“The problem [with monkeypox] is no one knows how concerned to be about things,” Carson told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures. “It’s going to be very hard to convince people that this is something that’s very serious. It’s not clear to me that it’s going to be that serious."
On Saturday, the World Health Organization stated the monkeypox outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern." The monkeypox virus can generally spread via skin-to-skin contact and entails headaches, fevers, swollen lymph nodes, rashes, and other symptoms.
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Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration, also discussed President Joe Biden’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis and his prescribed treatment using the antiviral drug Paxlovid.
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“It is very useful, particularly in older people who may have a propensity to need hospitalization. Now, it does have some potential side effects,” Carson said, noting possible effects on the liver and a person’s immune system. “But for the most part, it’s good, and I use that as a segue-way to say that there are a number of treatments. We’ve learned a lot of things about COVID since the beginning and have the ability to treat it to a much greater extent.”
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“Therefore, if it begins to multiply again amongst our population, the degree of fright and hysteria should be significantly diminished,” Carson added.
A video reappeared Thursday of Biden, who is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, saying one year ago that anyone who is vaccinated cannot get the virus. Former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx admitted the vaccines were “overplayed.”
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“I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection, and I think we overplayed the vaccines,” Birx told Fox News. “It made people then worry that it's not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will. But let's be very clear: 50% of the people who died from the omicron surge were older, vaccinated. So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and Paxlovid. It's effective. It's a great antiviral.”
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Monkeypox was first found in 1958 and first found in humans in 1970 in present-day Congo. There are already vaccines and antiviral medications developed to treat the infection, and governments around the world have been scrambling to ramp up production.
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