At the current rate, the United States will very soon constitute 50% of total recorded monkeypox cases in the world, despite being <5% of the world’s population.
You left out the possibility that the way the U.S. tests or records cases as a whole is significantly different. I don't pretend to know why this would be, but it's not inconceivable, right?
By the way, I haven't had the chance to dip into this blog too often, but whenever I do I'm truly impressed by the level of analysis and insight, and your candor. Not to mention, your generosity in sharing your writing for free. It's a terrific Substack and I always mention it to friends when I'm in the business of making recommendations. Thanks for all the effort you put in!
First of all, thankyou for your comments! Feedback like this really makes my day.
Secondly, I added this in via an edit, but if you got this on email you wouldn't have seen it:
"Edit: Someone’s going to argue that it might be that the United States is just better at picking up cases However- assuming plausible parameters- that hypothesis can’t explain the plateauing pattern in numerous first world countries amply equipped to detect it."
In essence, my response is that I find it highly implausible that wealthy, well equipped countries like Canada and the UK would be able to detect and track the disease early, then plateau in their ability to track it to such a degree that they keep recording the same number of cases despite real exponential increases.
However, I freely admit that I could be wrong about this.
Ah, that's funny - didn't know about the edit. Certainly on reflection it seems implausible as you say. I'm no expert on these quantitative nuances, but perhaps one other counter would be that the early steep rise in all those countries is mostly a statistical artifact due to very small numbers (especially in smaller countries), so even where cases were recorded less sensitively you would expect an automatic plateau effect? Of course that doesn't change the possibility of other factors.
Personally I'm inclined to say the time frame has just been too short to draw strong inferences, given the unpredictable and counterintuitive patterns we often witnessed with COVID over the past two years. Geography and timing seem to really matter, for whatever reason.
Brazil also had a huge anti-vax movement, did it not, just like the US? It seems plausible that both just have much lower compliance with public health measures than Euro countries, for reasons of national character.
Also, both have highly emancipated gays with big party scenes. Other countries that have low compliance with public health measures might tend to repress their gays a lot more.
Seems to me it's the intersection of highly liberated gays and low general compliance with public health measures that most plausibly explains the disease spreading in both the US and Brazil, but not Europe or the far East.
Why would Google searches reveal anything on the topic? It's hardly acceptable, even now, for public figures to say aloud that Monkeypox is sexually transmitted, and they certainly can't say the word 'gay' except to preemptively shield gays from criticism; instead they say 'men who have sex with men.' If the truth is not politically correct, you're not going to see it in your Google search results.
Of course, Fauci and the rest of the old guard who were around for GRID, plus anyone who's read the infamous Salo thread, know exactly why the virus is disproportionately an American phenonemon: we are ranked number one in gay orgies. This is not rocket science. I confess I'm wondering if this post is just a cynical virtue-signal against the evil right-wing theory that Monkeypox is mostly a gay man disease; were you really not sure?
I'll be like Chris Schuck, impressed by your analysis and insight et cetera, when you learn the rule about "it's" vs "its." I tend to see it, like all spelling mistakes, as a proxy for attention to detail generally, and more generally as a proxy for soundness of thought. If I write down such dull thoughts on my blog, will someone suck my dick over it? How does this work?
Couldn't there just happen to be more of an outbreak in the US? Like why did NYC have way more covid cases earlier than the rest of the country? Not because it had an unusually bad response or was uniquely vulnerable, that's just where the disease made landfall and got started.
It seems unlikely because this can't explain the difference with the UK and many other countries like Canada (where it made landfall sooner). However see the explanation I suggest in edit 2 which I think is similar to the spirit of your explanation in that it suggests it's an artifact. However, it comes at it from the opposite angle, suggesting this is happening because it started in the US later.
You left out the possibility that the way the U.S. tests or records cases as a whole is significantly different. I don't pretend to know why this would be, but it's not inconceivable, right?
By the way, I haven't had the chance to dip into this blog too often, but whenever I do I'm truly impressed by the level of analysis and insight, and your candor. Not to mention, your generosity in sharing your writing for free. It's a terrific Substack and I always mention it to friends when I'm in the business of making recommendations. Thanks for all the effort you put in!
First of all, thankyou for your comments! Feedback like this really makes my day.
Secondly, I added this in via an edit, but if you got this on email you wouldn't have seen it:
"Edit: Someone’s going to argue that it might be that the United States is just better at picking up cases However- assuming plausible parameters- that hypothesis can’t explain the plateauing pattern in numerous first world countries amply equipped to detect it."
In essence, my response is that I find it highly implausible that wealthy, well equipped countries like Canada and the UK would be able to detect and track the disease early, then plateau in their ability to track it to such a degree that they keep recording the same number of cases despite real exponential increases.
However, I freely admit that I could be wrong about this.
Ah, that's funny - didn't know about the edit. Certainly on reflection it seems implausible as you say. I'm no expert on these quantitative nuances, but perhaps one other counter would be that the early steep rise in all those countries is mostly a statistical artifact due to very small numbers (especially in smaller countries), so even where cases were recorded less sensitively you would expect an automatic plateau effect? Of course that doesn't change the possibility of other factors.
Personally I'm inclined to say the time frame has just been too short to draw strong inferences, given the unpredictable and counterintuitive patterns we often witnessed with COVID over the past two years. Geography and timing seem to really matter, for whatever reason.
Brazil also had a huge anti-vax movement, did it not, just like the US? It seems plausible that both just have much lower compliance with public health measures than Euro countries, for reasons of national character.
Also, both have highly emancipated gays with big party scenes. Other countries that have low compliance with public health measures might tend to repress their gays a lot more.
Seems to me it's the intersection of highly liberated gays and low general compliance with public health measures that most plausibly explains the disease spreading in both the US and Brazil, but not Europe or the far East.
This is my guess too, for what it's worth. Or at least I think it's a big part of the story, although there could be other factors as well.
Why would Google searches reveal anything on the topic? It's hardly acceptable, even now, for public figures to say aloud that Monkeypox is sexually transmitted, and they certainly can't say the word 'gay' except to preemptively shield gays from criticism; instead they say 'men who have sex with men.' If the truth is not politically correct, you're not going to see it in your Google search results.
Of course, Fauci and the rest of the old guard who were around for GRID, plus anyone who's read the infamous Salo thread, know exactly why the virus is disproportionately an American phenonemon: we are ranked number one in gay orgies. This is not rocket science. I confess I'm wondering if this post is just a cynical virtue-signal against the evil right-wing theory that Monkeypox is mostly a gay man disease; were you really not sure?
I'll be like Chris Schuck, impressed by your analysis and insight et cetera, when you learn the rule about "it's" vs "its." I tend to see it, like all spelling mistakes, as a proxy for attention to detail generally, and more generally as a proxy for soundness of thought. If I write down such dull thoughts on my blog, will someone suck my dick over it? How does this work?
Couldn't there just happen to be more of an outbreak in the US? Like why did NYC have way more covid cases earlier than the rest of the country? Not because it had an unusually bad response or was uniquely vulnerable, that's just where the disease made landfall and got started.
It seems unlikely because this can't explain the difference with the UK and many other countries like Canada (where it made landfall sooner). However see the explanation I suggest in edit 2 which I think is similar to the spirit of your explanation in that it suggests it's an artifact. However, it comes at it from the opposite angle, suggesting this is happening because it started in the US later.