Talking points NEWS 21
28 May 2022 THE WEEKMonkeypox: should we be worried?
“If you can’t be kind,
at least be vague.”
Judith Martin, quoted in
The Washington Post“Competition brings out
the best in products and
the worst in people.”
David Sarnoff, quoted
on The Browser“Good manners are a
combination of intelligence,
education, taste and style
mixed together so that
you don’t need any of
those things.”
P.J. O’Rourke, quoted
in Forbes
“I think God, in creating
man, somewhat
overestimated his ability.”
Oscar Wilde, quoted
on Salon“We tell ourselves stories in
order to live... We look for
the sermon in the suicide.”
Joan Didion, quoted in
The Guardian“It is not a mistake to have
strong views. The mistake
is to have nothing else.”
Anthony Weston, quoted
in The Bristol Post
“It’s a cruel jest to say to
a bootless man that he
ought to lift himself by
his own bootstraps.”
Martin Luther King Jr,
quoted in
The New York Times“The only function of
economic forecasting is
to make astrology
look respectable.”
Ezra Solomon, quoted
in The HillBoris Johnson’s attempts to
tear up the Northern Ireland
Protocol have already met
with strong resistance from
Brussels and Dublin, said The
Independent. Now Washington
too has made its disapproval
clear. The Foreign Secretary
Liz Truss last week threatened
unilaterally to suspend parts
of the Protocol (which
establishes a customs border
in the Irish Sea between Great
Britain and Northern Ireland,
in order to ensure frictionless
trade between the North
and the Republic). But the
speaker of the US House of
Representatives, Nancy Pelosi,
has warned that such a move could destroy any
chance of a free trade deal with the US. A US
delegation to Ireland and the UK, led by the
congressman and Biden ally Richard Neal,
drove home the same point. A US trade pact
was meant to be one of Brexit’s great rewards.
Thanks to the “dangerous crisis” over Northern
Ireland, there’s little chance of that.
US politicians often view Ireland with “a
misty-eyed sentimentality”, said the Daily Mail.
Biden and Pelosi are displaying “a wilful
ignorance of the situation today”. They believe
that ditching the Protocol could prompt a return
to violence. “Yet it is so flawed and so hated by
unionists that the real risk of violence lies in
keeping it.” Neither side can win this argument
outright, said Tom McTague
in The Atlantic. The view in
“polite society” is that Britain
is responsible for the current
mess. And Johnson was indeed
“reckless” to agree to the
Protocol, and to think that
the border problem could
be erased by technology and
political will. But the EU was
“equally delusional” to believe
that the Protocol could be
fixed in place without the
consent of unionists, whose
largest party, the DUP, is
boycotting power-sharing
government until there’s
“decisive action” on the issue.
The truth is the Protocol has
never been fully implemented because it would
be “politically intolerable”: Brexit created “a
problem that can’t be solved, only managed”.Even so, “behind the outrage, everyone is saying
roughly the same thing”, said Newton Emerson
in The Irish News. In essence, all sides favour
some version of the “red and green channel
model”: UK goods destined for NI would go
through a green channel – or what the EU calls
an “express lane” – with reduced checks, while
those for the EU single market would face
tighter scrutiny. The situation remains difficult
“when nobody trusts the UK, relationships are
fraught and there is a bewildering range of
power-plays at work”. But a consensus is not
only possible – it’s “almost absurdly obvious”.Northern Ireland: the Protocol dilemma
A sharp rise in cases, advice to self-
isolate, talk of contact tracing. “It’s
all starting to sound eerily familiar,”
said the London Evening Standard.
The first case of monkeypox was
reported in the UK on 7 May. By
the middle of this week, there had
been 71 here, and further cases had
been confirmed in countries across
Europe, as well as in Australia
and the US. This outbreak is very
unusual, said Ed Yong in The
Atlantic. Caused by a virus similar
to smallpox, monkeypox is mainly
only seen in eastern and central
Africa; and previous cases outside
Africa have tended to be linked to
international travel. It is concerning that this
time, chains of human transmission are forming.
Even so, monkeypox is not Covid: the world is
not back to where it was two years ago.
One crucial difference is that monkeypox is not
new, said The Economist. It was first identified
in lab monkeys in 1958 – hence its name, though
rodents are probably its main reservoir. And we
already have a vaccine: the smallpox jab is
effective against it. Similarly encouraging is the
fact that, unlike Covid, monkeypox does not
spread easily. It requires very close contact with
infected people, or “fomites” such
as contaminated towels. It tends
not to transmit asymptomatically;
infections are usually mild, with
flu-like symptoms and an
unpleasant blistering rash; and
though the virus can be dangerous
for children and others with weak
immune systems, most patients
recover without treatment.Still, we need to know what has
driven the outbreak, said Tom
Chivers in The i Paper. The
widespread phasing out of the
smallpox jab, in the 1970s, is a
probable factor. It could also be
that a new, more infectious, strain has emerged.
This, however, is not very likely: the monkeypox
virus is a DNA virus and far more stable than
the RNA viruses that cause Covid and flu. More
likely, the outbreak was caused by superspreader
events. There is evidence that it originated at
raves in Spain and Belgium, then spread mainly
among gay or bisexual men. But doctors stress
that it is not a sexually transmitted disease, let
alone a “gay disease”; it could equally have
been spread by rugby players. The key now is
for infected people to come forward; if they do,
doctors are confident the virus can be contained.A relatively stable virusStatistics of the week
In February, 420,314 under-
18s were undergoing
treatment for mental health
problems in England, or
waiting to start NHS care, the
highest figure since records
began in 2016.
The Guardian
The price of the average
house has risen £55,000 since
the start of the pandemic,
more than the average
worker has taken home in
pay in that time.
The TimesPelosi: a warning to London