<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With the 2020 Covid lockdowns still fresh in our minds, the recent outbreak of monkeypox in the United States has many people on edge. But what is monkeypox? How significant is this outbreak? Will it get worse? How can you prepare? These are alarming questions that people across the world are asking right now, and here we hope to answer at least a few of them.<\/p>\n<p>Monkeypox is a member of the orthopoxvirus genus, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/poxvirus\/monkeypox\/about.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">same genus<\/a> that also houses the variola virus that causes smallpox. While the name suggests the virus originated in monkeys, this is misleading. It is more likely that rodents and small mammals are the origin of this zoonotic disease, with the source of a 2003 outbreak coming from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20220801-what-is-monkeypox-and-why-is-it-spreading\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">prairie dogs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While monkeypox was first discovered in 1958, there are indications it has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20220801-what-is-monkeypox-and-why-is-it-spreading\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">experienced changes<\/a> in the last few years that allow it to be more transmissible between humans. The recent global monkeypox outbreak was first detected in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/emergencies\/disease-outbreak-news\/item\/2022-DON385\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">May 2022<\/a>, and has since reached <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/poxvirus\/monkeypox\/response\/2022\/us-map.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">over 6,000 confirmed<\/a> cases in the United States, and over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-62350022\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">21,000 cases worldwide<\/a>, resulting in the World Health Organization recently declaring a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/healthcare-pharmaceuticals\/monkeypox-outbreak-constitutes-global-health-emergency-who-2022-07-23\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">global health emergency<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the 2020 Covid lockdowns still fresh in our minds, the recent outbreak of monkeypox in the United States has many people on edge. But what is monkeypox? How significant is this outbreak? Will it get worse? How can you prepare? These are alarming questions that people across the world are asking right now, and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}