BA5 And Monkeypox = The Latest Health Concerns

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to even a modicum of pre-pandemic life, now comes 2 more major health threats: BA5 and Monkeypox.

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The latest COVID variant, BA5, has already begun wreaking havoc from coast to coast. Medical experts say it’s hitting hard against those who are fully vaccinated and boosted — and even against those who assumed they were immune after experiencing a recent bout of the coronavirus.

According to NPR, Americans are contracting the BA5 COVID variant sooner than 90 days after their last bout with a previous variant. In fact, with some 31,000 people across the US currently hospitalized with the virus, the CDC says BA5 is now the most dominant strain of COVID-19 in the country.

“Not only is it more infectious, but your prior immunity doesn’t count for as much as it used to,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “And that means that the old saw that, ‘I just had COVID a month ago, and so I have COVID immunity superpowers, I’m not going to get it again’ — that no longer holds.”

The BA5 variant is said to have a growth advantage at least 4 times that of the original Omicron variant from December. Or, in other words, it’s highly contagious and prompting health concerns throughout the country.

In California, a reported 13,000 new cases are already 44% above the approximately 9,000 cases reported last December. The current 7-day test positivity rate is 16.7%, which is the second-highest rate of test positivity the state has seen during the entire pandemic.

In New York City, the COVID level was raised to High last Friday. Additionally, the virus has secretly worked its way through Broadway theaters, requiring understudy performers in Broadway shows to fill in once again to save the day (just as they did during the Christmas wave). Interestingly, the Broadway League caved to public pressure and ended the audience mask mandate to see a show as of July 1 — just in time for this new wave to make its rounds.

Although COVID has consistently continued to mutate, experts warn that the vaccine and booster shots are still the best available method to fight the virus. Granted, it wasn’t designed to stop you from getting the coronavirus, but it can prevent serious illness and death.

As if the new BA5 COVID variant wasn’t enough, the US (and the world) now has Monkeypox to add to its list of health concerns.

Unlike the coronavirus, Monkeypox is not airborne or spread casually. The disease is passed along via intimate body contact including sexual activities, kissing, etc. The broadening epidemic has mostly been connected to homosexual males. However, medical experts are warning that any theory of Monkeypox being an exclusively gay disease is dangerously incorrect.

Monkeypox symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, and exhaustion. However, the primary proof is a rash that can leave painful pimples and lesions on the face, inside the mouth, as well as on the hands, feet, chest, genitals, or anus.

According to The New York Times, there are already at least 700 cases of Monkeypox in the United States, although experts believe the real number is much higher. They also believe there will probably be many more infections before the outbreak can be controlled — if it can still be controlled at all at this point.

“Why is it so hard for something that’s even a known pathogen?” asked Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who first warned of monkeypox outbreaks more than a decade ago. “How many more times do we have to go through this?”

With increasing travel and the ability for this and other diseases to spread quickly around the globe, Dr. Rimoin said: “We’ve been hitting the snooze button on emerging diseases for decades. The alarm is going off, and it’s time to wake up.”

OK WASSUP! discusses Health News:
BA5 and Monkeypox are crisscrossing America.