WHO considers declaring public health emergency of international concern due to outbreak of deadlier Mpox strain

Benjamin Mateus

On Sunday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on Twitter/X that he is considering convening an advisory committee to determine if the public health agency should declare the growing Mpox outbreak with the deadlier strain (clade Ib) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) a public health emergency of international concern.

Ghebreyesus wrote:

As a deadlier strain of Mpox spreads to multiple African countries, the WHO, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), local governments and partners are further scaling up the response to interrupt disease transmission. But more funding and support for a comprehensive response are needed. [Therefore], I am considering convening an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee to advise me on whether the outbreak of Mpox should be declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

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In a situation report published last week, the Africa CDC wrote that since the beginning of 2022, there have been a total of 37,583 cases and 1,451 deaths, a case fatality rate (CFR) of 3.9 percent across 15 African Union Member States. In 2023, there were close to 15,000 cases, a 78.5 percent increase in the number of new cases compared to 2022. The CFR in that year was 4.9 percent with 739 deaths.

From the beginning of 2024 up to July 28, another 14,250 cases (2,745 confirmed and 11,505 suspected) have been tallied and 456 more people have died (CFR 3.2 percent). When compared to the same period in 2023, these figures represent a 160 percent and 19 percent increase in the number of cases and deaths in 2024. The DRC accounts for 96.2 percent of all cases and 97 percent of all deaths in the last seven months.

Close-up of Mpox lesions on the arm and leg of a female child in Bondua, Grand Gedeh County, Liberia. [Photo: CDC]

What has public health officials concerned is that the outbreak with the deadlier strain of Mpox virus that began late last year in the mining town of Kamituga in South Kivu Province has been spreading unchecked in the DRC over the last several months and has now extended beyond the borders of the country. Last week it was identified in Uganda and Kenya.

The initial outbreak of this strain of the virus was first reported as a study in a preprint form by the Mpox consortium in April 2024 which has since been published in the journal Nature Medicine on June 13, 2024. The authors noted then that the emergence of the virus transmitting efficiently between people through direct contact raised immediate concerns, writing:

The sustained spread of clade I MPXV in Kamituga, a densely populated, poor mining region, raises important concerns. The local healthcare infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle a large-scale epidemic, compounded by limited access to external aid. The 241 reported cases are probably an underestimate of the true incidence of mpox cases occurring in the area. In conversations with local healthcare workers, they reported that many additional people in the community had mpox symptoms but did not seek care.

They continued,

Frequent travel occurs between Kamituga and the nearby city of Bukavu, with subsequent movement to neighboring countries such as Rwanda and Burundi. Moreover, sex workers operating in Kamituga represent several nationalities and frequently return to their countries of origin. Although there is no current evidence of wider dissemination of the outbreak, the highly mobile nature of this mining population poses a substantial risk of escalation beyond the current area and across borders. The international spread of clade I MPXV is particularly concerning due to its higher virulence compared to clade II.

Even more worrisome, cases of Mpox have now been registered in the capital Goma, the largest city of the North Kivu Province and home to nearly 2 million people, many only recently arrived as refugees escaping the ongoing conflict between Rwandan and Ugandan rebel forces known as M23 and the Congolese army.

Goma, 460 kilometers to the northeast of Kamituga along the N2 highway, sits on the shore of Lake Kivu and borders the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. It is a strategic site for mineral resources like uranium, copper and cobalt, whose value is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars. It has also been a region that has seen decades of brutal conflicts that have killed millions, leading to a chronic state of impoverishment. Despite the vast wealth of natural resources, the DRC remains one of the poorest countries across the globe, lacking necessary public health infrastructure and access to advanced medical care.

Amid displaced people living in crowded makeshift tents, with food prices out of reach for many and under constant threat of a new armed conflict, international humanitarian workers have described Goma as a city “buckling under huge strain.” Lack of funds has made a difficult task even harder, with resources stretched thin. As most of the access roads that connect the city to other regions are cut off, basic goods have grown scarce. Precisely in such circumstances, the emergence of the deadlier strain of Mpox bodes a catastrophe.

The literature on public health in conflict zones is replete with empirical evidence that these regions quickly become breeding grounds for previously checked or non-existent pathogens. The recent declaration of a polio epidemic in Gaza after 10 months of the genocidal campaign by Israeli forces, and following a quarter century of having maintained zero polio cases, attests to these concerns. Given Goma’s overcrowded and dire conditions, it can afford ample opportunity for the virus that causes Mpox to run roughshod over the population.

Furthermore, the intimate connections between large urban centers with the rest of the world also raise the threat that this deadlier strain of Mpox could expand rapidly across the surface of the globe, just as the Mpox clade IIb did in 2022, which was eventually deemed a PHEIC by the WHO in July 2022.

One of the major direct causal factors for the emergence of the Mpox pandemic at that time was the erosion of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had earlier included some degree of contact tracing, testing and tracking. There was no interest on the part of member states to address the threat posed by Mpox to their populations. By the time the WHO ended the PHEIC on Mpox clade IIb in May 2023, the virus had spread to at least 116 countries affecting almost 100,000 people. With 208 confirmed deaths by then, mostly among immunocompromised people, the CFR stands around 0.16 percent.

During a WHO press brief on July 27, 2022, Director-General Ghebreyesus in his opening remarks repeated his refrain used during the initial COVID-19 global epidemic. He said, “This is an outbreak that can be stopped if countries and communities and individuals inform themselves, take the risk seriously, and take the steps needed to stop the transmission and protect vulnerable groups.”

The Role of Ancient DNA in Modern Traits

Marjorie Hecht

Image Source: geralt – CC0

Ancient human retrovirus DNA could be one of the markers of susceptibility to mental illness—specifically schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, a new study suggests.

An international team of researchers examined 732 post-mortem brain samples and identified variations in DNA associated with different psychiatric conditions, which they cross-referenced with data from large genetic studies. The research appears in Nature Communications, May 22, 2024.

In a summary of their work for a nonspecialist audience, three of the study authors report that their research is the first to show that ancient viral DNA is one of the avenues through which genetic susceptibility to psychiatric disorders may occur. They are careful not to attribute causality here, but to note that their findings “suggest” a link that deserves further exploration.

Human Endogenous Retroviruses

The ancient viral DNA is called human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs, and makes up about 8 percent of the human genome. HERVs are DNA sequences that originated as viral infections millions of years ago and evolved in mammals through genetic mutations and deletions over time. Retroviruses are those that infect cells by inserting a copy of their own genes into the cell DNA.

First identified in the 1980s, HERVs have been characterized as “viral fossils” that continue to be passed on to modern generations. At first, HERVs were considered to be “junk DNA,” with no known functions. As genomic technology advanced, scientists identified some specific roles for HERVs, such as producing RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules that lead to proteins, and possibly regulating neighboring genes.

Most HERVs are thought to be inert, but some are known to play an active role in human physiology. For example, two known beneficial HERVs are those involved in the formation of the placenta and in embryogenesis, helping to make pregnancy possible. Other HERVs have been detected in some types of cancer, and research is beginning to look at how to target and possibly control these HERVs to treat the cancer.

HERV Variations and Mental Illness

The new findings reported in Nature Communications looked at how variations in HERVs are involved in regulating neighboring neurological genes in specific, finely mapped locations in the genome known to be associated with psychiatric conditions. Their approach identified HERVs in the adult brains of Africans and Europeans who had a psychiatric diagnosis at the time of their death.

“It is not clear yet how the expression of the high confidence risk HERVs may play a role in psychiatric disorders,” the authors write. However, they found that some of the 1,238 HERVs identified in the brain were associated with “risk for complex psychiatric traits.”

The new research is important for advancing our understanding of mental illness and possibly finding new ways to treat it. Older studies dating back to the 1960s identified a link between genetics and mental illness, but no specific mechanism for heritability. Much of the research came from adoption and twin studies carried out in Denmark over a decade by a joint U.S. and Danish research team.

Led by psychiatrist Seymour S. Kety at Harvard Medical School, the Danish studies spanned 1968 to 1994. Although the studies are generally accepted in the field as supporting a genetic basis for schizophrenia, there are some who challenge this, questioning the methodology and subjective interpretation of the data. Criticisms of the Danish twin studies point to the fact that control group adoptees were placed in more favorable environments than the study subjects, that the study did not include environmental variables, and that the definition of schizophrenia and its spectrum was not rigorous.

More recently, scientists have used genome-wide association studies to analyze genetic links to psychiatric disorders. A 2023 review of these studies stressed that “…there is no single ‘disease-gene’ for psychiatric disorders, but thousands of genetic variants that act together and collectively influence the risk of illness. Given that most of these genetic variants are commonly occurring, every human being has a genetic risk to each psychiatric disorder, from low to high.”

Another factor to consider is the possibility of infection from viruses or bacteria that triggers neurological, immune system, and psychological changes, in association with schizophrenia in particular.

Implications for Human History

We know the effects of severe mental illnesses and how society has dealt with those persons severely affected, often in inhumane ways. But are there any possible benefits to individuals who may have smaller numbers of genetic variants linked to a particular mental disorder?

Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky has a provocative answer to this question, in his analysis of how individuals with a moderate number of genetic links to schizophrenia might have provided the ancient basis for modern religions.

Sapolsky begins a Stanford University class on the biological underpinnings of religiosity by outlining the positive adaptive value for people who have some genes linked to certain genetic disorders, but not enough to cause full-blown illness. Sickle-cell anemia, for example, conveys protection from malaria to those with some of its marker genes. Similarly, cystic fibrosis, crippling when full-blown, is associated with protection from cholera and dehydration in those who have some of its marker genes. In that lecture, Sapolsky makes the point that it’s about too much allocation/expression of the genes. Just the right amount, and you have protection. Too much, and you have a chronic health issue.

In the same way, Sapolsky says, individuals who are on the spectrum of schizophrenia may have used their particular qualities of schizophrenia—seeing visions, hearing voices, obsessive-compulsive ritualistic behavior, intrusive thoughts, anxieties, and superstitions—positively in ancient societies.

Sapolsky bases his analysis on the data from the adoption studies in Denmark by Harvard psychiatry professor Seymour S. Kety and his U.S. and Danish research team, noted above. The Danish adoption studies found that schizophrenics often had family members who were a little “off,” not severely ill, but not quite “normal”—people whom they termed schizotypical.

Religion, Good Works, and Metamagical Thinking

In the appropriate context, Sapolsky says, a schizotypical individual could play a unifying role in an ancient society. Think of the shaman or medicine man in more recent native cultures, or the founding stories and rituals of today’s Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern religions, which all have similar elements.

Sapolsky reviews in detail the similarity in the outline of the ritual, numerology, and anxiety-calming behavior of religions. For all religious beliefs, the description of religious behavior—its “structural steel” and “building blocks” as Sapolsky terms it—is on the mark. How the beginnings of theology mesh with the particular qualities of schizotypicals, from the metamagical to ritualist, is eerily recognizable.

The positives for society also ring true: Good works are motivated, and ritual behaviors (think holiday celebrations) are unifying and calming. Religious believers today, Sapolsky notes, live longer and are healthier than nonbelievers.

As Sapolsky emphasizes, a schizotypical person has to get it “just right” in order to succeed, and a society has room for just one such person at a time. Failed schizotypical leaders often branch off into cults, and have bad endings, like the Manson or Waco cults.

Sapolsky also reminds us that today’s society still harbors metamagical thinking. A Gallup poll he quotes, for example, found that 25 percent of Americans believe in ghosts and 50 percent believe in the influence of the devil.

A New Frontier?

Sapolsky’s presentation on the biological underpinnings of religiosity is mesmerizing. If you have an interest in human behavior on any level, the ideas provoke more serious thinking, which is always a good thing.

This area of research and discussion is a sensitive one, with considerable history associated with some of humanity’s darkest chapters; genetic determinism in the form of eugenics and racism was an ugly feature of the World War II era.

How ancient HERVs (and modern microbial infection) influence the genetics of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses is an important subject for research and a necessary one if we are to find better treatments.

Global and Chinese slump slashes prices for Australian mineral exports

Mike Head

Since mid-2021, global prices for Australia’s biggest export, iron ore, have plummeted from a peak of $US215 per metric ton to $97 as of this July 31. The prices are predicted to keep falling, perhaps to as low as the $60s.

This precipitous drop, mirrored by the prices of key critical minerals, has serious implications for the Australian economy and government revenues, which depend heavily on these exports, especially to China, the country’s largest market by far, and the world’s biggest mineral importer.

Reclaimer parked at the Brockman 4 mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia [Photo by Calistemon via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The price crashes are, above all, a barometer of the mounting impact of the global downturn and the plunge in China’s economic growth rate, which has been exacerbated by US tariffs, sanctions and other increasingly aggressive economic warfare measures.

These measures, taken by successive US administrations, are part of a broader drive to cut off Chinese access to hi-tech industrial development and cripple its economy. This offensive is intensifying as Washington prepares for what would be a catastrophic war against China, which it has identified as the primary threat to American power worldwide.

The US moves include ending, as soon as possible, China’s current alleged dominance over the processing of many rare earths and other critical minerals that are essential for war, as well as for super-computers, AI, batteries and industrial and vehicle electrification.

Over the past year alone, world iron ore prices have fallen 26 percent. With nearly 80 percent of Australia’s iron ore exports (and 35 percent of its total exports) going to China, that signals an end to the super-profits derived from China’s economic growth over the past two decades.

By the end of July, Australia’s biggest iron ore exporters had already suffered sharp share price falls. BHP Group, Rio Tinto and Fortescue had experienced year-to-date share price declines of 18 percent, 16 percent and 36 percent, respectively, wiping billions off their valuations.

Over the past 17 years, Chinese economic growth has decelerated from an approximate average annual 10 percent to below 5 percent, whilst the Shanghai Composite Index has halved to under 2,900 points. The US-led economic warfare has compounded the crisis in the Chinese residential property market and the economy more broadly.

The Biden-Harris administration has kept most of President Donald Trump’s China tariffs and intensified the focus on the high-tech sector—particularly electric vehicles and batteries. Regardless of who wins November’s US presidential election, this offensive will accelerate in an effort to halt the relative decline of American capitalism over the past four decades.

For his second presidential run, Trump has already proposed a 10 percent tariff on every import, a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, and a 100 percent tariff on all cars made outside the United States. 

There clearly will be a further impact on iron ore prices and the value of Australia’s exports. The latest Australian government Resources and energy quarterly (REQ) report, published in July, forecast iron ore at US$77/tonne in 2026. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia predicts a long-term price of $68. Macquarie Bank expects the price to drop to the $70s or even $60s before the end of the 2020s.

Iron ore revenues are not the only casualty. Prices for Australian-mined lithium, nickel, copper and other strategic minerals are plummeting as well. Copper prices have declined 20 percent from $5.11/lb. to $4.08/lb. over the past two months. China is the largest consumer of refined copper, with over 50 percent global market share.

Prices of lithium—Australia’s largest commodity in committed capital expenditure through to 2030, greater than even iron ore—have collapsed over the past 12 months.

Lithium had previously surpassed liquefied natural gas as Australian capitalism’s second biggest export to China behind iron ore, with sales soaring to $A7.4 billion between January and June last year, from only $300 million in the same period of 2021.

Since early 2022, the price of another key rare earth, an oxide of neodymium and praseodymium, crucial for making powerful magnets, has dived from $145 a kilogram to $47. Nickel prices have fallen by more than two-thirds, from a high of $US50,000 per metric ton in 2022 to about $16,500 recently.

Mine workers’ jobs are being eliminated. The Finniss lithium mine in the Northern Territory suspended operations in January, followed by more closures. In the latest cutback, up to 300 jobs are to be axed at US-based lithium giant Albemarle’s Kemerton plant near Bunbury in Western Australia (WA), adding to the thousands destroyed in the mining industry since the beginning of the year.

BHP has written off its Nickel West division in WA as worthless and is preparing to suspend operations. Iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest, who controls Fortescue, is shutting down his WA nickel mines.

These developments are also slashing tax intakes for the already debt-ridden Australian federal and state governments. According to estimates, for every $US10 fall in the price of iron ore, Australia’s gross domestic product falls by $A6.5 billion and government tax receipts by $A1.3 billion.

The mining reversal is occurring despite the Albanese Labor government spending billions of dollars in subsidies and corporate aid to bolster critical minerals output, supposedly to make Australia a mining superpower.

Labor’s May budget allocated $22.7 billion over 10 years for the government’s Made in Australia package, primarily through corporate tax incentives, including $13 billion in production tax credits for critical mineral extraction and clean hydrogen production. That was on top of nearly $4 billion already handed out this year in largely unspecified subsidies, grants, cheap loans and other forms of support for similar ventures.

For example, the Albanese government advanced a $1.05 billion non-recourse loan through its Critical Minerals Facility to Iluka Resources to build a rare-earths processing plant at its mineral sands operation at Eneabba in WA.

The project was budgeted in 2022 to have a total cost of $1.2 billion, but in February the company revealed the cost had blown out to between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion. It has been in talks with the government about further support, but at current prices the venture looks doubtful.

These handouts are bound up with matching the United States, Canada, Japan and the European powers in subsidising industries to undercut China and develop war economies. At the same time, the government is seeking to assist US efforts to reduce reliance on supplies and refining in China, as part of the preparations for war against China.

The critical mineral supply issue is of paramount importance to the AUKUS military pact between the US, UK and Australia to provide long-range, nuclear-powered attack submarines, hypersonic missiles and other cutting-edge weaponry to be based in Australia.

A report by the government-sponsored Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) last year noted: “Some 3,300 items of US military equipment depend on rare earths, which have few known or potential substitutes. They include almost every weapon being used by combatants in Ukraine as well as every fighter jet, navy vessel and nuclear weapon on Earth.”

While cutting spending in real terms on public health, education, housing and other vital social services, and handing out pittances for cost-of-living relief, Albanese and his ministers are allocating hundreds of billions of dollars for AUKUS and other war plans.

The May budget confirmed soaring military spending. It featured $330 billion for new weapon systems, including long-range missiles, over the decade and the near doubling of annual spending from $53 billion this financial year to $100 billion by 2033–34, or 2.4 percent of the gross domestic product.

Workers and young people in Australia are increasingly paying a heavy price for this program of war and austerity, and much worse is to come as the economic fallout deepens from the US-led confrontation with China.

Wall Street selloff exposes financial parasitism

Nick Beams

The gyrations on Wall Street and global markets underscore the extreme fragility of the world financial system due to speculation and financial parasitism, which have been sustained by the pumping of cheap money from the US Federal Reserve and other central banks.

Monday began with a further selloff in Japan, where the Tokyo market had been trading at record highs. The Nikkei 225 index, which on Friday had its worst day since the October 1987 crash, fell a further 5.9 percent. It is now down more than 20 percent since its all-time high last month. Friday’s drop of more than 4,451 points was the largest in point terms in its history.

People pass the New York Stock Exchange on July 30, 2024. [AP Photo/Peter Morgan]

The plunge came in response to the decision by the Bank of Japan last week to lift interest rates into positive territory, ending a zero-rate regime that has prevailed for more than a decade and a half.

Wall Street experienced a significant selloff on Friday, followed by a nosedive when trading opened Monday morning, most sharply expressed in the high-tech sector, which had led the market to record highs in July. Stocks recovered somewhat in the afternoon but were down across the board. The Dow dropped more than 1,000 points to end the day 2.6 percent down. The NASDAQ fell 3.43 percent, and the S&P 500 dropped 3 percent. For the Dow and the S&P 500, it was their biggest decline since September 2022.

The falls were concentrated in the high-tech stocks that have been the object of speculation. From the beginning of the year to July, the handful of companies known as the Magnificent Seven—Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (the parent of Google), Tesla, Meta (the parent of Facebook) and Nvidia— accounted for 52 percent of the increase in the rise in the S&P 500 index.

Besides Intel, which saw its shares fall 26 percent on Friday on the back of its decision to cut 15,000 jobs, Nvidia, which makes chips used extensively in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), was hit hard. Its shares fell by 15 percent when trading began, before recovering somewhat later in the day to finish down by 6 percent. Shares in the company are down by around 30 percent since reaching a high in June.

Apple also took a hit following the announcement by Warren Buffett, the head of the Berkshire Hathaway fund, that he had sold half his shares in the company in the second quarter, amounting to $76 billion, and moved the money into government debt.

Expectations of continuing turbulence are reflected in the Vix volatility index, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” which rose to as high as 65 in the morning compared to single-digit levels in recent weeks.

A number of factors have come together to produce the selloff. These include the puncturing of the AI bubble, a significant blow to the so-called “carry trade” based on the Japanese yen and the fear that the US economy could be moving into a recession.

The development of AI represents a significant advance in technology and the development of the productive forces. But like all such advances—one can recall the internet bubble of the early 2000s, which culminated in the so-called “tech wreck”—it has been accompanied by rampant speculation based on exaggerated claims of the significance of AI in promoting economic growth and a flood of money into the acquisition of shares in the high-tech sector based on fear of missing out on speculative gains.

In a demonstration of the globally interconnected nature of the financial system, the decision of the Bank of Japan to lift interest rates to try to halt the slide of the yen on currency markets fed directly into Wall Street. The resultant increase in the value of the yen against the dollar of more than 11 percent over recent days—it has risen from 161.96 to the dollar at the beginning of July to 143.46 yesterday—dealt a blow to the carry trade, in which investors borrow money in Japan to invest in US markets, where they can enjoy a higher rate of return.

According to an analysis published by Reuters, while exact numbers are not available, it is believed that much of the investment in high-tech stocks that sent them to record highs had been financed by carry trades. The Bank for International Settlements has estimated that cross-border yen borrowing has increased by $742 billion since the end of 2021.

A note issued by Kit Juckes, chief foreign exchange strategist at Société Générale, pointed to this process. “You can’t unwind the biggest carry trade the world has ever seen without breaking a few heads,” he wrote.

Another factor is increasing fear of a recession in the US, heightened by the US jobs report issued Friday. It showed that the number of new jobs last month was 114,000, well below the expectation of 175,000. This was coupled with a rise in the unemployment rate to 4.3 percent. That increase brought the rise in the rate to 0.6 percent from its previous low, directing attention to the so-called Sahm Rule, which indicates a recession when the three-month moving average moves at least half a percentage point above its low in the previous 12 months.

The selloff in the market amounts to a clamor by finance capital that the Federal Reserve start cutting interest rates so as to make money cheaper and intense dissatisfaction with its decision last Wednesday to keep interest rates on hold. The clear indication by the Fed that it would reduce rates in September, initially welcomed by the markets, has now been declared to be insufficient.

The universal call is: Give us more money.

In addition to the immediate issues that sparked the fall, there are other powerful forces at work. With the assassinations carried out by Israel of leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah last week, the prospect of an all-out war in the Middle East has significantly increased.

And overhanging the financial markets is the escalation of US public debt, which now stands at around $35 trillion and is increasing at a rate that both the US Treasury and the Fed maintain is “unsustainable.”

It is not possible to predict the exact course of events, but the trends are clearly evident. The US and global financial system have become a house of cards that can be destabilized and pushed into a crisis by even seemingly minor developments.

There is no question as to what the response of the ruling class will be to a crisis. As the bitter experiences in 2008 and 2020 show, it will be to intensify attacks on the working class.

In 2008, millions of workers lost their jobs, wages were cut, and homes were repossessed, while the corporations and banks, whose actions sparked the crisis, were rewarded to the tune of billions of dollars in handouts from the government and cheap money supplied by the Fed. And in 2020, when COVID-19 struck, government assistance was directed to corporations as the Fed again supplied ultra-cheap money, which provided the fuel for further speculation amid the refusal to take meaningful public health measures to eliminate the virus.