Authoritarians are eager to return to the heady days of national emergencies due to infectious diseases. They have been desperately seeking the next new pandemic and so far, have been out of luck. The bird flu failed to captivate the developed world despite the best efforts of legacy media and now the establishment is trying yet again to convince the world that monkeypox will indeed surge and threaten us all.While we can’t go a day without seeing a news item on monkeypox and the threat it allegedly presents to people, the statistics don’t justify the attention its garnering. Monkeypox came and went a couple years ago with great fanfare but little impact. There is now apparently a new strain we must watch for. Currently, the number of people in Canada diagnosed with this new strain is zero. Whether looking at the new strain or the old strain, the death count in Canada of both strains consistent at zero. You have as much chance of dying of monkeypox in Canada as you do of leprosy but you certainly wouldn’t know it from watching the news lately.With politicians and media so eager to keep crying wolf with every new disease outbreak, the public could become blasé and indifferent to warnings if and when a truly dangerous disease emerges. We are supposed to start calling it mpox rather than monkeypox these days since monkeypox is apparently insensitive to monkeys or something. I am going to keep things simple and stick to the term monkeypox. I don’t think too many monkeys read my columns anyway.All that said, monkeypox does exist and it sounds like a terrible disease to catch. Even if it isn’t fatal, it will make a person quite ill and their body could be covered in oozing lesions that may scar. The news is also warning us that monkeypox could come without symptoms too though how they know that remains a mystery. Asymptomatic people don’t go to get tested for monkeypox. It sure sounds familiar though. Asymptomatic COVID apparently swept the world hard too. Diseases have become so sneaky; we can’t even tell we have them anymore.Part of the issue with monkeypox is that it is predominantly being spread among the gay, male community. That adds political sensitivity to the issue which tempts folks to try to claim this disease threatens everybody equally but that’s a dangerous and stupid approach to take with an infectious disease. That approach to a novel disease was done before and that came at a cost of untold lives.When AIDS first came on the scene in the early 1980s, the first reports were blunt and it was pretty frightening. A new disease was sweeping the gay male community, predominantly in California and it was fatal. It was initially called Gay Acquired Immune Deficiency and was also referred to as the “gay cancer” in the earliest days. The word gay was soon dropped and it was termed AIDS from there on in.As it became evident how horrible and dangerous this new disease was, the strategy became one of trying to tell the public that everybody was at risk for it. When I was in high school in the 1980s, we were told it would sweep the heterosexual community and within years we would all know somebody with AIDS. It was a frightening scenario for those of us entering our 20s when we were at a likelihood of peak promiscuity.Thankfully, the warnings of the transmissibility of the HIV virus were greatly exaggerated. The disease wasn’t that easy to transmit through conventional sex and while the spread was devastating to those impacted, it remained predominantly within the gay male and IV drug using communities. That said, the destruction of the disease can’t be understated. It killed millions and continues to spread today.What if instead of pretending the disease was hitting everybody equally, we had set aside political correctness and targeted prevention and treatment toward the communities that were hit worst? Could lives had been saved if more outreach was directed to the gay male and IV drug using communities rather than diluting resources among everybody?Resources for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of AIDS surely could have been better utilized and more effective if they had been directed to the areas where they were needed most. Instead, our medical experts and social services were running around trying to tell heterosexual high school kids they were at high risk. The disease never spread as they said it would but the fear sure did.Monkeypox isn’t the threat the panic-porn pushers are trying to make it into but it still can be terrible for those effected. Let’s not repeat the errors of the 1980s and succumb to political correctness rather than being guided by medical reality. Monkeypox is being predominantly spread within the gay male community. If we want to prevent this disease from spreading and harming people, we need to target prevention, diagnosis and treatment in the community it is most likely to hit.It isn’t a slight against the LGBTQ community to do this. If we really wanted to harm that community, I can’t think of a better way than to pretend monkeypox is widespread outside that community and spread resources too thin again.The left loves to howl “follow the science!” when talking about policy issues. It’s time we set political correctness aside and follow the science when dealing with infectious diseases..This is what the Western Standard is up againstThe Trudeau government is funding lies and propaganda by directly subsidizing the mainstream media. They do this to entrench the powerful Eastern, woke and corrupt interests that dominate the political, social and economic institutions in Canada. Federal authorities are constantly trying to censor us and stop us from publishing the stories that they don’t want you to read. Ottawa may weaponize our taxes and police against us, but we’ve got a powerful ally on our side.You. Free men, and free women. We need you to stand with us and become a member of the Western Standard. Here’s what you will get for your membership:Unlimited access to all articles from the Western Standard, Alberta Report, West Coast Standard, and Saskatchewan Standard, with no paywall. Our daily newsletter delivered to your inbox. .Access to exclusive Member-only WS events.Keep the West’s leading independent media voice strong and free.If you can, please support us with a monthly or annual membership. It takes just a moment to set up, and you will be making a big impact on keeping one the last independent media outlets in Canada free from Ottawa’s corrupting influence.
Authoritarians are eager to return to the heady days of national emergencies due to infectious diseases. They have been desperately seeking the next new pandemic and so far, have been out of luck. The bird flu failed to captivate the developed world despite the best efforts of legacy media and now the establishment is trying yet again to convince the world that monkeypox will indeed surge and threaten us all.While we can’t go a day without seeing a news item on monkeypox and the threat it allegedly presents to people, the statistics don’t justify the attention its garnering. Monkeypox came and went a couple years ago with great fanfare but little impact. There is now apparently a new strain we must watch for. Currently, the number of people in Canada diagnosed with this new strain is zero. Whether looking at the new strain or the old strain, the death count in Canada of both strains consistent at zero. You have as much chance of dying of monkeypox in Canada as you do of leprosy but you certainly wouldn’t know it from watching the news lately.With politicians and media so eager to keep crying wolf with every new disease outbreak, the public could become blasé and indifferent to warnings if and when a truly dangerous disease emerges. We are supposed to start calling it mpox rather than monkeypox these days since monkeypox is apparently insensitive to monkeys or something. I am going to keep things simple and stick to the term monkeypox. I don’t think too many monkeys read my columns anyway.All that said, monkeypox does exist and it sounds like a terrible disease to catch. Even if it isn’t fatal, it will make a person quite ill and their body could be covered in oozing lesions that may scar. The news is also warning us that monkeypox could come without symptoms too though how they know that remains a mystery. Asymptomatic people don’t go to get tested for monkeypox. It sure sounds familiar though. Asymptomatic COVID apparently swept the world hard too. Diseases have become so sneaky; we can’t even tell we have them anymore.Part of the issue with monkeypox is that it is predominantly being spread among the gay, male community. That adds political sensitivity to the issue which tempts folks to try to claim this disease threatens everybody equally but that’s a dangerous and stupid approach to take with an infectious disease. That approach to a novel disease was done before and that came at a cost of untold lives.When AIDS first came on the scene in the early 1980s, the first reports were blunt and it was pretty frightening. A new disease was sweeping the gay male community, predominantly in California and it was fatal. It was initially called Gay Acquired Immune Deficiency and was also referred to as the “gay cancer” in the earliest days. The word gay was soon dropped and it was termed AIDS from there on in.As it became evident how horrible and dangerous this new disease was, the strategy became one of trying to tell the public that everybody was at risk for it. When I was in high school in the 1980s, we were told it would sweep the heterosexual community and within years we would all know somebody with AIDS. It was a frightening scenario for those of us entering our 20s when we were at a likelihood of peak promiscuity.Thankfully, the warnings of the transmissibility of the HIV virus were greatly exaggerated. The disease wasn’t that easy to transmit through conventional sex and while the spread was devastating to those impacted, it remained predominantly within the gay male and IV drug using communities. That said, the destruction of the disease can’t be understated. It killed millions and continues to spread today.What if instead of pretending the disease was hitting everybody equally, we had set aside political correctness and targeted prevention and treatment toward the communities that were hit worst? Could lives had been saved if more outreach was directed to the gay male and IV drug using communities rather than diluting resources among everybody?Resources for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of AIDS surely could have been better utilized and more effective if they had been directed to the areas where they were needed most. Instead, our medical experts and social services were running around trying to tell heterosexual high school kids they were at high risk. The disease never spread as they said it would but the fear sure did.Monkeypox isn’t the threat the panic-porn pushers are trying to make it into but it still can be terrible for those effected. Let’s not repeat the errors of the 1980s and succumb to political correctness rather than being guided by medical reality. Monkeypox is being predominantly spread within the gay male community. If we want to prevent this disease from spreading and harming people, we need to target prevention, diagnosis and treatment in the community it is most likely to hit.It isn’t a slight against the LGBTQ community to do this. If we really wanted to harm that community, I can’t think of a better way than to pretend monkeypox is widespread outside that community and spread resources too thin again.The left loves to howl “follow the science!” when talking about policy issues. It’s time we set political correctness aside and follow the science when dealing with infectious diseases..This is what the Western Standard is up againstThe Trudeau government is funding lies and propaganda by directly subsidizing the mainstream media. They do this to entrench the powerful Eastern, woke and corrupt interests that dominate the political, social and economic institutions in Canada. Federal authorities are constantly trying to censor us and stop us from publishing the stories that they don’t want you to read. Ottawa may weaponize our taxes and police against us, but we’ve got a powerful ally on our side.You. Free men, and free women. We need you to stand with us and become a member of the Western Standard. Here’s what you will get for your membership:Unlimited access to all articles from the Western Standard, Alberta Report, West Coast Standard, and Saskatchewan Standard, with no paywall. Our daily newsletter delivered to your inbox. .Access to exclusive Member-only WS events.Keep the West’s leading independent media voice strong and free.If you can, please support us with a monthly or annual membership. It takes just a moment to set up, and you will be making a big impact on keeping one the last independent media outlets in Canada free from Ottawa’s corrupting influence.
