John Oliver addressed the increasing numbers of monkeypox cases in the U.S. on Sunday night’s episode of HBO Max’s Last Week Tonight. The comedian expressed frustration with that “despite the fact we’re still in the middle of the COVID pandemic, we seem to be replicating some of its key mistakes.”
Oliver listed that some of the factors that don’t contribute to getting a hold of the monkeypox outbreak include “persecuting strangers, spreading misinformation, and badly mismanaging the public health response.”
Monkeypox, explained the talk-show host, is an ailment that causes a variety of illnesses. “pox virus” “part of the same family as smallpox”However, it isn’t as fatal or transmissible. It was discovered in Denmark in 1958 by captivated monkeys. “like got them from rodents.”Oliver then shared an ABC News article from 2003 that discussed a monkeypox epidemic linked to prairie dogs.
California declared an emergency on August 1st following close to 800 reported cases. The U.S. declared a Health Emergency in response after more than 7,000 cases were recorded across the country.
Oliver explained that the majority of cases currently being recorded are “among gay and bisexual men and their sexual networks. The virus spreads through sustained skin-to-skin contact and it is currently believed to be spreading most commonly during sex, though in rare cases it can be spread through respiratory droplets.”
Oliver acknowledged that he knew about the virus and had tools to stop a widespread epidemic, but he called for the elimination of the virus.
“As of early June, we were only conducting 10 tests per day in total across the country — increasing to just 60 by the end of the month,”Oliver said.
Although there has been an increase in testing, the FDA-approved test that detects the virus is by swabbing the lesions. However, a person would need to wait until they are able to perform the test. This is because they may have other symptoms. Oliver noted that until testing gets better, there won’t be a good indicator as to how widespread the virus is.
“Every part of our early response to this made it harder than it needed to be,”He added. “I will say, there have been some improvements recently. We’ve seen some progress on testing, more vaccines are finally coming with large numbers set to start arriving in October.”
Oliver asked if delays in fixing the problem were related to Oliver’s question. “who’s been getting hit the hardest.”
“You have to believe that if monkeypox was spreading largely through heterosexual sex things would be drastically different,”Oliver said. “It is not homophobic to acknowledge who is currently most affected, which is gay and bisexual men, sex workers, and people who participate in sex with multiple partners. What is homophobic is when you blame or shame the people who are suffering or when you decide you don’t need to care about this because you don’t see their lives as valuable or their suffering as consequential and that is where there are strong echoes of the AIDS crisis in some of the discussion around monkeypox.”
Oliver suggests that information about protecting yourself against monkeypox should be presented in a more structured manner. “sex positive”Lighter would be better.
“The next 6 to 8 weeks are going to be crucial so we need to be ramping up testing and data collection and getting vaccines and anti-virals to those who need them the most,”Oliver suggested that this be done in the short-term. “We also need to make quarantining be more logistically possible for people because monkeypox can require up to 4 weeks of isolation and for many, that is going to be difficult to manage without extra support.”
Oliver suggested that the long-term goal be: “We badly need to restructure our public health system so it is better able to respond to a viral outbreak.”