LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Clear, concise, and accurate messaging has always been key in the early days of a virus's spread, and experts in infectious diseases aimed to deliver that at a monkeypox town hall at the LGBTQ Center Thursday evening.
Dr. Alireza Firabi has been treating the lesion causing disease for nearly a month.
"At the beginning I didn't expect this," Firabi said, "that you would see a lot of monkeypox.
Firabi said the first case he came across surprised him as the disease has been rare in the United States, and he said he definitely didn't expect the virus to spread as rapidly as it has.
"I've seen one after one after one," he said, "and right now I have one to two patients a day."
Firabi said around 97% of the patients he has treated have been men who have sex with other men, but he issued an emphatic warning to everyone because monkeypox can spread among all populations.
"The point is this is a virus," he said, "and they can be spreading to everybody. Anybody can be exposed. It started with this group of people, but we shouldn't underestimate. We suspect many more people may be involved."
UNLV infectious disease expert Brian Labus cautioned people to set prejudice aside as awareness of the disease spreads.
"Anytime that happens with any disease, people start to treat other groups unfairly," Labus said. "People tend to think that it's only that population, but really any person could get monkeypox and those are some of the rumors we want to dispel."
Firabi said now is the time to stop monkeypox from continuing to find new hosts because, while it's generally not deadly in the short-term, the future is unclear.
"The long term side effect or anything we don't know," he said, "but when we do know, we can't prevent it. Why not do it now?"
