Monkeypox Vaccines Are Too Gnarly for the Masses

In the past three years, the world has weathered two very different global outbreaks, caused by two very different pathogens, under two sets of very different circumstances. Unlike with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with monkeypox, we’re entering an epidemic with highly effective vaccines—formulated to guard against smallpox—already in hand. Also unlike with SARS-CoV-2, with monkeypox, the shots stockpiled in U.S. stores are based on some pretty grody tech. Nearly all of the 100 million available smallpox vaccines are ACAM2000, an inoculation that, per FDA documentation, gets punctured “rapidly” into the arm via 15 jabs of a bifurcated, escargot-fork-esque needle, in a fashion “vigorous enough” to draw blood. In the weeks following, a gnarly, pus-laden lump blossoms, then scabs and falls away. “It’s oozy; it’s nasty; it definitely doesn’t feel good,” says Kelsey Cone, a virologist at ARUP Laboratories, in Utah, who received the vaccine about 12 years ago.

And unlike with SARS-CoV-2, with monkeypox, most of us