New COVID-19 boosters are rolling out, but the US still leads the world in daily pandemic deaths. At the same time, we’re one of over 80 countries (1) struggling to control monkeypox in regions where it is not endemic. Even polio is waging a comeback. Though these diseases are very different, this confluence of viruses and public health emergencies is unlike anything I’ve seen in my career, which started with the fight against HIV/AIDS.
It is an avoidable collision of threats. Though COVID-19 struck as a novel virus, the re-emergence of polio comes more than 40 years after it was essentially eliminated in the US, and we’ve known about monkeypox since the 1950s. Although most Western countries have avoided monkeypox outbreaks, it is endemic in certain African countries, with Nigeria reporting an outbreak (2) as recently as 2017. It is one more example of infectious diseases, such as Ebola and Zika, that were largely neglected by countries not directly affected.