Letter to U.S. House Rep. Jasmine Crockett about government poor handling on mpox
The federal government could have prevented mpox from happening and done much better when it did, we have currently no indication whether there is heard immunity, Dallas County Health performed poorly
We can’t start holding our elective officials accountable if I can’t get the word out concerning my investigations. Take a minute and shart this newsletter.
Background
This newsletter has had earlier posts on mpox (monkeypox) providing background information, tracking how well Dallas County Health Dept. has responded, and also a post providing some basic information about mpox. Links will be provided at the very end of this post. This post will go into the omnibus mpox post.
Introduction
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) are a real material concern of a large fraction of the Gay community. A group which is more sexually active logically would be likely to be impacted by STDs. Mpox victims in Dallas County were 98.6% men.
Yet, STDs don’t appear to be an agenda item at all by the various LGBTQ+ groups. Respectability Gays were alarmed that it might be thought as a “Gay disease,” despite the fact that 98.6% of the mpox victims were men.
One of the reasons I was pushed out of the Stonewall Democratic Facebook group was that I brought up the issues of STDs and it upset people.
These are the key concerns raised in the following letter.
What can be done to avoid the next mpox-type STD hitting the Gay community?
What can be done to more rapidly responds to the next mpox-type STD that might arise?
How will racial disparities in impact of the next mpox-type STD be avoided?
When will an mpox vaccine be generally available through the usual channels of distribution?
What is the plan to eliminate mpox?
Have we achieved herd immunity in Dallas County, state of Texas, nationally? Why is there no vaccination data available?
It is the purpose of the Dallas Gay Liberation newsletter to work on the real material interests of the Dallas Gay community regardless whether it is embarrasing to the LGBTQ+ Democrats and the Respectibility Gays.
One of the material interests is having a political program to have the government act effectively against STDs.
It can’t be the situation where LGBTQ+ votes are harvested every election, but real interests are neglected the rest of the time.
The Letter
January 31, 2023
Edward H. Sebesta
Hon. Jasmine Crockett
House of Representatives
1616 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Hon. Crockett:
I am writing you about the failures of the United States government and the failures of Dallas County in Texas in regards to mpox (Formerly referred to as monkeypox.) The mpox debacle was preventable, but when it happened the response was poor. Further important vital information has not been made available to the Gay community and MSM individuals, both in Dallas County and nationally. I am going discuss these failings as follows:
1. Failure to Prevent Mpox: There is this article in Nature magazine, one of the two most authoritative and prestigious science publications in world, “Monkeypox in Africa: The science the world ignored.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01686-z
As early as 2017 the epidemiology of mpox in Nigeria started to change and spread in new ways in urban areas, and that “infected people sometimes had genital lesions, suggesting that the virus might spread through sexual contact.” Also, with the cessation of smallpox vaccinations in Africa cases were starting to rise.
Had the United States taken the warnings of the African scientists seriously the problem of mpox could have been solved by having Africans vaccinated so the chances of someone getting infected and bringing it to the Western world would have been extremely reduced.
Further instead of the CDC having ad hoc procedures for the administration of the vaccine to stretch supplies and hope that they are effective, methods would have already been tested.
2. Failure to be Prepared: Had the United States taken the warnings of the African scientists seriously we would have had a vaccine of known effectiveness. As it was, there was little data on how effective the Bavarian Nordic MVA smallpox vaccine (JYNNEOS) was against monkeypox. The data was limited. This article, in Science magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “How effective is the monkeypox vaccine?: Scientists scramble for clues as trials ramp up,” shows how ill prepared the Western World was for mpox and didn’t have good data on vaccines to prevent mpox. The fact is the medical community had to use MVA as the best choice and hope for the best.
Though the better moral choice would have been to help African nations get vaccinated, even a limited program would have provided information as to how effective the MVA vaccine was.
Even better would have been having tested the vaccine, and developed an improved version.
3. Failure to protect African Americans: The following table was taken from the Dallas County on 1/31/2023. The Dallas County Health Dept. doesn’t provide dates for the tables an indication of their lackadaisical attitude towards this crisis. One thing though in reviewing this table is immediately apparent. I added two a columns to the right.
African American MSM got slammed with mpox in Dallas County and were impacted twice as much as Hispanics and Whites.
4. Missing vaccination data: Estimating what percentage of the MSM population has received a vaccine shot is critical to understanding whether the MSM population has achieved herd immunity and the risk of mpox has been substantially reduced.
Also, with some idea of how many people have been vaccinated community leaders can see whether the campaign for vaccination is going well, or if the numbers are low, if a campaign to encourage vaccination is needed.
Dallas County Health made the claim that since multiple groups were doing vaccinations, they didn’t know the numbers. During the Covid epidemic numbers were available on how many people were vaccinated, I don’t know why we couldn’t have had reporting on how many vaccinations.
Even, if it wasn’t possible, vaccine doses for mpox were allocated by county and the total number of doses allocated to Dallas County could have been reported.
5. Slow Response: Even though there were reports of an outbreak in Britain, it seems nothing was happening in the United States. In looking at Dallas County you can see an exponential increase in the beginning from a few cases to about 150 before the anti-mpox campaign started to have an effect. I plotted total cumulative cases and the exponential increase didn’t seem to start slowing down until August. (Plot enclosed.)
6. Vaccine availability: Though Dallas County has finally expanded mpox vaccination to anyone who needs it, when will mpox vaccination be generally available through the usual channels for vaccines?
7. Elimination of Mpox: Is there a plan?
The following needs to be done by the U.S. government and its health agencies.
A. Support Tropical & Pandemic Medicine Research Aggressively: Take seriously the threat of tropical diseases and other diseases that are a risk for becoming a pandemic. Listen to the warnings of scientists and doctors outside the Western world. Further there should be a specific unit focused on the risk of diseases being sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
This article way back in 2007 in Science magazine, “Italian Virus Outbreak May Portend Global Spread,” was trying to warn the world that diseases outside the Western world are not likely to stay out.
https://www.science.org/content/article/italian-virus-outbreak-may-portend-global-spread
This aggressive research would involve making sure there was an effective vaccine for any disease currently endemic or pandemic outside the Western world.
B. Provide Vaccines for disadvantaged nations: Have a program to provide vaccines to disadvantaged nations and support manufacturing of vaccines in those nations to aggressively reduce endemic diseases and prevent them from reaching the West in the first place.
C. Disproportionate Racial Impact: There needs to be a study as to how mpox disproportionately racially impacted MSMs across the nation, what was the potential causes, how might a better vaccine outreach be done in the next pandemic.
D. Vaccination Data: Compile some statistic, if only proxy, to give an idea how many people were vaccinated for mpox by county. Investigate why the collection of mpox vaccination numbers were part of the response plan to the mpox outbreak, but vaccination data was available for covid.
For future outbreaks make the collection of vaccinate data an integral part of the plan.
E. Action Plan for next Pandemic: Have a defined action plan for the next pandemic so that the response can be as quick as possible. Make sure the United States government responds as soon as possible.
F. Official Statement as to Mpox plan: When do we plan to eliminate mpox? When do we plan to have a vaccine with know effectiveness? When will vaccines for mpox be generally available and not rationed?
Some may feel the program against mpox was a big success, but I think the 854 people in Dallas County who got it as of 1/31/2023 don’t think so. Further, the success was due to the shutdown of the social life of the Gay community, which isn’t really a success. I look forward to your response to share with my readers.
Sincerely Yours,
Edward H. Sebesta
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This post had a lot of links for mpox information at leading science magazines.
This was my presentation to the Dallas County Commissioners. They didn’t take it seriously.
Link to the first two mpox reports.
Link to the rest of the mpox reports made by this newsletter.
