Scientists Make A Shocking Monkeypox Discovery: “There Are Way More Mutations Than Expected”
Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC
Monkeypox continues to spread to more areas around the globe, but so far there is not the same sort of widespread alarm that we witnessed during the early stages of the COVID pandemic. One of the big reasons for this is because global health authorities have been assuring us that there isn’t much of a risk to the general population. More than a week ago, the World Health Organization boldly announced that there was no evidence that the monkeypox virus had mutated, and so everyone assumed that this outbreak would not become a global crisis. Well, it turns out that the World Health Organization spoke way too soon. Scientists are now telling us that there are lots and lots of mutations in the new strain that has been spreading like wildfire all over the planet. In fact, it is being reported that “there are way more mutations than expected”…
DNA viruses, particularly those with relatively big genomes like poxviruses (the family that includes monkeypox), generally accrue mutations much more slowly than, say, an RNA virus like SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19. That means that examining the sequences might be less fruitful in terms of tracking how the virus is spreading from person to person. There are fewer changes to the virus’ genome that might shine a light on transmission chains.
But as researchers around the world share sequences from the current outbreak, the genomes have revealed something odd: There are way more mutations than expected.
Needless to say, this is not good news.
Apparently the “closest relatives” are from an outbreak that happened in 2018, and since that time there have been “40-some mutations”…
Most notably, there are a whole lot of mutations that appear across the new sequences. The genomes from the current outbreak share 40-some mutations with each other that distinguish them from their closest relatives, which were from around 2018. (The exact number of mutations varies depending on how certain changes are counted.)
Based on normal evolutionary timelines, scientists would expect a virus like monkeypox to pick up that many mutations over perhaps 50 years, not four, Neher said.
The scientific article that I just quoted goes on to speculate about how so many mutations could have possibly occurred naturally.
Of course the truth is that they probably didn’t occur naturally.
But mainstream outlets are not going to be eager to go down that rabbit hole at this point.
As I write this article, this new monkeypox outbreak has now spread to 33 countries outside of Africa, and the total of confirmed, probable and suspected cases outside of Africa has grown to 825.
Here in the United States, the total number of confirmed cases is now up to 21…
Chicago has detected a suspected case of monkeypox in a man who recently returned from Europe, health chiefs revealed Thursday.
The patient — who was not named — is the first case to be detected in Illinois since the outbreak began last month.
It brings the U.S. tally to 21 cases across as many as 11 states, with Los Angeles today also reporting its first suspected case in an adult ‘close contact’ of another case.