IS THE NEW MONKEYPOX OUTBREAK sexually transmitted?

Plus: “The irony is that we’re victims of our own success here to some extent. ‘The smallpox vaccine incidentally protected against monkeypox,’ Ed Yong notes. ‘And when new generations were born into a world without either smallpox or smallpox-vaccination campaigns, they grew up vulnerable to monkeypox.'”

I think we should have been vaccinating people against smallpox — which also provides considerable protection against monkeypox — all along. Sure, smallpox appears to have been eradicated, but if we’re wrong and there’s a “virgin field” smallpox outbreak it would be a catastrophe of biblical proportions.