You can subscribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE [1].
You can subscribe to the comments made on programs and posts–an excellent source of information in, and of, itself, HERE [2].
WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE [3].
Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is available on a 32GB flash drive, available for a contribution of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). Click Here to obtain Dave’s 40+ years’ work, complete through Late Fall of 2021 (through FTR #1215). [4]
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24 [5]
ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24 [6]
Mr. Emory has launched a new Patreon site. Visit at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory [7]
FTR#1257 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment [8].
[9]Stages of Monkeypox development
Credit: Wikipedia
Introduction: This program continues discussion and analysis of the consortium of EcoHealth Analysis, Metabiota, In-Q-Tel and Munich Re–an association inextricably linked with biological warfare and generation of the Covid-19 pandemic.
First, we review [10] the fact that Metabiota–which uses AI and social media scraping (among other tools) to gauge the “fear factor” involved with pandemic readiness (and the associated pandemic insurance policies)–was gauging the fear factor for monkey pox, which had manifested some human infections in the Congo as “low.”
This was in early 2020. Now, the disease is on the “front burner,” so to speak. People are afraid of the “new pandemic.”
Despite only 306 documented cases in the U.S. (as of 6/28/2022), hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses [11] are being readied for human use.
The disease bears an epidemiological similarity to AIDS: an African monkey virus infecting gay males with multiple sex partners.
In addition, we review an excerpting of an op-ed column by Scott Gottlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a member of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer.
He notes [12] that the new agency created by Biden to deal with monkeypox and other emerging infections was formerly: ” . . . . an office inside the Department of Health and Human Services that is charged with coordinating the federal response to bioterrorism . . . .”
Sampling some of the media coverage of the monkeypox outbreak, Mr. Emory reads from America’s “Newspaper of Record,” The New York Times:
“Another Virus Is Catching America Off Guard” by Jay K. Varma; The New York Times; 6/28/2022; p. A23 [Western Print Edition].
“Health Officials Call Emergency for Monkeypox” by Apoorva Mandavilli; The New York Times; 7/24/2022; pp. A1-A23 [Western Print Edition].
“Health Secretary Says States ‘Need to Work with Us’ on Fighting Monkeypox” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [Western Print Edition].
“U.S. Calls Rise of Moneypox an Emergency” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Apoorva Mandavilli; The New York Times; 8/5/2022; pp. A1-A15 [Western Print Edition].
“In Monkeypox, Gay Men Confront a Health Crisis With Echoes of the Past” by Liam Stack; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [Western Print Edition].
Media coverage of the outbreak characterizes [13] monkeypox as a disease afflicting primarily gay males with multiple sex partners–similar to the epidemiology of the early AIDS outbreak.
Much of the broadcast consists of information indicating the possibility [14] of airborne transmission of monkeypox. NB: Mr. Emory cannot comment definitely on this possibility–he presents this analysis to note the possibility.
We conclude that children have contracted the disease [15], without engaging in the behavior associated with the spread of monkeypox, although this is apparently quite rare.
1. First, we review the fact that Metabiota–which uses AI and social media scraping (among other tools) to gauge the “fear factor” involved with pandemic readiness (and the associated pandemic insurance policies)–was gauging the fear factor for monkey pox, which had manifested some human infections in the Congo as “low.”
This was in early 2020. Now, the disease is on the “front burner,” so to speak. People are afraid of the “new pandemic.”
Despite only 306 documented cases in the U.S. (as of 6/28/2022), hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses [11] are being readied for human use.
The disease bears an epidemiological similarity to AIDS: an African monkey virus infecting gay males with multiple sex partners.
“How AI is battling the coronavirus outbreak” by Rebecca Heilweil; Vox; 01/28/2020. [10]
. . . . Similarly, the epidemic-monitoring company Metabiota determined that Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan had the highest risk of seeing the virus show up more than a week before cases in those countries were actually reported, partially by looking to flight data. Metabiota, like BlueDot, uses natural-language processing to evaluate online reports about a potential disease, and it’s also working on developing the same technology for social media data.
Mark Gallivan, Metabiota’s data science director, explains that online platforms and forums can also give an indication that there’s a risk of an epidemic. Metabiota also claims it can estimate the risk of a disease’s spread causing social and political disruption, based on information like an illness’s symptoms, mortality rate, and the availability of treatment [16]. For instance, at the time of this article’s publication, Metabiota rated the risk of the novel coronavirus causing public anxiety as “high” in the US and China, but it rated this risk for the monkeypox virus [17] in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (where there have been reported cases of that virus) as “medium.”
It’s hard to know just how accurate this rating system or the platform itself can be, but Gallivan says the company is working with the US intelligence community and the Defense Department on issues related to the coronavirus. This is part of Metabiota’s work with In-Q-Tel [18], the nonprofit venture firm associated with the Central Intelligence Agency. But government agencies aren’t the only potential clients of these systems. Metabiota also advertises its platform [19] to reinsurance companies — reinsurance is essentially insurance for insurance companies — that might want to manage the financial risks associated with a disease’s potential spread. . . .
2. We review an excerpting of an op-ed column by Scott Gottlieb, the head of the FDA under Trump, a member of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer.
He notes that the new agency created by Biden to deal with monkeypox and other emerging infections was formerly: ” . . . . an office inside the Department of Health and Human Services that is charged with coordinating the federal response to bioterrorism . . . .”
“Monkeypox Is About to Become the Next Public Health Failure” by Scott Gottlieb; The New York Times [12]; 7/30/2002.
. . . . It has effectively created an agency [20] out of an office inside the Department of Health and Human Services that is charged with coordinating the federal response to bioterrorism, among other things. The reordering puts the new Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response on equal footing with the C.D.C. . . .
3a. Sampling some of the media coverage of the monkeypox outbreak, Mr. Emory reads from America’s “Newspaper of Record,” The New York Times:
“Another Virus Is Catching America Off Guard” by Jay K. Varma; The New York Times; 6/28/2022; p. A23 [Western Print Edition].
“Health Officials Call Emergency for Monkeypox” by Apoorva Mandavilli; The New York Times; 7/24/2022; pp. A1-A23 [Western Print Edition].
“Health Secretary Says States ‘Need to Work with Us’ on Fighting Monkeypox” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [Western Print Edition].
“U.S. Calls Rise of Moneypox an Emergency” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Apoorva Mandavilli; The New York Times; 8/5/2022; pp. A1-A15 [Western Print Edition].
“In Monkeypox, Gay Men Confront a Health Crisis With Echoes of the Past” by Liam Stack; The New York Times; 7/29/2022; p. A‑20 [Western Print Edition].
3b. Media coverage of the outbreak characterizes monkeypox as a disease afflicting primarily gay males with multiple sex partners–similar to the epidemiology of the early AIDS outbreak.
“Showing Old Prejudices, U.S. Government Falsely Associates Monkeypox Outbreak with Gays, Bisexuals and Africans” by Morgan Artyukhina; Covert Action Magazine; [13]8/14/2022. [13]
Misinformation Breeds More Fear of Minority Groups Along With Misunderstanding About Disease Itself
Careless messaging by global health agencies about the outbreak of monkeypox virus has created widespread public confusion, including associating the infectious disease with gay and bisexual men and with Africans.
The unwarranted and needless situation is a public health failure and has camouflaged the true nature of the outbreak, which does not discriminate between races, genders, or sexualities, posing a greater risk to the U.S. public at large.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 11,177 cases [21] of monkeypox virus (MPXV) have been detected in the United States since May, with nearly all of them being gay and bisexual men, sometimes worded as “men who have sex with men (MSM).” Globally, more than 31,799 cases have been detected across 87 countries, with most of them in the U.S., Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
The disease is closely related to the extinct virus variola, which caused smallpox. It was first detected in humans in West Africa in 1970, but has never reached such a wide-scale outbreak as presently exists. This outbreak is driven by the West African clade, which has a mortality rate of less than 1%. A two-shot vaccine, Jynneos, is produced by Danish company Bavarian Nordic and licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to inoculate against monkeypox, and smallpox vaccines are predicted to provide protection as well, due to their similarity.
Health officials have clearly and repeatedly stated that everyone can catch monkeypox and that it is not sexually transmitted, meaning there is nothing unique about gay and bisexual men with respect to the virus. What is unique about queer men is that they are the only ones being tested, resulting in a false picture of the outbreak as being either only possible among them or that it is being spread by them. . . .
. . . . However, some, such as health-oriented Boston Globe spinoff Stat News [22], plainly stated that “It is not known how any of these people contracted the virus,” noting that “transmission is thought to occur mainly through virus-laced droplets, but direct contact with lesions or bodily fluids from an infected person, or indirect contact via contaminated clothing or linens, can also result in transmission.” . . . .
3c. Much of the broadcast consists of information indicating the possibility of airborne transmission of monkeypox. NB: Mr. Emory cannot comment definitely on this possibility–he presents this analysis to note the possibility.
“CDC Rigs Its Own Monkeypox Case Reports by Not Including Questions on Airborne Transmission [14]” by Lambert Strether; Naked Capitalism; 8/15/2022. [14]
This short and sweet post will have two parts. First, I will show that the CDC Monkeypox case report form omits any questions about airborne transmission. Then I will show why that’s a bad idea, inexplicable given CDC’s previous documentation on this point.
Caveat: I am not saying that “Monkeypox is airborne.” To my knowledge, we don’t have epidemiological studies of the same quality we have with Covid; the kind with seat charts and diagrams of airflow (as in the famous Skagit Valley chorus study, but with many others); that is the kind of evidence I rate highest, most of all because such studies show me how to imagine the ground and what to do. However, we do have sufficient information not to rule out airborne transmission altogether, as I will show. That CDC does this a priori — and at the start of what we all hope is not the start of another global pandemic on the order of Covid — is mind-boggling, or would be mind-boggling if we had not, by this time, had plenty of experience with how “The Centers for Disease” operates. They have form.
First, let’s look at the CDC case report, “OMB No. 0920–1011.” We have the “Short Form,” designed to be filled out by state or local health officials [23]. We also have the “Data Dictionary Codebook” (same OMB number), which documents the database fields that will be populated by Short Form data entry. Both are embedded in the Appendix to this post. (The name “Short Form” suggests the existence of a “Long Form,” probably populating database fields unused by the Short Form, but if such a form exists, I haven’t seen it.
From transmission, the key section in the Short From is “History of Possible Exposures.” Here it is:
As you can see, the structured portion of the form (i.e. checkboxes and radio buttons) does not permit any representation of airborne transmission (certainly not a “fleeting contact [24]” such as has occurred with Covid); airborne tranmission is ruled out a priori[1].
An interviewer desperate to somehow cram information about airborne transmission into the form could use the following text fields (“location of exposure,” “additional details”):
However, exactly because such data would be unstructured and unstandardized, it’s not likely to make it into any reports generated from the database.
We now turn to the Data Dictionary Codebook. As you can see, fields on the Short Form are mapped to fields in a database. Here is an example of how the documentation is structured:
As you can see, the basic structure is a series of field/value pairs, mutually exclusive (ORed radio buttons) or not (ANDed checkboxes). Hilariously, I found this field while searching for “air” (“prairie”); no such luck. “Prairie Dog” strongly suggests that the Data Dictionary dates from no later than 2003, when [25] “All people infected with monkeypox in this outbreak became ill after having contact with pet prairie dogs. The pets were infected after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana. This was the first time that human monkeypox was reported outside of Africa.” But no doubt our thinking, and our fields, have been updated since that time.
We can also see from this example that the CodeBook contains many fields that are not used in the Short Form. Here is another example:
The word “mask” does not appear in the Short Form.
I scanned the entire codebook, and I can’t find any fields that would store data relevant to airborne transmission in the general case. (You can check my work in the Appendix.) For example, the famous Japanese 3Cs — closed spaces (with poor ventilation), crowded places (with many people nearby), and close-contact settings (such as close-range conversations), are highly structured and would lend themselves well to representation in a database. Here are more suggestions:
We can conclude, then, that CDC simply is not enquiring into airborne transmission of Monkeypox. They have ruled it out, a priori. However, if you go by existing literature — including from the CDC itself — there’s plenty of reason consider it a real possibllity. To that literature we now turn.
* * *
First, from KHN, “CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Guidance On Airborne Risks Of Monkeypox [26]“:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it removed the recommendation that travelers worried about monkeypox should wear a mask because it was causing confusion. Although public health officials have been linking many of the cases in this outbreak to close sexual contacts, monkeypox can also be spread through the air for short distances.
This is one of KHN’s handy wrap-ups. From the New York Times, “Monkeypox Can Be Airborne, Too.” So why not collect data on airborne transmision of monkeypox, if only to rule it out?
Then there’s Nature, “How does monkeypox spread? What scientists know [27].” What we “know” seems solid:
Several studies… show that few people contract the disease from an infected household member with whom they didn’t have sexual contact. This finding, paired with the data about viral load, suggests that respiratory droplets and airborne particles probably aren’t the primary transmission route… If corroborated by further research [which CDC has decided not to do, because reasons], it could call into question whether people should isolate for the entire duration of infection, which might be difficult because the illness seems to take up to a month to resolve, she adds.
But what we “know” melts into air:
Even if the virus can be sexually transmitted, it’s unclear how large of a role this mode of transmission has, compared with simply being in close, skin-to-skin contact with a person or inhaling their respiratory particles [gawd, they can never say “aerosols”] — which also occur during sex.
Put more pointedly, during sex — hear me out — people share air, so any theory of skin-to-skin contact has an enormous confounding factor. So why not collect data on airborne transmision of monkeypox, if only to rule it out?
Now let’s do a (frankly cursory) review of the literature on airborne transmission of monkeypox.
CDC, “Smallpox & Other Orthopoxvirus-Associated Infections [28].” Here is CDC scrubbing it:
CDC, “Hospital Respiratory Protection Program Toolkit [29]“:
CDC, “Potential Exposure to Person with Confirmed Human Monkeypox Infection [30]” (via [31]):
CDC, “Monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [32]“:
Coughing and sneezing is possibly droplets (loogies, ballistic). Talking (like singing) certainly includes aerosols, i.e. transmission is airborne.
But wait, there’s more from the CDC:
GOV.UK, “High consequence infectious diseases (HCID) [33]“:
And finally, Clinical Infectious Diseases, “The Clinical Characteristics of Human Monkeypox, and Risk Factors for Severe Disease [34].” Figure 1 lists the upper and lower respiratory tract symptoms — arguably related to breathing, not touch — the researchers studied.:
Oddly, the CDC’s “Short Form” has eliminated all these symptoms, even coughing:
Again, why not collect data on airborne transmision of monkeypox, if only to rule it out?
NOTES
[1] CDC might not be so strong on transmission, but hoo boy! Did they lavish attention on data structures for gender and race (although not, naturally, proxies for class like income or education level).
3d. Although apparently quite rare, children have contracted the disease [15], without engaging in the behavior associated with the spread of monkeypox.