White House scrambles to play catch-up on monkeypox response
Biden Admin Declares Monkeypox a 'Public Health Emergency'
Facts
- On Thurs. Pres. Biden's Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, declared the monkeypox virus outbreak a 'public health emergency'. The move paves the way for efforts to raise awareness and to provide additional federal funding and flexibility to combat the spread of the virus.
- According to the CDC, monkeypox cases have been surging by more than a hundred per day over the last three weeks. As of Thurs. there are more than 6.6k confirmed infections – mainly reported among gay and bisexual men.
- On Mon., Calif. joined Ill. and N.Y. in declaring a state of emergency for the monkeypox outbreak in their respective states.
Sources
Spin
Democratic narrative
The Biden administration is making a course correction as monkeypox figures increase. There's still a chance that we can contain this outbreak, and it all boils down to if the public health sector will be adequately funded and coordinated. The White House has acknowledged this and is adjusting to an epidemiological threat using well-established tools.
Republican narrative
First, we had COVID alarmism, and now there's monkeypox alarmism. Why would we conflate mitigation measures for these two diseases, as some "experts" have, even if they have very different modes of transmission? Let's be wary of those who talk about "raising the alarm" - there are hidden agendas here.
Nerd narrative
There's a 50% chance that there will be 248K human infections of monkeypox worldwide before 2023, according to the Metaculus Prediction Community.
