It is the first poxvirus to spread across the globe since the eradication of smallpox. Vaccines exist, unlike at the outset of Covid, but not at the scale necessary to vaccinate the world and move on.
Even if monkeypox is only an annoyance (which I doubt), if 7 billion people all have to get sick for a week, that deprives humanity of ~134 million people-years of life that they'd rather spend doing something else -- even if there are no longer-lasting impacts.
Even if monkeypox is only an annoyance (which I doubt), if 7 billion people all have to get sick for a week, that deprives humanity of ~134 million people-years of life that they'd rather spend doing something else -- even if there are no longer-lasting impacts.