• S&T Moderators: VerbalTruist | Skorpio | alasdairm

Biology Evidence based Monkey Pox thread

I was wrong, I don't know why I said 15 days, I didn't remember what it was so I think I said whatever passed through my mind...
it's doubling each 10 DAYS, not 15...
that way you have the 21 millions
 
I was wrong, I don't know why I said 15 days, I didn't remember what it was so I think I said whatever passed through my mind...
it's doubling each 10 DAYS, not 15...
that way you have the 21 millions
ok, yeah with 10 days it would make 21 million, but i don't think that's what the graph shows.

day 1 is may 12th, 0.29 cases per day. by may 22nd we should have ~0.6 per day, there's actually way more, 14.5 - ten days later on june 1st, we would then expect ~ 30 per day, again we have way higher than expected for a doubling time of 10 days, at 63.29. the next 10 days, if it doubles we expect 126 cases per day, but we don't have that, we have 80. june 21st it catches up to 180, but if it we had a ten day doubling period the we'd expect, from 63.29 on june 1st, to get 360 by june 21st, but we only have 180. for july 1st we have 307, 60 below the expected case rate were the doubling time 10 days. june 11th should be 614, but that's higher than the maximum peal on the graph, so no need to go on.

the hypothesis that the doubling time is 10 days is easily disproven by just looking at the graph. its messy at the start probably cos these things are stochastic processes and there are many factors involved in getting a diagnosis that smooth out over time.

my brief calculation in my previous post shows that the doubling time being ~14 days is supported by the graph you have linked. if my working is wrong please correct me.
 
the hypothesis that the doubling time is 10 days is easily disproven by just looking at the graph.
No, I didn't start at the beginning since it makes no sense to do it like that, there's always the starting period on which is normally slower, once you start looking on the mid-high part of the graph you see it much more consistently.
It's obvious that there's gonna be some variations but the trend is more or less that.
You're right in something, in the last part of the table it's not doubling each 10 days, it's slowing down to 14-15 days, so maybe that's why I said that.
It's difficult to pinpoint a reason but the Pride festivals and demonstrations makes sense in the sudden increased trend of June, maybe it's normal trend is doubling each 14-15 days.
 
No, I didn't start at the beginning since it makes no sense to do it like that, there's always the starting period on which is normally slower, once you start looking on the mid-high part of the graph you see it much more consistently.
It's obvious that there's gonna be some variations but the trend is more or less that.
fair enough re not starting at the beginning.

but you still aren't showing your working. brief calculations making predictions based on a doubling time of 10 days disprove your hypothesis.

edit just seen your edit. i agree that normal doubling looks to be about 14 days.
 
fair enough re not starting at the beginning.

but you still aren't showing your working. brief calculations making predictions based on a doubling time of 10 days disprove your hypothesis.

edit just seen your edit. i agree that normal doubling looks to be about 14 days.
In anycase I would bet that it's gonna be between 10 and 14, mainly because if it's still more typical yet for homosexuals that could change, if enough bi-sexuals enter into the game.
They always say that it's usually homosexuals and "men that have sex with men" (???) so... does that mean that there's no cases of women or what?
I don't get that,
I think that if it's also contagious to women if there's enough bisexual transmission to women then the doubling rate will grow exponentially...
 
In anycase I would bet that it's gonna be between 10 and 14, mainly because if it's still more typical yet for homosexuals that could change, if enough bi-sexuals enter into the game.
They always say that it's usually homosexuals and "men that have sex with men" (???) so... does that mean that there's no cases of women or what?
I don't get that,
I think that if it's also contagious to women if there's enough bisexual transmission to women then the doubling rate will grow exponentially...
we have to be extremely careful not to demonise gay men, we don't wanna end up with another generation of hurt like we did with HIV. though thankfully monkeypox is nothing near as devastating. though it is every individuals responsibility to practise safe sex, its not their fault if a virus finds it easier to spread through one population.

women can get monkeypox, but according to this only 2 women got monkepox in the UK, its not clear about the time period from the page. @Skorpio's post above mentions that one of the mutations in the monkeypox we are seeing spread out of africa affects a protein that mediates endocytosis in all cells with an actin cytoskeleton, which is possibly all cells.

i've tried to look for more papers about the transmission mechanism. everything says it can be transmitted by any close contact but clearly there is a preference for sexual contact, particularly anal sex, but i've not found anything to explain that and tbh i'm not even sure i know the right words to google.
 
we have to be extremely careful not to demonise gay men,
Do you think we are demonizing gay men?
it's what it is, one could judge (or not) whatever about them, I'm only talking about how it's been at the moment, pure statistics, it would be stupid to blame them...
If it was a biological warfare against gays then it's working, but that only demonize those who threw it, not the victims, I guess..
I don't understand why "anal sex" would be more close contact in terms of transmision, if that's real then it means that the transmission is almost "impossible" if there's no friction, which I think it's quite unlikely, to be honest.
My bet it's what I've said, this can go out control once heterosexuals get into the scene in big numbers.
 
Do you think we are demonizing gay men?
i don't think we personally are because we are discussing a statement of fact without any moral implications. but, elsewhere i have seen people use this to demonise gay men and i don't want that to happen in S&T.

it's what it is, one could judge (or not) whatever about them, I'm only talking about how it's been at the moment, pure statistics, it would be stupid to blame them...
yeah exactly, its just a quirk of this virus and means nothing about anyone personally.
If it was a biological warfare against gays then it's working, but that only demonize those who threw it, not the victims, I guess..
I don't understand why "anal sex" would be more close contact in terms of transmision, if that's real then it means that the transmission is almost "impossible" if there's no friction, which I think it's quite unlikely, to be honest.
neither do i and that's why i am hoping people are working on understanding the mechanism of transmission better. especially given one of its key differences wrt the general west african clade should increase its ability to enter any type of cell. i'll do some more digging tomorrow about if there has been any functional interpretation of the genome, when i last looked it was just focused on assemblies (i.e. the actual genome sequences, strings of DNA). i feel like the anus is just epithelial cells, like many other parts of our body. there must be some key difference.
My bet it's what I've said, this can go out control once heterosexuals get into the scene in big numbers.
it could but that still wouldn't endanger too many people, as most people are in roughly monogamous relationships. but its very possible that one of the versions that infects a woman will find ways to ensure positive selection in females. then it will be a truly non-discriminatory virus. as always with viruses, the more hosts you have, the most replication cycles you have, the greater the chance of evolutionarily beneficial mutations. a dsDNA virus like monkeypox is pretty stable so the mutation rate is much lower than an ssRNA virus such as sars-cov-2, but it could still pose a threat if the right mutations arise in the right niche. i'm hoping they won't though.
 
This doctor warned about monkeypox back in 2017:

the article seems quite scare mongery and some things aren't explained- like how did they go from not being able to diagnose it in nigeria to diagnosing 200 cases... what happened? were all those samples sent away?

anyway, what i'm taking from this is that if this thing has been around in its current form for 5 years then we don't have much to worry about. its trajectory will have been impacted by covid, but it had 2 years before then to make itself known. totally believe that cases are underreported in west africa, unfortunately western countries only really start caring when people on their own soil start to suffer so i can't see anyone having done anything to help with diagnosis, epidemiology, etc, which the article makes clear nigeria was struggling with.
 
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