Scientists warned us about monkeypox in 1988. Here's why they were right.
Their prediction stemmed from the eradication of smallpox. Here's what they said more than three decades ago — and how it foreshadowed events of 2022.
Back in 1988, scientists in London almost seem to have had a crystal ball.
Writing in the International Journal of Epidemiology, they made a bold – and surprisingly prescient – prediction about monkeypox: Over time, "the average magnitude and duration of monkeypox epidemics will increase," they wrote.
At the time, monkeypox was an extremely rare disease. Health-care workers detected only a few cases a year in West and Central Africa. People caught the disease almost exclusively from rodents or primates and
