It’s gotten worse:
I think the vaccine is not that available in parts of Africa compared to where I live; that is a social problem maybe. I can’t say for sure as I don’t know anyone there.
Apparently, during the previous outbreak a couple of years ago, the death rate was around 1%. The current outbreak has a death rate between 3% and 4%. That sure seems like a fairly big increase.
It also appears to be striking people in a war zone, where everything is compromised already.
If you aren’t in endemic areas, it’s probably nothing to worry about.
There was some news article in my local paper today about giving of the Mpox vaccine to patients under 15 in central Africa. The article was trying to destigmatize patients by saying they of course didn’t get it from sexual contact. Although i can’t seem to find the article, it seemed like a good intermediary step.
This story appeared on NPR’s “Goats and Soda” last month, and a variation on this afternoon’s “All Things Considered.” TL : DR - Mpox appears to have crossed into the human population in the 1960s, coinciding with the eradication of smallpox, and the smallpox vaccine confers some immunity to mpox (and presumably vice versa). Of course, we’ve known about the reciprocity of cowpox for centuries; MHO vaxing against mpox would be much more practical, because AFAWK smallpox is extinct in the wild.