The Great US Monkeypox Outbreak

...of 2003

I can’t believe I’m even typing the word Monkeypox. In all transparency I have not even taken the bait on the sensationalist headlines and I’ve just avoided this altogether. However, a CDC MMWR report, brought to my attention by @EWoodhouse7, was just too fascinating for me to ignore.

Given the pattern that we’ve been stuck in over the last 2 years, I thought it was absolutely incredible to think that so far, according to the CDC, there’s just been a single case of monkeypox identified in the US.

Despite this, the media coverage of these cases persists and cable news/ social media seems to be enjoying the fruits of the conditioning we’ve all been subjected to for constant Covid-19 updates for 2+ years now.

Google Search Trends for term “Monkeypox” compared to “Covid-19”

“Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.”

So just exactly how rare, how unprecedented is this outbreak?