The Scourge of MONKEYPOX.

• Author: Harrison, Rachel
• Position: MEDICINE & HEALTH

"Global infectious diseases need global solutions. There are answers in the short, middle, and long term. For now, vaccines need to get into arms."

JOSEPH OSMUNDSON has been drawn to microbes--particularly viruses-since he was a kid, in part from growing up in the 1980s in the shadow of HIV. ("A virus with nine genes that could kill you? How could that type of mystery not astound and shock?" he says.)

In college, he began studying the evolution of viruses like HIV, and since then has dedicated his scientific career to unraveling the mysteries of microbes. Now a clinical assistant professor of biology at New York University, Osmundson also found that viruses are too complex to understand with science alone. That is where writing came in. Osmundson had been writing about HIV for publications like The Village Voice and Guernica Magazine for years before COVID-19 hit, but the pandemic prompted a closer look at how viruses have shaped our lives.

"I needed to share what it felt like to live through this moment, this time of overlapping pandemics, as a queer scientist," says Osmundson. "Scientists have feelings, too--we are human; we live through the very things we study; and I wanted that complexity and emotionality to exist in a book full of science writing."

The result is Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between, a collection of Osmundson's reflections on the personal, political, and scientific impact of viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. which became even more relevant in recent months.

Just as Virology was published in spring 2022, the U.S. found itself facing yet another viral outbreak. Cases of monkeypox--a type of orthopoxvirus closely related to smallpox--have grown, predominantly affecting queer men and their sexual networks with painful rashes and flu-like symptoms.

New York City and State, the White House, and the World Health Organization (WHO) have all declared monkeypox a public health emergency. I spoke with Osmundson about the lessons learned from HIV and COVID-19, and how to apply them to this new public health challenge.

Harrison: There's been some debate about the name for monkeypox, and the WHO has started a process to rename it. Why is language important here?

Osmundson: We have to rename this virus. It is verifiably incorrect that this virus comes from monkeys in the Congo; the monkeys were in a lab in Europe. The virus was then found in rodents and humans in Central Africa. The name evokes a lot of...