{"id":24639,"date":"2022-08-30T17:46:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=24639"},"modified":"2022-08-30T17:46:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:46:56","slug":"monkeypox-and-the-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/08\/30\/monkeypox-and-the-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Monkeypox and the impact<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With nearly 2,000 reported cases of monkeypox in Florida, that puts the state third, behind California and New York for having the highest number of cases in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Tampa Bay area man who recently had monkeypox shared his experience living with the virus. He asked not to be identified because of the stigma associated with the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cAs it started with one and then grew to five, we were looking up physical characteristics of monkeypox to kind of see what they would look like,\u201d said the man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called Dr. Bob Wallace\u2019s office in St. Petersburg to set up an appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom there, you know, he looked at the lesions that I had on my body, and at the point, I quarantined myself at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said symptoms included spots on the body, chills, fever, and body aches. Coincidentally, he received his first dose of the monkeypox vaccine just two days before noticing symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, they believe that the vaccine actually helped it control the spread and help it heal faster. My lesions really did heal a lot quicker than most people\u2019s,\u201d said the man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what is monkeypox, where did it come from and why are we seeing more cases now, locally?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not new. It\u2019s actually endemic in parts of Africa,\u201d said Dr. Sneed with USF Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Sneed said monkeypox was first discovered in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that the exact origin of the virus – despite its name – is still unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the CDC, there have been more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Sneed said we’re seeing more cases of the virus among men who have sex with men and people of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though African Americans only make up between 12% and 13% of the population, right now they\u2019re making up about 26% of all of the cases that we found in the United States, so far. And the very same thing for Hispanics. They make up about 19% of the population, but we\u2019re finding that they\u2019re 28% of the cases are out there,\u201d said Dr. Sneed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health experts believe we may be seeing this disparity because of a lack of access to the vaccine or to vaccine hesitancy, essentially people unwilling to get inoculated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things we know about, there is a treatment and we know that there are actually 17 million doses available for treatment for monkeypox if that should become necessary,\u201d said Dr. Bob Wallace in conversation with a colleague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Wallace runs the Love the Golden Rule clinic in St. Petersburg and said monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease and anyone can get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe certainly don\u2019t want to label this as an LGBTQ disease. It\u2019s something that we know that the majority of cases have been men who have sex with men, but we know that anyone can get this,\u201d said Dr. Wallace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the virus is usually transmitted from skin-to-skin contact. This means you should not share towels at the pool or beach. Getting vaccinated can offer a level of protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, we want people not to be afraid, but at the same time to be cautious,\u201d said Dr. Wallace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for our interview subject, he recently received his second and last dose of the vaccine and is doing well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMake sure that you\u2019re washing your hands. Cleaning any surfaces that might\u2019ve touched anybody\u2019s body. Like, just making sure that you\u2019re taking care of yourself and making sure you\u2019re being cleanly and just being ahead of it,\u201d he advised others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are interested in getting vaccinated against monkeypox, you can visit the Florida Department of Health’s website<\/a> or call 850-245-4444<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With nearly 2,000 reported cases of monkeypox in Florida, that puts the state third, behind California and New York for having the highest number of cases in the U.S. A… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[3328],"class_list":["post-24639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-monkeypox-and-the-impact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}