Appearing Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned that Monkeypox could be “disruptive” in places where the virus is spreading.
A transcript is as follows:
JOE KERNEN: Are we going to be talking about [Monkeypox] in three months in your view?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: I think the risk right now is becomes a persistent risk, that we can’t fully snuff this out and cases continue to emerge. I don’t think this will be an uncontrolled spread in the same way we tolerated the COVID-19 epidemic. But there is a possibility that now that’s gotten into the community, if in fact it’s more pervasive than what we’re measuring right now, that it becomes hard to snuff out because a lot of these cases are mild, asymptomatic, patients might not present. Patients are going to be misdiagnosed because doctors aren’t used to evaluating this virus. If it is persistent, I think that could cause a lot of disruption and some people are going to have bad outcomes. It can cause a lot of disruptions. It could be disruptive in areas that this is spreading.