Here's a good news story about a disease that was spreading fast through the summer. Not COVID-19, monkeypox. A few months ago, the U.S. was reporting more than 400 cases a day on average. Infections have been dropping pretty steadily over the last few weeks and are now less than half where they were at the peak. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis is deputy coordinator for the White House National Monkeypox Response. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DASKALAKIS: I think the first thing to say is that this is definitely not COVID-19. The vast majority of transmission is occurring through close intimate contact, often related to sexual activity. Also, it started in a population of gay, bisexual, other men who have sex with men, and the majority of cases continue to be in that group. Its mechanism of transmission and also where it lives in a population is a lot different.
DASKALAKIS: MMWR. It's one of the ways that CDC disseminates some of their data and information. So in this report, a survey was done of about 800 men who have sex with men. And what they found was that there was a 50% reduction for several behaviors that could be associated with monkeypox. And it was in response to the monkeypox outbreak. So fewer one-time partners, less use of social networking sites or sex venues. Behavior - definitely a part of this. Biology - also a part of it.
SHAPIRO: So currently, in order to get the vaccine, people have to say, more or less, I have a lot of sex partners, which might not be something that everybody is comfortable saying, particularly when it comes to same-sex partners. RICHARD BURR: For the next one, we've got to respond a hell of a lot faster than we did for COVID, and we've got to do much better than we did on monkeypox.DASKALAKIS: I'll tell you that this has been a story of pivots. So, you know, when we first started and we looked at the monkeypox playbook, what you do is what they call ring vaccination. So you find someone with monkeypox, find out who their contacts were and then give them vaccine.
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