The current MPOX epidemic in Africa has triggered another, global one: a wave of disinformation, against a backdrop of homophobia and conspiracy theories, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared its highest health alert level on August 14.
MPOX has nothing to do with shingles or the COVID vaccine
The video is translated and relayed on X and Facebook, in many languages: we see a German doctor known for his anti-vaccine positions assuring that the symptoms described for mpox are the same as those of shingles.
According to Wolfgang Wodarg, this shingles outbreak is a side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the pharmaceutical industry is only trying to scare people for commercial gain.
This is false, firstly because MPOX, identified in the 1970s in a child in the former Zaire, is much older than the COVID vaccines.
And on the other hand because it is a zoonotic virus, of animal origin, of the poxvirus family, while shingles – a reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus – is of the herpes family. The symptoms are also different, since shingles causes smaller lesions that generate a characteristic intense pain.
MPOX doesn’t only affect homosexuals
On social media, some people reassure themselves by claiming that MPOX only affects homosexuals, with homophobic messages deeming these practices “disgusting”.
But as P. explained to AFPr Richard Martinello, an infectious disease specialist at Yale University School of Medicine, says: “There is no infectious disease in the world that is transmitted differently based on sexual orientation. It is intimate, skin-to-skin contact that can allow the transmission of MPOX, not one’s sexual orientation.”
It is the infected fluid contained in the patient’s vesicles that transmits the virus, recalls the Pr Antoine Gessain, a specialist in the disease at the Pasteur Institute, recalls that children can be infected “by skin contact”, but also, as in the epidemic at the end of 2023 in the Republic of Congo, heterosexuals with multiple partners.
There is no miracle treatment
A popular conspiracy theory, particularly on YouTube and Facebook, claims that a drug against COPD is very effective but is not available, based on statements by the controversial Pr Didier Raoult in 2022 as to what against MPOX “the most effective molecule is a Japanese drug called Tranilast. […] It will never be marketed here because it costs nothing.”
Except that Tranilast, approved in 1982 in Japan and China against asthma, has never been the subject of clinical studies on humans against COPD. So claiming its effectiveness is misleading.
On the other hand, vaccination, combined with awareness-raising among people at risk and isolation of contact cases, made it possible to contain the MPOX epidemic in 2022.
WHO has not ordered any lockdown
“Attention, mega-lockdowns in sight!” warn Internet users, arguing that these measures were ordered by the WHO to “governments”, thus attesting to the thesis of a “plandemic”, a neologism describing an orchestrated pandemic, according to the conspiracy narrative.
The WHO does not have the power to order governments to prepare for these “mega-lockdowns,” “or any type of lockdown for that matter,” the organization confirmed to AFP.
“As a scientific and technical organization, WHO provides advice to its 194 Member States. Each country has sovereignty over decisions and actions concerning the health of its populations.”
In France, on TikTok, Internet users even claim that due to the mpox epidemic, “the start of the school year has been postponed”. Information formally denied to AFP by the Ministry of Education. As of August 21, no cases of mpox of the new 1b strain have been reported in the country.