The doctor who warned the world of the mpox outbreak of 2022 is still worried

A little over a year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still a public health emergency, a little-known virus came seemingly out of nowhere to add to the world's worries – a virus known at the time as monkeypox.

Monkeypox – since renamed mpox following criticisms that the name held misleading and racist connotations – went from sickening only a few dozen people a year to quickly infecting over 87,000 people around the globe, mostly in countries with no previous history of infection.

That led the World Health Organization to declare the mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on July 23, 2022. But following a peak in late summer of 2022, cases dropped dramatically and just ten months later, the public health emergency was declared over.

So was the mpox outbreak simply a passing threat? Or is there reason to