Mpox, previously known as Monkeypox, is a virus that causes blisters, swollen lymph nodes, and rashes. A new strain currently has 100,000 reported cases and 220 deaths. This new strain had emerged in Africa in 2023, and if the disease were to spread around the world, it could potentially cause lockdowns and have devastating effects on people’s lives. We need to ensure that we are prepared for this virus and take it far more seriously than we did with COVID-19.

The World Health Organization, an organization that works with governments to attempt to keep the world safe from diseases. declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on March 20, 2020.

According to a statement from the WHO on August 14 2024, the current surge of mpox in Africa is an “emergency”, not just for Africa, “but for the entire globe.”

The report went on to say, “It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself.”

An outbreak in 2022 led to almost 100,000 cases, and in 2023 a new strain of the disease was found that currently has over 14,000 cases with 524 reported deaths, a significant increase from 2023 from when the strand was first discovered.

Mpox is a dangerous disease and we need to learn from how we handled COVID-19 in order to deal with mpox.

Skirting the rules and misinformation: How we handled COVID

When COVID-19 spread, governments throughout the world enforced lockdowns, yet there were some who still went out in violation of these rules. For example, in the UK, a movement called Partygate started where several government members, most notably including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, would gather repeatedly through 2020 and 2021 despite COVID-19 regulations. 

In response to the Partygate incidents, Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition at the time, said that Johnson was “trashing the ministerial code” of the United Kingdom by participating in Partygate.

Government officials weren’t the only ones who had violated lockdown procedures, starting in April of 2020, citizens in the United States would gather in areas and protest due to the lockdowns, which violated lockdown procedures and spread the disease more, Former President Donald Trump also encouraged these protests, these protests actively attempted to go against government lockdowns and attempted to stop lockdowns in their states.

If mpox were to have the same lockdown procedures, and people were to violate these procedures again, it would definitely cause more people to catch the virus and put more people in danger compared to staying inside, it would also cause more deaths because of the virus.

People also made things worse by spreading misinformation regarding COVID-19, one of the most notable examples being former U.S. President Donald Trump who, as reported by Forbes in January of 2024, stated a cure for the virus that he was using was hydroxychloroquine, which was in reality a malaria treatment and not designed or meant for COVID-19.

A disease that spreads as much as COVID could lead to more lockdowns, and while this strain of Mpox is currently contained to Africa, if it were to spread, then it would be dangerous.

According to the WHO website, COVID-19 has caused 7 million deaths on it’s own, a second disease that spreads as much as COVID could cause more if we aren’t prepared for it, which is why Mpox needs to be taken more seriously than COVID was, if we don’t take Mpox seriously it could cause deaths just as bad if not worse than COVID-19.

Mpox is a dangerous disease, if we want to avoid lockdowns again and avoid the risk of unnecessary deaths because of the virus, then we have to hope we can find a vaccine for the disease quickly, or else we’ll possibly have to go through lockdowns a second time. 

We need to ensure that the information we consume about the virus comes from verified trusted sources such as the CDC or WHO, we also can’t violate quarantine rules again and cause more people to catch the virus, and most importantly we have to tell family members, co-workers, friends, and others if someone catches the virus so those people can get themselves checked for the virus.