In the coming days, the Biden administration is expected to declare monkeypox a public health emergency, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Politico reported Wednesday.
According to an article written by Dr. Robert Malone, "Monkeypox or Moneypox?" the Biden administration's upcoming decision comes in light of the World Health Organization's declaring monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). But as Malone highlighted, the declaration of PHEIC by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stands as a "direct contradiction of independent review panel advice."
Malone wrote: "Tedros made the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of the WHO's emergency committee on the monkeypox outbreak, and in so doing overruled his own review panel, who had voted 9 against, 6 for declaring the PHEIC."
While the virus presents an uptick in virulence, according to the most recent report from the WHO, it has resulted in only five deaths, "all in Africa."
Should the Biden administration declare monkeypox a public health emergency, it will grant the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a slew of actions, including the ability to access new money and appoint new personnel.
The people with knowledge of the matter expect the Biden administration will issue a declaration by the end of the week. Still, the decision is not final. A spokesperson for HHS noted that the agency "is continuing to explore options."
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra will hold a press conference on monkeypox Thursday morning.
A White House spokesperson said there are no further updates at this time. For days, Biden officials have debated whether to declare monkeypox a nationwide emergency.
"I do think it deserves to be one," said Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We're having a lot of challenges around the country with their rate of rise in terms of new cases. It isn't isn't an emergency posing a ... high threat to the general population. But it's still moving ... and has the potential to spread to additional vulnerable communities."
But as Geert Vanden Bossche, whose evolutionary model predicted leaky COVID-19 vaccines would lead to breakthrough infections in COVID-19 vaccinated populations, wrote, "Emerging pandemics of other [acute self-limiting viral infections] (e.g., influenza, RSV) or [acute self-limiting viral diseases] (e.g., monkeypox and avian flu) will inflict relatively little damage to populations that are highly C-19 vaccinated (as vaccinees benefit from cross-protection conferred by cytotoxic CD8+ T cells while the unvaccinated take advantage of a steadily improved training of their [cell-based innate immune system]), more significant damage will come from epidemics of other microbial diseases and cancer as they become more prevalent due to relative exhaustion of the adaptive immune system in these populations. However, if communities rapidly proceed with vaccination of young children, global epidemics of infectious and immunopathological disorders could cause incredible damage to this part of the population, possibly even before the pseudo-pandemic of 'more virulent' SC-2 [SARS-CoV-2] variants transitions into its final dramatic stage of ADESD [Ab-dependent enhancement of severe disease]."