Stop scolding people for worrying about monkeypox (Vox article)

By Lizka @ 2022-05-31T08:37 (+39)

This is a linkpost to https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23140258/monkeypox-pandemic-covid-public-health

I quite liked this recent article from Kelsey Piper. (Note: I'm link-posting this because I think link-posting can be useful.)

A few excerpts from the article: 

There are some solid epidemiological reasons to conclude that monkeypox doesn’t pose the same threat to the world that Covid-19 did in 2020. But instead of condemning alarmism, experts should acknowledge the many reasons for that alarm. The world is horribly vulnerable to the next pandemic, we know it will hit at some point, and the undetected spread of monkeypox around the world until there were dozens of cases in non-endemic countries — despite the fact it typically has low transmissibility — shows how profoundly we’ve failed to learn the lessons from Covid-19 we need to avoid a catastrophic repeat.

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Many of the biggest missteps of the last few years have happened when our public health and communications institutions have tried to manage public reactions to what they have to say: from Fauci saying that he dismissed mask-wearing early on in the pandemic out of fears of causing mass panic, to worries that endorsing booster shots (even as the evidence grew they were needed) would make the vaccines look bad, to the FDA’s earlier seeming reluctance to authorize vaccines for children under age 5, despite data justifying it, out of concerns that authorizing Pfizer and Moderna at different times would confuse the public.

In general, I’d like to see public health officials step back entirely from trying to manage our feelings about outbreaks. Don’t tell us to worry or not to worry, or not to worry yet. Don’t tell us to worry about something else instead. Tell us what measures are being taken to contain the monkeypox outbreak, and prevent the next monkeypox outbreak, and prevent the next outbreak of something much, much worse than monkeypox. By all means, explain the reasons to think monkeypox is likely not very transmissible; that’s important information you have relevant expertise on, unlike trying to manage the public’s feelings.

[...]

Once you have the accurate facts about monkeypox — and about the risk of pandemics generally — whether you’re worried by those facts isn’t really a question for the CDC.