Commentary: Monkeypox is not the next COVID. But it’s spreading from the same failures

The recent discovery by Stanford scientists that wastewater in Palo Alto, Sacramento and other cities in the Bay Area contains monkeypox DNA means that the outbreak has gained traction in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a monkeypox emergency on Monday.

But the wastewater discovery does not mean that monkeypox virus is spreading in water, in the air or widely enough that we are looking at a second pandemic at a time when we’re still struggling, as a nation and species, with SARS-CoV-2.

That doesn’t stop panic on social media or