Dr. John Brooks, an internist at CDC office of prevention, speaks about #mpox. He notes that we've seen declines worldwide in new cases. 2/
Mpox likely transmitted most via contact with skin and the anorectal area. #CROI2023 3/
Dr. Brooks says, "We don't really know" why #mpox has declined so dramatically. He speculates vaccination and sexual behavior change in gay and bi men likely contributed. He does not mention my theory that the virus ran out of people with high frequency of new partners to infect.
Dr. Brooks calls for completion of the clinical trial of antiviral TPOXX , something that is difficult without many cases of #mpox occurring. He says people need to get vaccinated against mpox now before Pride season returns. #CROI2023
Dr. Brooks notes that presymptomatic transmission of #mpox is possible. #CROI2023
Dr. Sharon Frey, Clinical Director, Center for Vaccine Development, St. Louis University: MOLECULAR PATHOGENESIS AND THERAPEUTIC TARGETS FOR MPOX VIRUS lecture
Jynneos has been vaccinated intradermally:
Dr. Frey compares smallpox and #mpox at #CROI2023. "The presentation of mpox when it is sexually transmitted is very different from what we know of mpox in the past."
Dr. Frey reviews the history of smallpox vaccination. #CROI2023
Post-9/11, Iraq war era, Bush's administration was afraid that Iraq would use biological warfare. It turns out Iraq did not have smallpox on hand. Regardless, a program began to develop a new vaccine for smallpox. #CROI2023
The history of #mpox. #CROI2023
Dr. Frey says that quote about the virus disappearing because of ecological changes has the matter backward.
A play-by-play of the 2022 #mpox outbreak. Note that researchers later realized there had been signs of the virus in the UK by early April. #CROI2023
The CDC's John Brooks says that there are an est 2M Americans who would be good candidates for #mpox vaccination, because they are a man who has sex with men at risk of sexual acquisition and/or a person with HIV. 1.2M doses have been given; only 470,000 people have both doses.
A PhD student from @fredhutch says there has been "historical revisionism" going on in the talks in today's session. Yes, he says, there was decrease in sexual activity. "I think the LGBTQ community felt very let down by the public health infrastructure."
The @fredhutch student says, "We kind of had to take care of ourselves." He refers to the delay in the vaccine arriving on US shores. "I don't mean to tell you that this is bad or anything, but I don't necessarily think this is as rosy as being presented." (Applause)
"Now is the time to protect yourself. Prepare to be protected so you can take care of yourself in the future," said Dr. John Brooks of CDC at #CROI2023, anticipating that #mpox might rise again with the arrival of #LGBTQ Pride season. Will we see another mpox summer?
@MegDoherty_HIV of @WHO in Geneva says there's no guarantee that the public health emergency of international concern regarding #mpox will continue. She asks about the best way to continue monitoring and surveillance and not to lose momentum in combatting the virus. #CROI2023
Dr. John Brooks says, "We have the tools that work, how do we make sure we have equitable access to those around the world." The problem of #mpox, he says at #CROI2023, is growing in W and Central Africa.
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I would very much like to know whether the unnamed source got cold feet and demanded a retraction of his quote (and if so, why), or if his words and his capacity to recall a time from about six or seven years ago were somehow misrepresented in the first place.
WaPo reports:
Xander Luke, another high school classmate, said he remembers Tyler Robinson being smart, funny and active online, trafficking in silly memes and jokes.
They would talk politics, Luke said, and discuss their “frustration with the system,” particularly feeling let down by the two major political parties. Robinson did not appear to like “hateful people” and “people who would talk down” to others, said Luke, 22.
I report for @UnHerd on the tangled and tortured case of Gordon Guyatt, the towering figure of evidence-based medicine who has caved to transgender-activist pressure and thrown under the bus the funder of his systematic reviews of pediatric gender-transition treatment, @SEGM_EBM. He and his colleagues also contradicted their own research findings by adopting activist language touting the benefits of these interventions as “medically necessary.”
My reporting plumbs the depths of the internal tensions at McMaster University, where Guyatt is a star professor, over the mounting activist pressure. I spoke with one of the authors of the review papers, who was sharply critical of Guyatt’s decision to take sides on how his work should be used in the policy arena. This source shared with me internal emails diagramming the thought process of Guyatt and one of his key McMaster colleagues as they tried to quell the furor over their commissioned work for SEGM.
I also report on how Guyatt’s team is seeking to sink or at least divorce themselves from two other systematic reviews about youth gender medicine, and also kill an analysis of @WPATH’s trans care guidelines.
Dr. Steven Montante, a plastic surgeon in Richmond, Va., was among the four review-paper coauthors who didn’t sign the statement. “I don’t necessarily agree that he has the authority to dictate” how his work is used, he said of Guyatt. “To be so prescriptive waters down the notion of why we do these systematic reviews, and the notion of evidence-based medicine. There should be some level of detachment.”
“Why didn’t the institution defend the science?” said Dr. Paul Garner, an emeritus professor of evidence synthesis in global health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. “I see this is an institutional failure.” He added: “This is obviously a toxic ideological area.”
I interviewed a number of the first monkeypox (mpox) cases in 2022. They were largely affluent gay men who enjoyed traveling around the world and going to sex parties. I am not certain how stigma is connected to such a pastime.
During the outbreak, the CDC downplayed how central sex between men was to driving the outbreak. Dr. Daskalakis in particular invariably led with the exceptions to the rule of who was at risk, such as by uttering the misleading slogan, “Anybody can get monkeypox.” I once challenged him on this fact during a press call in August 2022 and asked why he wasn’t instead being direct and clear that gay men were overwhelmingly the ones at risk. He responded by saying he thought he and the CDC were doing a fantastic job.
Meanwhile, I was constantly getting DMs from parents who were scared to send their kids back to school or to daycare, despite the fact that their children were literally at greater risk of being struck by lightning than getting mpox.
Many people were angry that summer that some of the same people who insisted on masking children or keeping everyone at home during Covid were now insisting that gay men should not be asked to take a break from sex with multiple partners. It is evident that this contradiction eroded trust in public health, as you can see here from what @steveguest is saying:
I cannot begin to tell you how much rage people directed at me for simply saying gay men should modify their sexual behaviors to lower their risk of monkeypox. I broke a cardinal gay sin: Never tell a gay man to reel in his sex life. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Nearly 40 percent of students at Brown University identify as something other than straight. The growth has been largely among students identifying as bisexual or as queer, pansexual, asexual or questioning. There has been little growth in gay identity.
Mother Jones is re-upping this article from January. The study in question found that, among minors with private health insurance, by age 17, about 1 in 1,000 were on cross-sex hormones during 2018 to 2023. The rate was higher than that for natal girls and was likely higher overall by 2023.
One way of reporting this news is to simply provide readers with the figures and let them decide whether they represent a little or a lot. open.substack.com/pub/benryan/p/…
Puberty blockers themselves, multiple studies have found, are not actually associated with any change in mental health metrics.
The Advocate reports: "Asked whether a parent concerned about their child facing a trans kid in girls’ sports 'has a case,' Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg said, “Sure.” But he rejected blanket policies like the federal bans being enacted by the Trump administration, saying, “These decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians, least of all politicians in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn.”
This statement has inspired a blistering response on Bleuskie—see the 🧵⬇️
Journalist Walter Bragman issues a blistering response to @PeteButtigieg’s statement over trans inclusion in sports, calling it “craven shit” and saying Mr. Buttigieg is catering to bigots.
“To just put a fine point on it: Parents do not, in fact, have legitimate concerns about trans kids playing sports,” Mr. Bragman says.
“Just because they believe bullshit doesn’t make it legitimate.
“Fuck anti-trans bigots.”
@PeteButtigieg A person called Guillotine Hunger Force argues that sports is not about winning.