What You Need to Know About Mpox

Election season wouldn’t be complete without the declaration of a public health emergency and another global pandemic.

With less than three months remaining until the fate of our country is determined, the election season wouldn’t be complete without the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring yet another global pandemic.

Even though the WHO’s pandemic treaty that would have given it sovereign control over the world’s pandemic response failed to materialize, the organization isn’t letting the current version of its International Health Regulations and an opportunity to play in the pre-season game go to waste.

After convening its emergency committee, the WHO on Aug. 14 officially declared the “mpox” outbreak in Africa a “global health emergency” after a more lethal strain of the virus spread to four new countries in Africa.

The alert, known as a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, is the highest level of alarm under international health law. This is a status given by the WHO for “extraordinary events” that pose a public health risk to other countries due to the international spread of disease and may require a “coordinated international response.”

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will present the Committee’s findings and issue temporary recommendations to other countries that will most certainly include more vaccines. In a statement, Ghebreyesus said a “coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”

(Watch out for language like this, which may be used to argue that people in countries that aren’t at risk from mpox should embrace vaccines, increased surveillance, travel restrictions, etc., for the perceived benefit of those that are.)

Yet there was already a PHEIC issued previously for mpox set to expire on Aug. 20, 2024, raising questions as to why the WHO created the illusion that this is a “new” phenomenon. Declaring another PHEIC undoubtedly allows the WHO to enjoy the continued benefits of funding and authority conferred by its previous declaration.

This begs the question—why mpox, why now, and should we be concerned?

What is Mpox?

Mpox, short for monkeypox, is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus that primarily spreads through sexual contact—at least, that’s what U.S. health agencies said two years ago. According to the WHO, mpox can now spread through close contact, respiratory droplets, and contaminated materials, ironically expanding the vaccine market.

Mpox is classified into two genetic clades, I and II. A clade is a broad category of evolved viruses that form a genetically and clinically distinct group. Clade II caused the 2022 outbreak, whereas Clade I, spreading in Africa, is said to cause more severe disease. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is driving the upsurge of cases caused by two clade I sub-clades—Ia and Ib.

According to the Lancet Global Health, there have been 17,541 cases of mpox and 517 deaths reported in Africa in 2024, and it is primarily being spread among heterosexual female sex workers. For perspective, there are about 12 million deaths each year in Africa, and a child dies from hunger every 10 seconds. For further perspective, it should be noted that the living conditions in Africa, namely the DRC—where most cases occur—couldn’t be more different than the living conditions in the United States.

I’ve been to the DRC, founded an organization there, and have been on the ground in the communities and orphanages. Infectious diseases of all kinds are more prevalent due to poor hygiene and living conditions, something the WHO if it were really concerned about eradicating infectious diseases, would spend the bulk of its funding and resources focusing on.

Although Sweden has since announced its first case of the new form of Mpox, it was imported into the country by a traveler. Thailand is the second country to report a case of this version of mpox outside of Africa.

Symptoms of mpox include fever, rash, headache, muscle pain, low energy, and enlarged lymph nodes. In other words, it causes the same symptoms as any other virus.

Just days after the WHO announced mpox as a global pandemic, a health minister from the DRC announced the country would be receiving its first mRNA mpox vaccine doses from the United States, which is ironic, given the convenience of conducting vaccine experiments in Africa.

Stocks for Danish biotech company Bavarian Nordic, the manufacturer of the mpox/smallpox vaccine, JYNNEOS, surged more than 40% in the five days following the WHO’s declaration. It also received a big order of vaccines from Europe.

According to the WEF, the U.S. already has nearly 1.1 million vials that have either been allocated or are now available for ordering. Pandemics and vaccines are multi-billion-dollar industries in their own right, and fear still sells.

Mpox Fictious Scenario

As with “Event 201,” which simulated a fictitious COVID-19 pandemic scenario that ironically played out in real life, mpox had its own simulation. If you want to know how things may play out, look no further than this exercise.

In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)—partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—partnered with the Munich Security Conference to conduct a tabletop exercise centered around “reducing high-consequence biological threats.” The exercise examined the gaps in national and international biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

The exercise scenario involved a deadly, global pandemic with an unusual strain of the monkeypox virus that first emerged in the fictional country of Brinia and eventually spread globally. The scenario later reveals that the outbreak was caused by a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight. The exercise scenario ends with more than three billion cases and 270 million deaths globally.

Like Event 201 and COVID-19, that scenario bears an uncanny resemblance to how things are currently playing out with mpox. With the mpox simulation, there was no immediate evidence of international spread. Within six months, the virus affected 83 countries.

Some fictitious governments in the scenario promptly adopted aggressive measures to slow virus transmission by shutting down mass gatherings, imposing social-distancing measures and contact tracing, and implementing mask mandates. Other vigilante countries kept their economies open, and a dark winter of death fell upon their deviant citizens.

The countries that fared the best were those that adopted the same extreme pandemic measures we had the pleasure of experiencing during COVID-19—the same measures that have been, time and time again, debunked by valid science and shown to be harmful to our children and society as a whole.

Imagine that?

Mpox Vaccines Are On The Way

A few days before the WHO's announcement, the organization invited pharmaceutical companies with mpox vaccines to apply for Emergency Use Listing (EUL). Similar to the Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S., this process fast-tracks the availability of unlicensed medical products, such as vaccines, during "public health emergencies."

The most widely used and only U.S. vaccine for mpox is JYNNEOS (Imvamune/Imvanex). It's a live, non-replicating smallpox and mpox vaccine administered in two doses.

Another vaccine candidate is the BNT166 vaccine. BNT166 is a multivalent mRNA (modified-RNA) vaccine currently being developed by BioNTech in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). The second phase of its clinical trial began almost a year ago.

It’s almost as if BioNTech and Bill Gates had a hunch about mpox. CEPI, which is essentially an extension of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched this initiative as part of its “100 Days Campaign,” which aims to develop vaccines against novel viruses with pandemic potential within 100 days.

Reportedly, in challenge studies, the company claims BNT166a and BNT166c provided complete protection against vaccinia, clade I, and clade IIb monkeypox virus.

Moreover, BNT166a was touted as 100% effective in preventing death and suppressing lesions in a lethal clade I challenge in cynomolgus macaques. If this sounds familiar, it’s worth remembering that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were also touted as being almost 100% effective at preventing disease—until they weren’t.

Nobody knows (outside of Bill Gates, the WHO, and a select group of elites) whether mpox will materialize into anything Americans really need to be concerned about. What we do know is that there’s an entire industry reliant upon pandemics, gain-of-function research, vaccines for hypothetical threats, and a market that must be created to sell them.

Whether it’s COVID-19, bird flu, or mpox, there’s too much control and money wrapped up in pandemics for them ever to be eradicated. This is more than distantly related to how we approach chronic disease and cancer: There’s too much money wrapped up in pharmaceutical drugs for there ever to be an acknowledged “cure.” That’s why none of the funding addresses the root causes of why we have these diseases in the first place.