What the monkeyfuck is going on?

The denialism by the government, the press, and the public, is dangerous

First, as I have said, no one should panic about monkeypox. So far, it hasn’t killed anyone in this outbreak and the cases are still relatively low, although rapidly growing. Its natural host is African rodents and it’s naturally hard to spread among humans in its historic form. This virus is exceedingly unlikely to turn into a major pandemic.

However, most of the people we trust to provide information, in the medical profession, the media and the government seem desperate to believe and convince others, regardless of the facts, that this completely unprecedented monkeypox outbreak is some sort of natural event.

And it might be, but if it is, something has manifestly changed in the transmission routes. There has never been an outbreak of monkeypox like this. Ever.

It’s in 18 countries, 4 US states, and more than 200 cases — and rapidly increasing. Additionally, the 2022 virus appears to have mutated, or “hypermutated” with “massive deviations” from the 2019 virus.

Chris Turnbull @EnemyInAState

1/ Portugal has furthered the sequencing of the monkeypox virus causing the current outbreak—50 divergences 'far more than one would expect' say Portuguese scientists: 'hypermutated virus' cannot be 'discarded'

Chris Turnbull @EnemyInAState

2/ The report says that there are 50 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms): 50 changes in the genetics of the virus from the last isolated samples in Europe in 2018-2019. 'The outbreak virus diverges a mean of 50 SNPs from those 2018-2019 viruses (46 SNPs from the...

Chris Turnbull @EnemyInAState

3/ ...closest reference—which is far more than one would expect considering the estimated substitution rate for Orthopoxviruses ' The report says. Indeed these are massive deviations in the genetics of the virus.

I am no geneticist but “we see a large deletion in a gene known to be involved in host transmission and is very possibly responsible for increased transmission between humans” sounds like something more than the 16 people who liked this tweet should know about.

Roland Baker 2.0 @RolandBakerIII

@Modern_Healing @EnemyInAState More importantly we see a large deletion in a gene known to be involved in host transmission and is very possibly responsible for increased transmission between humans (yet to be proven for this virus but proven to cause increased transmission to new hosts in other viruses).

If this is indeed a “new variant and it appears to be getting better at spreading the more it spreads” then it seems like, regardless of the cause, the knee-jerk reaction of nearly everyone of simply dismissing this as a weird natural event that will go away all by itself and that no one should be worried about, is just denialism.

Chris Turnbull @EnemyInAState

10/ The research supports the hypothesis that this is a new variant and it appears to be getting better at spreading the more it spreads.

Here are some other facts that I believe it is the responsibility of the US Government and our medical establishment to be honest about:

— This is a totally atypical monkeypox outbreak, with no obvious correlates since monkeypox was isolated in the 50s. The only other major US outbreak was in 2003 when infected African rodents caused a cluster when they were sold as pets.

— The virus has simultaneously showed up in 18 countries with little obvious overlap between the clusters and, except in one case, no travel to Africa.

— The claim that this was “primarily transmitted through gay sex” is not proven at all, and the speculation around this is dangerous and potentially harmful to the LGBTQ community because it fuels an already unacceptable level of anti-gay hate. For some of the cases in UK and Spain, the patients had gone to a gay fetish festival, but there is no proof this was the result of sex rather than just the location being a possible source. Note that Putin is notoriously anti-gay.

— The virus has erupted almost entirely in NATO countries, across two continents, where it almost never shows up in individual cases, much less in large, expanding clusters.

— The Soviet Union had a monkeypox bioweapons program which continued after its fall. Russia is also the only other country besides the US known to have live smallpox which is genetically similar and is far more contagious in humans.

— Putin has threatened biowarfare and recently created a massive amount of disinformation about “biolabs” which was amplified and expanded on by the QAnon+ cult.

— The White House warned that Putin might use bioweapons near the start of the atrocities in Ukraine.

— The QAnon+ cult has seized on the monkeypox outbreak to blame everyone from Bill Gates, to Joe Biden, to vaccines. Here’s a screenshot of how Telegram is reacting. This frenzy is currently outpacing Big Lie and COVID disinfo.

Despite the fact that both the virus and misinformation about it are spreading, rather than be honest about how incredibly unusual this event is, and about the blindingly obvious possibility of biological warfare, Joe Biden had to walk back his perfectly accurate comment that Americans should be “concerned.”

This denialism and feigned ignorance fits perfectly with the establishment’s dangerously feckless response to the theft of the 2016 election and to the near toppling of our democracy on 1/6.

Putin is already waging psychological war on the US and kinetic war on Europe. Why the fuck won’t anyone admit that biological warfare is a perfectly logical move to Putin and that the currently known set of facts about this monkeypox outbreak has almost no other explanation?

Astonishingly, the real reason seems to be fear of being wrong and being punished politically for even mentioning the possibility. Chickenshit pundits and politicians are credulously reporting this knowing perfectly well that this may very well be a biological attack and they are too afraid to say it.

It’s not only pathetic, it’s dangerous. The longer this grows with no honest assessment of the facts, the worse the fallout is going to be, both in terms of our response to the disease, and for the politicians who failed to say anything while it spread around the globe.

This disease is stable on surfaces and in airborne droplets for days. If someone had this virus in aerosolized form, spreading it through an airport or a gay festival would be a simple matter of showing up and spraying into the air or spreading it on surfaces in public spaces.

Obviously, if the disease has also been modified to make it more contagious among humans, that would be far worse, and the scientific data appears to show that it had a rapid mutation that isn’t explained by the normal “stochastic” or random mutations that we all know from third grade takes a long time.

We need the people responsible for informing and protecting us to treat us like adults. Stop hiding the ball. You don’t have to know the answer to tell people this is a legitimate question.

Sadly, I’m afraid the same failure of imagination that allowed 1/6 to happen, despite it being completely predictable, is at work again. We still have not collectively figured out that all the stuff we were worried about came true, and worse. Putin is committing genocide in Ukraine, right now, against civilians. Does anyone believe it’s beyond him to use bioweapons?

CIA: Putin’s threat of nukes is not to be taken “lightly”