UN health agency chief declares monkeypox a global emergency

Reality

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From the article ..

A global emergency is WHO’s highest level of alert but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. Similar declarations were made for the Zika virus in 2016 in Latin America and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision on calling monkeypox a global emergency despite a lack of consensus among experts on the U.N. health agency’s emergency committee, saying he acted as “a tiebreaker.” It was the first time a U.N. health agency chief has unilaterally made such a decision without an expert recommendation.​

The WHO did not declare it a global emergency. One person did by himself.

This is why people lose confidence in "science" because even the people in charge of those areas replace scientific analysis, measurements and long-established guidelines and policies with their own arrogant subjective opinions and theories and assume due to having their job title people will believe them.

To be clear, I am not debating whether or not this is a global emergency but simply pointing out that in a world where every statement, scientific or not, is over-analyzed, heavily scrutinized and wildly debated, the last thing the scientific community should be doing is declaring and disseminating opinions and educated guesses under the guise of factual information.

That leads to distrust which opens the door for misinformation and disinformation and once that happens, it is hard to gain back the trust of the people.
 
Runwildboys

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Reality said:
From the article ..

A global emergency is WHO’s highest level of alert but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. Similar declarations were made for the Zika virus in 2016 in Latin America and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision on calling monkeypox a global emergency despite a lack of consensus among experts on the U.N. health agency’s emergency committee, saying he acted as “a tiebreaker.” It was the first time a U.N. health agency chief has unilaterally made such a decision without an expert recommendation.​

The WHO did not declare it a global emergency. One person did by himself.

This is why people lose confidence in "science" because even the people in charge of those areas replace scientific analysis, measurements and long-established guidelines and policies with their own arrogant subjective opinions and theories and assume due to having their job title people will believe them.

To be clear, I am not debating whether or not this is a global emergency but simply pointing out that in a world where every statement, scientific or not, is over-analyzed, heavily scrutinized and wildly debated, the last thing the scientific community should be doing is declaring and disseminating opinions and educated guesses under the guise of factual information.

That leads to distrust which opens the door for misinformation and disinformation and once that happens, it is hard to gain back the trust of the people.
Click to expand...
"I heard stuff that scares me, so...it's an emergency!"
 
Roadtrip635

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I don't know about some attempt to keep people frightened, I think there should be an appropriate level of concern. Considering what we just went through the last couple years, I think it's appropriate to make people aware and not take things too lightly, I'm not eager to repeat past mistakes. A lot of times elevating risk levels is just an official way to open up appropriate funding and manage awareness.

People are going to react according to their own personalities, some people will panic if someone coughs a block away and others will still insist it's fake and some sort of conspiracy even if people are dropping dead around them. Personally, just keep me informed so I can assess my own level of risk.
 
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Roadtrip635

Roadtrip635

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It seems like this thread has been "tidied" up and bit and can't respond directly to other responses. I will say it only makes sense to assure the proper resources are more widely available, we have vaccines and testing for monkeypox. The issue is it's such a rare disease, only 2 cases last year and the last "outbreak" was what 20 years ago and that was only 40 cases, that we didn't have those resources widely available.

We have the tools to nip this in the bud, let's make those tools more widely available and continue to educate the public.
 
triplets_93

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Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota said that, as of now, the outbreak is largely affecting a limited group of "highly sexually active gay men," and added that many gay men are at low risk for contracting the virus.

We see in the United States that about 52% of gay men have between zero and 11 partners in their lifetime. But there, on the upper end of that scale, 10% that have more than 101, and about 1.9% that have more than 400 partners over a lifetime," Osterholm said. "When you look at those risks, it's much, much, much, much higher in that group that's having a large number of partners."

"We have to emphasize that. Why? Because we do have a major shortage of vaccines.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/n...exually-transmitted-gay-men-vaccine-shortage/
 
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