The Genesis of a Zoonotic Enigma

"Scientists use a chimpanzee adenovirus as a vector -- a way to get instructions for making virus-fighting antigens into the body."

"It should be noted that chimpanzees are not monkeys."

Meedan Health Desk

"It is wholly different from monkeypox [the Astra Zeneca vaccine using a chimpanzee adenovirus vector] and there is no possibility whatsoever that the two are linked."

"The virus used in the AZ vaccine is an adenovirus that has been mutated to prevent it [from] growing in human cells."

"All the vector does is carry the vaccine component into human cells, it does not establish any sort of infection itself."

Ian Jones, professor of virology, University of Reading

"We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission."

Dr.David Heymann, former head, WHO emergencies department

"By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person's sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission."

Mike Skinner, virologist, Imperial College London

Health experts say that although recent outbreaks of monkeypox are a cause for concern, they urge people not to panic, saying the virus is nothing like COVID-19.

The most recently reported virus causing consternation in the health communities where monkeypox has been laboratory-confirmed -- where to the present most such cases are generally confined to Africa where it is endemic -- has presented as a mystery where it has turned up in Europe and North America. The virus typically causes fever, chills, rash and face or genital lesions, also appearing on the hands of affected people. No one outside Africa has yet died as a result of contracting monkeypox which has tended to clear up in several weeks' time.

The hundred or so cases that have turned up in North America and Europe are being closely monitored, the possible source examined by public health authorities. But the public has not been idle itself in raising their versions of its origins through wild speculation of just how it was that a virus confined to two areas on one continent has suddenly begun appearing worldwide. There are the claims that a COVID virus making use of a mutated chimpanzee adenovirus is responsible.

That misinformation has been repeated by a number of individuals in positions of authority, like the British MP who on May20 posted on Twitter: "Who is surprised that after millions of people have been injected with genetically modified chimp virus, there is now an outbreak of monkeypox?" That single Twitter post has been retweeted two thousand times with over six thousand 'likes'. Word gets around, particularly controversially unsound words.

 

 

Chinese social media users are being directed toward speculation that the source of monkeypox infections is a deliberate move on the part of the United States. Taken in its malicious interpretation to have resulted from the skepticism voiced by the Trump administration when a new and deadly virus arose in Wuhan, China to go on at speed to infect the entire world. When interest zeroed in on the proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was thought to have inadvertently released the SARS-CoV-2 virus while experimentation was taking place in the biologically secure research facility.

Beijing saw an opportunity to turn the screws on the U.S. in smarting umbrage over criticism that was aimed at it over its critical lack of warning to the world at large when it began coping with a mysterious new virus. The popular Chinese social media site Weibo has preached to the convinced that the source was deliberately designed; "a plan by the U.S. to leak bioengineered monkeypox virus". At the time that the COVID pandemic was first sweeping the world, Beijing claimed the U.S. had engineered the virus at a military base.

The unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox outside its usual Africa preserve, led a leading adviser to the World Health Organization to describe the outbreak as "a random event" whose cause appeared to be sexual activities at two recent raves that took place in Spain and Belgium. In central and western Africa people typically become infected through contact with wild rodents and primates; a zoonotic infection where animal viruses leap the species barrier to infect humans.

It is now official that most of the known cases seen in Europe have been the result of men having sex with men even though theoretically anyone can be infected through close contact with an infected person. Whose clothing or bedsheets can spread the infection. In fact, scientists still remain uncertain over whether the virus is spread through sex or by close physical contact in general.

"The likelihood of further spread of the virus through close contact, for example during sexual activities among persons with multiple sexual partners, is considered to be high."

Andrea Ammon, control director, European Centre for Disease Prevention