Monkeypox in schools?
Just when you think they couldn’t possibly descend any further into the abyss, the Daily Herald and Kane County Chronicle demonstrate they have no intention of giving up the pandemic panic porn anytime soon.
With a COVID weary population finally realizing that the “experts” were wrong every step of the way, and this far less lethal version will be with us for the foreseeable future, those newspapers turned to irrational monkeypox fears to make up for those missing Internet hits.
Apparently anxiety sells even better than sex.
To wit, in a DH/KCC report that tacitly takes on local schools for shifting away from the ineffective pandemic mitigations, the DH reporter actually wrote this, “Health officials are concerned how school leaders will handle the full return to in-person learning amid lingering health concerns with new COVID variants and the threat of monkeypox spreading.”
Monkeypox spreading in schools? Really? I don’t think so!
According to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, of the 14,000 monkeypox victims in 16 countries, 98 percent of them were gay or bisexual men. Not only that, but the CDC clearly stipulates that the disease can only be spread by prolonged physical contact with someone already suffering from the lesions the pathogen produces, particularly through anal intercourse.
So, in order for what the DH reporter wrote to be true, one must assume that fifth grade boys are having sex with each other. I don’t know about you, but as strange as the post-COVID world has become, I really don’t think that’s the case.
Though it can be a rather painful proposition, according to the World Health Organization, just five of those 14,000 global monkeypox victims have perished from the disease with none of those deaths occurring in the U.S. So, even if it could be spread in schools, this disease has a miniscule 0.03 percent mortality rate.
That means, at best, the aforementioned article is the worst variety of lazy and incomplete reporting, and at worst, it’s the kind of outright lie that should never be printed or tolerated in any newspaper, much less two of them. There is no circumstance in which monkeypox will have an effect on our schools.
This isn’t the first time I’ve called out this reporter for here poor work ethic, either. Shame on you Daily Herald and Kane County Chronicle for printing this kind of sensationalist and patently false garbage.
There is a vaccine
The good news in regard to the monkeypox outbreak is, unlike COVID, it’s an old enemy that generally succumbs to the existing smallpox vaccines or derivatives thereof. So, while the sudden spread of the disease is cause for concern, it’s simply a matter of ramping up serum production to put a swift end to it.
But before you rush out to get inoculated, please leave those still-limited vaccine doses for our truly at-risk gay and bi-sexual brothers. Unless you work with animals who can carry and transmit the disease through bites and scratches, there is virtually no risk to the straight or lesbian communities.
Modern medicine can be an amazing thing.
The Avian flu that wasn’t
In what has likely become the “new normal,” if we can still apply that word to this bizarre existence, after the “experts” insisted we dismantle our birdfeeders to prevent the avian flu from killing millions of songbirds, absolutely nothing happened.
Sadly, 37 million larger birds like chickens, ducks, and other commercially farmed fowl have succumbed to this disease, but the hard truth is, songbirds neither die from nor spread this pernicious variety of the avian flu.
So, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, why did all manner of wildlife “experts,” particularly the university variety, shriek and howl about this impending songbird doom? That’s simple, They did it because they were jealous of the attention and gravitas bestowed on their medical counterparts for their absurdly over-the-top and mendacious COVID proclamations.
That kind of adulation can be quite enticing and very addicting.
Think about how the medical narrative has shifted over the years. Thalidomide was good. Smoking was healthy. Avoid high cholesterol foods. Some cholesterol is good. Don’t eat eggs. Eat eggs. Use margarine instead of butter. Butter is better that margarine. Hormone replacement therapy actually causes heart attacks in women. Cardiac stents have no beneficial effect.
This article in Medical News Today describes how recent studies and improved medical trials have proven almost 400 widely accepted medical practices to be utterly ineffective.
But the sad irony is, the fact that the experts consistently – and often completely – get it wrong, hasn’t put as much as a dent in the public’s overreliance on self-proclaimed “authorities.” I understand undertaking a reasonable due diligence is never easy, but whenever we give up our power in these regards, it never ends well.
There’s no better example than the economic and psychological fallout from the COVID mitigations that didn’t save a single life.
Despite the doomed-to-repeat-history nature of this paradigm, the next time Dr. Fauci or some avian expert opens their mouths, the general sweaty public will fall in line because it’s so much easier than applying critical thinking.
