Joe Biden says 'everybody should be concerned' about the recent spread of monkeypox that is leaving experts clueless
On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the recent outbreak of monkeypox should concern “everybody,” as it continues to confuse medical experts around the world.
Fox News reported that while speaking with a group of reporters in South Korea before boarding Air Force One for Japan, Biden said, “Everybody should be concerned about [it].”
Biden’s remarks come as large monkeypox outbreaks were reported in Africa, with some cases also being reported in Europe and the U.S.
Biden said, “We’re working on it, hard to figure out what we do.”
There are currently 80 confirmed cases of the disease worldwide and at least 50 suspected cases. The U.S. has only currently confirmed two cases after a man in Massachusetts was diagnosed with the disease and a second man in New York City tested positive for it.
The man from Massachusetts is reported to have traveled to Canada before coming down with the disease.
Monkeypox cases have also been reported in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, and Australia. Reportedly, none of the people coming down with the disease have any travel history to Africa, where the virus is most present.
Oyewale Tomori, a virologist and World Health Organization (WHO) advisory board member, said, “I’m stunned by this. Every day I wake up, and there are more countries infected.”
The virologist noted that the seemingly large presence of monkeypox in Western countries among people who have not traveled to Africa is perplexing.
Tomori added, “This is not the kind of spread we’ve seen in West Africa, so there may be something new happening in the West.”
Christian Happi, the director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, agreed with Tomori that monkeypox’s seemingly spontaneous emergence in the West is perplexing. He said he has “never seen anything like what’s happening in Europe.”
Although it is unlikely someone will die from the disease, WHO data estimates that monkeypox could be fatal for up to one-in-ten people. However, monkeypox’s similarity to smallpox may enable recipients of smallpox vaccines to receive some protection from the virus.
Reportedly, symptoms of monkeypox appear one to two weeks after the initial infection occurs and invovle flu-like symptoms including fever, headaches, and shortness of breath. After about five days of infection, a “skin eruption phase” begins when a rash starts to appear and often spreads to different areas of the infected person’s body.
The CDC warns that teen mental health is in 'steep' decline
This past week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicated that American teenagers are experiencing a steep decline in mental health in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and covid lockdown protocols.
“These data echo a cry for help,” Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s acting principal deputy director, said in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental wellbeing.”
The Washington Post reported that the CDC’s new findings draw on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 7,700 teens conducted in the first six months of 2021.
The survey emphasized collecting data during students’ “first full pandemic school year.”
Students were questioned on a range of topics that included questions on their mental health, drug use, whether they encountered violence at home or school, and if they encountered racism.
The study suggested that whereas young people were sparred “the brunt of the virus” since they were statistically far less likely to fall ill, experience serious symptoms, or die than their older counterparts, they might still “pay a steep price for the pandemic.”
Children are displaying negative side effects of coming of age while “weathering isolation, uncertainty, economic turmoil, and for many, grief,” the Washington Post reported.
Implying there is a biological difference between men and women, Kathleen A. Ethier, head of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school health, said the recently concluded survey’s results showed male and female students having vastly different results.
Reportedly, Ethier said, “Female students are far worse off than their male peers.”
The Washington Post reported that the survey “underscored the vulnerability of certain students, including LGBTQ youth and students who are being treated unfairly because of their race.”
Ethier said, “All students were impacted by the pandemic, but not all students were impacted equally.”
This survey’s findings are not the first-time medical officials noted their concerns about a growing mental health crisis among America’s teenagers.
This past October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a “national emergency in child and adolescent mental health,” and said that its members were “caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, and their communities.”
In December, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said, “The pandemic era’s unfathomable number of deaths, pervasive sense of fear, economic instability, and forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced.”
www.theblaze.com
www.theblaze.com