John Oliver explains monkeypox and why it's 'not homophobic' to highlight it's mostly affecting gay men

"For the past several months, you may have noticed monkeypox being discussed with an increasing sense of alarm," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. And "the spread of monkeypox is genuinely alarming. Its most obvious symptom is skin lesions, which can, in severe cases, be extremely painful. And while the pain is not remotely funny, people have been getting very creative in how they describe it." He showed some examples, not all of them "PG."

"Frustratingly, despite the fact we're still in middle of the COVID pandemic, we seem to be replicating some of its key mistakes, from persecuting strangers to spreading misinformation to badly mismanaging the public health response," Oliver said. "So tonight we thought it'd be worth talking about monkeypox: What it is, how we fumbled our response to it, and what we should do going forward." He began with the common symptoms — fever, swollen lymph nodes, exhaustion, headache, and rash — and some history of this pox virus, including the last U.S. outbreak, linked to pet prairie dogs. Oliver also noted that, unlike with COVID, monkeypox is a known virus with existing tests, vaccines, and treatments.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.