A few months ago, monkeypox regularly made headlines as a major new disease outbreak. Then it largely vanished from the news.
What happened in the meantime? The virus receded: Since a peak in early August, reported monkeypox cases in the U.S. have fallen more than 85 percent through yesterday.
The rise and fall of monkeypox provide lessons on the spread of diseases — an aspect of public health that experts acknowledge we still know far too little about.
Covid has made clear that much of the world was not prepared for a deadly pandemic. Monkeypox, while nowhere as dangerous as Covid, can shed light on our vulnerabilities (as my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli explained).