Monkeypox is nothing new, but a mysterious new wave of cases in the UK, mainland Europe, Canada, and now the United States has health officials concer

Your Monkeypox Questions, Answered - by Josh Centers

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2022-05-20 00:30:07

Monkeypox is nothing new, but a mysterious new wave of cases in the UK, mainland Europe, Canada, and now the United States has health officials concerned. Should you be concerned as well?

You can think of monkeypox like smallpox junior. Similar to smallpox, it’s a virus that causes nasty lesions all over your body, but first, it starts with typical signs of illness, like fever, aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, and exhaustion. Cases typically clear up within four weeks, and it’s not as severe or deadly as smallpox was.

It was first spotted in African monkey populations in 1958, but the first human case was identified in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While smallpox has been all but eradicated, monkeypox lives on, largely in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.

Isolated cases of monkeypox have been identified in the United States before, the most recent being last year. The most notable American outbreak was in the Midwest in 2003, where prairie dogs infected 71 people. No person-to-person contact was identified and no one died.