Ok there seems to be a lot of information on this thread which isn't great.
Firstly whilst monkeypox isn't new, its been largely confined to West Africa populations so far. They believe that the fatality rate has been between 3 and 6% but it has been higher with some variants. Obviously this is a population with different access to health care and underlying health to the UK.
There are two real concerns with this current outbreak. Firstly whilst its currently confined to mainly gay men, there is still a risk it will enter different populations. I don't think its a coincidence that the WHO alert level has been raised immediately after 2 child cases in the US and 1 in the Netherlands have been identified. In the Dutch case they don't know where its come from and they explicitly ruled out sexual abuse. The family had recently been on holiday to turkey. This was about 3 weeks ago which is longer than average incubation but not out of the window which is possible.
Who are concerned about new patterns of transmission because they don't fully understand it or why its suddenly jumped from west africa.
So far there have been 16000 cases in over 70 countries with 5 deaths recorded. The issue is that this isn't representative of the population as a whole due to the restricted population its currently circulating in.
It is much more severe in children under 8 and pregnant women. There is no natural immunity and countries don't have enough supplies of vaccine nor drugs to treat the disease. Hence the alert to sort this shit out.
The disease is very painful and can require specialist hospital treatment. It can cause severe permenant scaring. Spots are common on face and genitals.
So the real risk here is you get an outbreak in a reception class or nursery full of licky, huggy young kids. And thats becoming high.
Its not going to be a covid type thing but the idea that we won't see school closures is not realistic. Without sufficient vaccine and drugs for treatment there isn't much of an alternative to stop the spread apart from quarantine.
Its not really a surprise that there is an outbreak. A big pandemic is usually accompanied by other pandemics of different diseases, partly because changes in behaviour which have caused isolation reduce immunity to other things thus when that contact resumes other things run rife.
So should we panic yet? No
Should we be concerned and vigilant? Yes
Should WHO be putting out a warning? Definitely because countries haven't learnt from covid and are rapidly ramping up production of smallpox vaccine and monkeypox treatment drugs.
The biggest difference between this and monkeypox is that we don't have to develop new treatments and trial them. This means we only have production issues. (remember the scramble for vaccines when they did become available though).
The uk has the capability to do this better than many other countries. Its just whether we are taking this seriously and doing this. Especially with a prime minister who has potentially checked out mentally from the job.
Am I concerned? Yes. I have family members who would be extremely vulnerable and the disease itself is nastier than chicken pox. And no I don't much fancy class closures when my sons class is already the wildest in the school due to being so badly affected by covid closures and I know they are all massively behind where they should be. DS is doing well despite of everything but the effect on his classmates has massively impacted on him nontheless.
So don't panic. Be concerned. Put pressure on government. Is the point we are at.