Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Adalja: Monkeypox Response ‘Should Have Been Easy’ But It’s ‘Been Haywire’

On Monday’s broadcast of “MSNBC Reports,” Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Amesh Adalja said that while the monkeypox response “should have been easy” since we’ve known about the virus since the ’50s, we have vaccines, tests, and antivirals, and it isn’t very contagious, “we’ve seen a response that’s basically been haywire.” And this “really calls into question the ability of the government to respond to an infectious disease emergency the way we need them to.”

Host Katy Tur asked, “Dr. Adalja, the way that this has been approached, the virus itself, the getting of the vaccine, the way that this administration, the way that state governments have treated it, has it gone well?”

Adalja responded, “No. It’s the opposite of well. And I think it’s very concerning because this is happening on the heels of COVID-19, when we saw continued government failures at multiple levels exacerbate the virus. And monkeypox is something that should have been easy. It should have been a slam dunk. This is a virus we’ve known since the 1950s, for which we had off-the-shelf vaccines, tests, antivirals. It’s not very contagious. But, yet, we’ve seen a response that’s basically been haywire. And I think it’s very concerning and I think this really calls into question the ability of the government to respond to an infectious disease emergency the way we need them to.”

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