Alright, hands up – who had #Monkeypox on their 2022 apocalypse ‘bingo!’ card?

In response to widespread hysteria sweeping social media, the World Health Organisation has declared an emergency and issued an edict banning citizens from all monkey shagging until a global vaccine roll-out can be organised via the ‘We Definitely Don’t Play With Your DNA Epidemic Preparedness Consortium of the Filthy Rich’. According to an unelected panel of unnamed experts, Smallpox vaccines are being dug out from the back of the pantry and re-purposed. For the sake of community safety and public health, all Twitter users are advised to add a monkey symbol to their usernames, preferably between the four needles and mask emoji but not after the Ukrainian flag or declarations of pronouns.

Further, anyone that finds themselves sitting next to a chimp, orangutan, or member of the gorilla family will be required to self-isolate upon arrival at the Banana Republic airport. Mask-wearing is encouraged at most zoos. Animal rights activists have launched a campaign to rename Monkeypox M-15 to avoid what they call hateful stigmatism and ‘filthy’ speciesism against monkeys displayed by ‘racist’ health authorities. Planet of the Apes has been temporarily restricted on Netflix with a warning that images of monkeys may disturb some viewers.

Well – no – but global health bodies and the mainstream press are having trouble with the public who refuse to take Monkeypox seriously.

Ever since Covid died off out of the news cycle, the public have been living on borrowed time before the next pandemic. The World Health Organisation and World Economic Forum have been itching for the ‘next big one’ which they need in order to continue expanding their authoritative powers over the ‘One Health’ solution. No fear? No power.

Australian radio stations and print media missing the Covid clickbait have indulged in flu-fear pieces for a few weeks, running scare campaigns about ‘horror’ children’s birthday parties where kids walked away with a cough. Despite their best efforts, it’s tough to make people fear something they’ve treated with Lemsip and a box of tissues their whole lives.

Monkeypox has an exotic flare that lends itself toward trending hashtags (and memes).

The virus has been endemic to various parts of Africa for the last 40 years in humans and discovered in monkeys as far back as 1958. It has recently escaped into the wider world – assumed to be via travellers from Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, health authorities have recorded cases in Europe, North America, the UK, and Canada.

Monkeypox is slow to spread and severely limiting its ability to cause a Covid-style pandemic situation, but that hasn’t stopped the news filling with a case-by-case progress report as Monkeypox swings its way into new countries.

This isn’t Smallpox 2.0 – although it is a cousin twice-removed whose symptoms will make victims less Instagrammable than the era of Covid mask selfies.

According to Statnews:

‘At this point, the cases are mainly being detected by clinics that treat sexually transmitted diseases and are being seen in men who have sex with men. But the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have cautioned that to assume the virus is only circulating in a single subset of the population risks missing cases that may be occurring among other people.’

Which is a horribly homophobic thing to suggest and clearly an act of trans-hate…

The World Health Organisation have confirmed that, ‘Newer vaccines have been developed of which one has been approved for prevention of Monkeypox.’ Side effects include the irresistible urge to climb trees and swing around screeching. ‘The World Health Organisation supports Member States with surveillance, preparedness and outbreak response activities for Monkeypox in affected countries.’

It is yet to be confirmed whether Monkeypox will feature at this weekend’s Bond Villain conference in Geneva.

/not entirely serious

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