there's a window in which you can still get the vaccine. You're kidding, really? Yeah, unlike COVID, which you need to be vaccinated before you're exposed, with monkeypox, you can actually get vaccinated after you've been exposed and it is effective and protective.

Yes, because it has such a long incubation period, there's a window there, also just because of the nature of this vaccine. It's a live attenuated virus vaccine. So, but this is really helpful when trying to stop the spread and prevent illness and death, that you have that window. And that's some other vaccines work that way, but that's a pretty helpful, unique thing. That's why we can give somebody a tetanus shot after they maybe have been exposed to tetanus, right?

Oh, right. Okay. You step on a resting ale, we tell you you need a tetanus shot. Yeah, that makes sense. It still works, even though perhaps you've already been exposed. This isn't the first time we've seen monkey pox in the US. Okay. And I want to tell you about a time that we did before and how that worked out. But before I do that, I do have to take you to the billing department.

Uh, let's go. It's 15th anniversary. It was a couple months ago, but we forgot. Yeah, completely. Our silly show is 15 years old. That makes it old enough to get its learners permit and almost old enough to get the talk. Wow, I hope you got the talk before then. A lot of things have changed in 15 years. Our show's not one of them.

We're never changing and you can't make us. Jordan Jesse Goat, the same forever show is not one of them. We're never changing and you can't make us. Jordan Jesse go the same forever at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going first. It's me Jackie K. Shud. Man, she's always is bossy. I'm Laura Kilhart. We're a bunch of standup comics and we've been doing comedy like 60 years total. But we look amazing. We drop every Monday on Max Fun and it's called the Jackie Laurie Show and you

could listen to it and learn about comedy and learn about anchor management and all the things. And Jackie is married but childless and I'm unmarried but child full. So together, we need one complete woman. Is that just what you're looking at? Yeah. And we try to make Kyle laugh just like that and say, oh my god, every episode. It's a good job.

Jackie and Laurie show. Monday's only on maximum fun. All right Sidney as I understand it, we have battled this the monkey. Now is it, have there been cases in the US? The first case is that mean, the first cases that we really saw outside of Africa were in the US, like certainly the first outbreak in 2003. Basically, all around the same time,

we saw people in multiple different states, actually Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Ohio, and Wisconsin. People in all these areas got sick around the same time. And again, like when you start with those initial symptoms for the first couple of days, most people probably wouldn't even go to the doctor. Or if they did, your doctor certainly wouldn't be thinking

monkey box, but then the rash. And the rash is so distinctive that that pretty quickly clued people in, especially health departments in these states that, oh, something is going on. So what they were able to do fairly quickly is figure out that, and there would be 47 people in all, by the way, who got sick, that all of these people had come in contact

recently with prairie dogs. of these people had come in contact recently with prairie dogs. Another rodent pops its head up, if you will, on sobans and is the villain yet again. Prairie dogs, carriers of plague and pox viruses. Yep. What was discovered was that there was a shipment of 800 animals sent from Ghana to Texas, mostly like small mammals, and they included a number of rodents.

Some of these, like one of them is called the giant pouch rat. I have to imagine you don't ever want to look at that. Like you probably shouldn't. Sorry, what is it called? Giant pouched. Oh, now that you said it. Like has a pouch pouched. Pouched? Oh no, for carrying more smaller rats inside of it.

Aww. Are they cute? You like them? He's not, they're not that, look at, they're kind of, they're heroes. They, they go, you know what they do? What? They help for landmines. Aww.

They sniff out landmines. Well, they are heroes. They're heroes. They are, they are heroes that can carry monkey pox. Well, everybody's got their strengths and weaknesses. It's just, Hey, fellas, and some of us are heroes that can carry all kinds of,

Yeah, yeah, like, you know, Yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a known many of us got COVID in the last two years and we can still be heroes. I'm a, I'm a notary public and I could probably still get COVID. I haven't, but I could, by that. So there were some of those in the shipment. There were some door mice. There were some rope squirrels.

Anyway, a bunch of different. I don't know any more of these. I got lucky with this big boy. I'm not taking this other spin. It should also be noted that Justin's fear of rodents is indirectly related to the size of the rodent. So the smaller the rodent, the greater the fear. Right. Yes. Yes, the smallness of it is what freaks me out. If I like yesterday we saw who is that big boy in our yard? It's a groundhog.

Groundhog is a rodent, right? Probably, I don't know. It's not an animal show. Well, that's just the zoo of us. But like he didn't scare me because he was a big boy. He just hung out in our backyard and ate clover. Hey, clover. Come on, but no problem. Get yourself a snack. No big deal. Um, this is how West Virginia. I am. I said, Oh, let's eat dinner out on the porch so that we can watch the groundhog eat clover. Oh, that's me. Uh, anyway, so there were some dormice and rope squirrels.

They were sent to different facilities, including some that were put in a facility in Illinois with other small mammals, including some prairie dogs. So what they found is that some of these like pouch, giant pouch rats and dormice and whatnot had already gotten monkey pox in Ghana. They've been sent over to Texas and then spread to these other states and infected prairie dogs in these sort of housing facilities. And then the prairie dogs were sold as pets to people and they got monkey pox from their prairie dogs. And they were pretty quick to figure this out and then start, they did note by the way

that most of the people who got sick actually had direct contact with the animals as opposed to contact with the people who had contact with the animals that can happen. But for the most part, it was people who had direct contact holding these animals. And especially if they had some sort of break in the skin or something.

So they were able to see that it really required a lot of close contact to get it from the rodent or from another person whatever. The response from the government was pretty quick. The CDC kind of led the USDA, the FDA state health departments. They all worked together to like find all the people, all the pets, all the contacts of the people in the pets, test everybody, quarantine everybody. They stopped allowing the import of these animals for a little while. There was one family who had gotten two of them for Mother's Day. It was like, I don't know.

And a centric mom, it's fine. And of course they all quarantined. And one of their Prairie Dogs was able to survive the monkey pox, chuckles, and stay, I guess, part of the family. That's nice. That's very nice. Chuckles lived to tell the story.

And then, and they used the smallpox vaccine they had available at the time to like vaccinate other people who had been exposed to stop the spread. It's like this ring vaccination sort of method. They use this to eradicate smallpox where you create a ring of immunity around an outbreak to stop it from spreading any further if you can kind of visualize what they're doing. So they did the same thing. About 30 people on all receive a vaccine, so not a ton of people had to get it. There were a couple of cases in the US back in 2021, actually, just last year, again,

very clearly related to travel. The current outbreak. So what is happening right now? Why are we talking about monkey pox? Because there have been clusters of cases outside the usual parts of the world where they occur. 20 other countries so far that we know of, between two and three-n-ter cases somewhere in there, including Australia, multiple parts of Europe, the US of course Canada. In the US there've been 10 cases in eight states. So California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Utah, Virginia, Washington. Okay. That is where it is. Currently and in each of those states is either one or two cases so far. Like I said, there are

the two clades of monkeypox. One clade being the central African clade and one being the West African clade. The central African clade is the one that is considered generally to be more severe and more transmissible. The ones we are seeing currently around the world are part of the West African clade, which we think probably doesn't have that 10%

fatality rate, probably something lower than that. So less severe, less transmissible, that's a good thing. And why are we seeing them? We're still figuring that out, right? Like, they're still in the middle of trying to investigate how is this happening? Why is this happening? Is it just some sort of bizarre one off thing or what's going on? There probably was some travel at the beginning of this, right? Someone traveled somewhere,

but we don't know. Sometimes with outbreaks, if it's a small enough number, we figure it out, right? Yeah, right. We figure out the index case. Kind of while the people can do that. Yeah, who went from where to where to carry this? We don't know that answer, but probably there was something like that that then has spread to household contacts and close contacts and things like that. There's been a lot of information publicized about the risk specifically to men who have sex with men.

I don't know if you've seen that, that that is sort of what they're reporting as a population where this is spreading currently, which is always concerning when you start to hear that sort of rhetoric, something that is being publicized as just a problem for the gay community. I think we have historically seen enough danger from that sort of thinking.

It is probably coincidental that that's where we saw it. It was just there were certain close contacts among these index cases and they also happened to be men who have sex with men. So I think it's important to remember that before that becomes part of the narrative because again, you know, men who have sex with men. So I think it's important to remember that before that becomes part of the narrative, because again, we know how quickly that can become part of the narrative

and be incredibly damaging to both the people who it's about, men who have sex with men, and everybody else who may be at risk who no longer thinks they are at risk because they're not part of that community. The CDC recommendations for the public mentioned that specifically, again, which what they say is that you should be concerned if you've traveled to a country where monkey box cases have been reported.

Although, man, that's such a wild thing to say because like the US, like the entire country of the United States of America. Yeah, it's a big country. I went to Cincinnati a few months ago, does that count? If you have contact with a person who is a similar rash or a diagnosis of Monkipox, of course, and if you're a man who has had closer intimate in-person contact with other men in the past month,

including through an online website, digital application app, or at a bar of party. Thank you, CDC. Wait, is the CDC... Thank you, CDC. I'm just saying that dudes are catching monkey pox to grinder. Is that what it's saying? I know that's not what they mean.

I love the CDC. I know they're smart in that. I know that's not what they mean, but that could probably be weird word it also. No, you don't have to say it's not what they're trying to say. If you are having anonymous sex with someone through an app is what they're trying to address. Yeah, you meet people through they know you meet people through the app and then you have sex with the usual stuff, right? Like it's not, you're not getting it from cybering, right? They understand that.

This is a classic scientific problem in which like the people behind this, no, yes they know, they're smart people, they're scientists. Communication isn't always the strong suit of the scientific community. But there's I think I have said that many times on this show. This is why I mean, I always say that I think you're the best science communicator on the planet.

And I think that you've backed that up many times. I do have to say it's not the highest ball. Like do they not have a person who's like, y'all this sounds like you are saying monkeypox is communicated through like tender or grinder or whatever you have to stop. E-Harmony is going to Sula, Srikas, you are saying that this disease is communicated digitally, it's like a cyber virus.

It is weird. Oh, I got, oh me, I got cyber amongst you all. I think this is, it's even worse. It's unnecessary to mention, because I don't think we need to know like the meet cute that led to you guys doing it. Yeah, who does it find like- That's the fight like-

That's the fight like- This doesn't apply to me. I'm at a guy through Grindr. Certainly that doesn't count. What do they mean? I'm included in it because I found it concerning. You gotta get over there. To the CDC in many instances. But this probably could be reworked here, my science friends. There has been renewed government interest in purchasing smallpox vaccine.

Recently, they deny, adamantly, this has anything to do with the current monkeypox outbreak, that this was already something that was like ongoing. Like, we were gonna buy these smallpox vaccines anyway, and this is just, like, the deal is just closing now and the timing's weird, we get it, but they're not currently offering the vaccine to someone who's been exposed in the US like routinely. I'm assuming that's about to change

as we see more cases, I would guess. They're already doing that in the UK I've read. But there's a thought that if you got the smallpox vaccine as a kid, that that probably provides a little bit of protection, limited protection, not complete, but you would still need like, if we were going to vaccinate people, it's a two shot deal. If you got the smallpox vaccine as a kid, you probably just need one now, like a booster, basically.

And this was anecdotally observed during the 2003 outbreak. They tended to notice that younger patients had a little bit of a worse time with it. And they thought it was because perhaps some of the older patients had gotten the smallpox vaccine as a kid. Like I said, it's a live attenuated virus,

a vaccineia virus, and it's called Jeneos. In case you're interested in looking it up and reading about it, it was just approved for monkeypox in like 2019. US officials are debating at this moment, like, should we, because people are getting sick, they're going to go to doctors and hospitals, and they're going to expose staff there, perhaps, and you know, you can wear your personal protective equipment and all that stuff, but should those people get vaccinated, like the healthcare workers?

I think we're gonna hear recommendations about this pretty quickly coming out because we didn't have any, because we didn't have monkeypox here in this country. A couple of other issues which I have alluded to, scientists and doctors in the parts of Africa where this exists have been trying to get people to pay attention to it for a long time and have been doing research on it without a lot of outside support or resources or interest or anything because it didn't affect them.

Now all of a sudden everybody's very interested in monkeypox which I can only imagine is incredibly frustrating for the doctors and scientists in Central and Western Africa who have been saying, yeah, thank you, who have actually said for a while, you know, like there could be outbreaks of this. Like, I know that we're not seeing a ton of it right now, but all it would need was, would be a little shift to be gone a little bit more transmissible. And, you know, it's even if it's not incredibly fatal, you do get very sick and as we read with smallpox, the scarring that can be left behind by some of these rashes

can be pretty, you know, in terms of just like, you're feelings about yourself and your body image and all those things can be pretty devastating. So there are a lot of African scientists who would say we should have been paying attention to this like a long time ago. It's frustrating. Some of my favorite podcasters have recently been acting

like this is a new thing that is just started happening. When really me and some other conscientious podcasting friends have been saying like no, this is like not a new problem. It's just, you know, we're finally paying attention because it's affecting us. And I think I just think that's, I just think that's really sad. But I'm, you know, I guess it's just human nature, I guess. We can't, we can't be too mad at people like that, I guess.

Or tweet at them or anything. I think we can all agree on that. It's a time to heal. What I would say about monkeypox is that we understand this virus a lot better than we did at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, certainly, right? We knew about coronavirus says, we knew about related coronavirus, we didn't know what we were dealing with,

yeah, with COVID, you just, it was brand new. It was novel, it's in the name. So this, we definitely have a little bit of an advantage in the sense that we already know about it. We have a vaccine. It is not as transmissible, certainly as COVID. And we have a history of containing these outbreaks pretty quickly in the past.

There was a recent, like I thought I saw a very recent article that was really suggesting that if you're sick with monkeypox, which I can't imagine, so few people are worldwide that if you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't have monkeypox, but there was a recommendation to stay away from your pets, because that could be an issue. If you do have like small rodent pets and you give your monkey box to your pet, then your pet could give it to other pets or to other people. You know, we could, that could continue the outbreak. And that's always a problem with any sort of virus that can exist in both humans and animals.

You've got multiple reservoirs to kind of trade it back and forth. So that's been a recommendation. And again, because of surface transmission, that's another issue with betting and stuff like that. But all in all, if we act quickly and we are smart about it and do things that sciences shown us and experiences shown us work, we can respond to this in a very responsible, helpful, humane way and not stigmatize any specific communities or allow, I don't know, fear over vaccines, quarantines, government overreach, whatever your particular flavor of concern is to get in the way of keeping people healthy and safe. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

We hope you've enjoyed yourself. Thanks to taxpayers for using their song Medicines as the intro've enjoyed yourself. Thanks to taxpayers that used to their song medicines as the intro and outro program. Hey, if you want to share the show, we would really appreciate it, especially when we're doing a topic that I think people could be a little bit more informed about. This is a great time to do it.

So just, you know, tweet about it, share it on Facebook, rate and review and your podcast platform of choice. I know people always say that, but it would really help us out. And if you could do that, I think you'd be doing a little bit to help us, which is huge, obviously, appreciate that. But also, you know, science education,

that's important to you. Sure, the show. Appreciate it. Thanks to the maximum fun network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family. And thanks to you for listening. That's gonna do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!