(2022-07-28) ZviM Monkeypox Post #2

Zvi Mowshowitz: Monkeypox Post #2. Will we turn the tide soon? It briefly looked like this might have already happened, but it turned out not to be the case. I give us a reasonable chance to indeed turn the tide relatively soon, and without a broad spillover into the non-MSM community. There will of course be some cases of spread elsewhere, but my (not too confident) hunch is that the disease won’t robustly spread in most other places, and will remain mostly within MSM.

Metaculus thinks the MSM percentage of cases will end up being around 93%

Also, I wouldn’t ban orgies, that won’t work, but I would have been willing to say out loud that maybe they aren’t such a good idea right now. I do think failure to do that is not good for public trust

Recent data from New York City shows that about 98% of reported monkeypox cases are among men and 2% among transgender, gender nonconforming and nonbinary individuals. Almost all are men who have sex with men (MSM).

The core problem seems to be that public health officials believe (correctly or otherwise) that you can either send the message that this is an STD impacting the MSM community or you can say it is something everyone can get, but you cannot do both – the public simply cannot handle, in the minds of those in charge of official communication, the idea that this mostly spreads one way but can also spread in another, and also there’s worry about stigmatization.

People can totally understand all of this, and also people mostly do understand most of this.