YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE CONFOUNDING FACTORS.

Last summer, the hoped-for day of independence from the coronavirus shutdowns turned into a nightmare in the aftermath of an oubreak among vaccinated people in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  It turned into not a big deal.

Meanwhile, the insurgents at Twitchy want to dunk on Dukes County, Massachusetts (where the Obama birthday party took place) as another superspreader event.  Sorry, no.  "An average of 6 cases per day were reported in Dukes County, a 2,050 percent increase from the average two weeks ago. Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 1 in 12 residents have been infected, a total of 1,502 reported cases."  Yes, and if you start from a low base, you can get what looks like a massive percentage increase, in much the same way that allowing four earned runs in two-thirds of an inning can destroy your earned run average.  I'd need a microscope to see the day-on-day change in corona deaths in all of Dukes County, let alone on the Vineyard.

At the time, it was nyekulturny to suggest that maybe a gathering of possibly immunocompromised men making out might have been a confounding factor.

About ten days after Billy went with his partner and a friend to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a Cape Cod tourist hub popular with the LGBTQ+ community affectionately known as “PTown,” to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, he started to feel sick.

Despite getting his second jab of the Moderna vaccine in April, the 26-year-old grocery store worker from Boston—who asked his last name be withheld for professional reasons—said his symptoms mirrored all the indicators of the novel coronavirus that has plagued the United States for over a year. He had a headache, fatigue, nausea, congestion, diarrhea, and a slight cough.

To make matters worse, Billy told The Daily Beast, his partner was also experiencing symptoms—along with other PTown visitors and residents, some of whom were going online to report a positive diagnosis after the holiday weekend.

That became a litany in the months that followed, people having mild symptoms and maintaining that their vaccine defanged the disease.

If you did not enjoy protected status according to the woke stylebook, whether you were a Milwaukee Bucks basketball fan, or enjoyed riding motorcycles,  or went to college football games in full stadia, der Giftzwerg and the chorus of neurotic cat ladies would scold you for being a public health menace as well as engaging in unapproved fun.  At the time, I focused on the choice of entertainment, not the confounding factors.  "But if you're a neurotic cat lady, that's having too much fun, in an environment too drenched with testosterone and estrogen interacting the way Nature, or Nature's God, intended, and you have to shame it."

This summer, it's not some new variant of the coronavirus, it's monkeypox, and, again, it's probably important to pay attention to the confounding factors.  "The virus itself is not a sexually transmitted infection, but [World Health Organisation] officials said the recent surge in cases is linked to homosexual men. However, they said that anyone can contract monkeypox, which is generally confined to Central and West Africa."  Call attention to the interaction of possibly immunocompromised men, expect to get scolded.

One was a pride festival in the Canary Islands…

The Canaria Pride festival, held in the town of Maspalomas between May 5 and 15, has become a hotspot for the monkeypox outbreak, reports El País.

The massive party was attended by over 80,000 people, including three Italian men who later tested positive for the virus.

A health source told the newspaper: “Among the 30 or so diagnosed in Madrid, there are several who attended the event, although it is not yet possible to know if one of them is patient zero of this outbreak or if they all got infected there.”

And the other was a fetish festival in Antwerp, Belgium…

Many of the patients who have come forward so far are gay men and Belgium’s three confirmed cases of monkeypox have been linked to a large-scale fetish festival in the port city of Antwerp. Kuipers said in his briefing that while a notable number of men who have sex with men are among the patients the virus is ‘not confined to them’. The virus can be spread via mucus membranes in the mouth, nose and eyes or via open wounds.

As we move into the summer months, the WHO is warning that similar events could cause the outbreak to accelerate even more…

Now the World Health Organization is warning that summer festivals and mass gatherings could accelerate the spread of monkeypox.

“As we enter the summer season in the European region, with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission could accelerate, as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity, and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe.

But even if health authorities do a great job of explaining the dangers, will people avoid engaging in high risk activities?

Of course not.

A WTMJ report from the beginning of the outbreak notes, "It can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented."  Is "immunocompromised" a counfounding factor?  Be careful, though, how you bring that up.  "Taking a page from the AIDS playbook, representatives from one United Nations [agency] decided to take the viral justice path and decried reports describing the information on the current cases as “homophobic,” referring to racism for good measure."  In the middle of the obligatory cautionary rhetoric, Common Dreams contributor Brett Wilkins makes the salient point.  "People infected with monkeypox usually recover within two to four weeks without requiring hospitalization; infection, however, can sometimes prove fatal, especially in immunocompromised people, those who are pregnant, and children."  That's Normal Science, but is Normal Science oppressive these days?  "The Trans and Queer factions of the Gay/Lesbian community have hijacked a movement that was, initially, about civil rights. Now it is a Woke cult that is hostile to all Western principles of individual liberty and responsibility."

Per corollary, if people have to walk on eggs while they call attention to confounding factors, it is going to be the alphabet people who will be hardest hit when reality bats last.