Welcome to Deconstructed. I'm Maya Hibbit, an associate editor for the Intercept, filling

in for Ryan Grim this week. On August 4th, with Monkeypock spreading globally and with

over 26,000 confirmed cases worldwide, US Health and Human Services Secretary Javier

Bacetta announced a public health emergency. I want to make an announcement today that

I will be declaring a public health emergency on Monkeypock and we urge every American

to take Monkeypock seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.

Coming from the country with more than a quarter of known cases, almost 7,000 by the day

of the announcement, the move struck many scientists and observers as too late. Several

states had gotten ahead of the federal government and the World Health Organization declared

a global health emergency almost two weeks earlier. The emergence of the coronavirus that

causes COVID and, long before that, the spread of HIV and AIDS showed us that what we think

of is hard science can only go so far in quelling these sorts of public health crises.

Even the best tests, treatments, and vaccines are useless if people don't trust public

health leaders enough to take advantage of them, or if they don't have the opportunity

to take advantage of them as a result of interlocking factors like race, wealth, and geography.

The simple truth is that our medical and pharmaceutical systems are more focused on profits than

on public health, and many people are treated as low priorities, if not outright abused,

furthering distrust in the medical response or lack thereof.

Joseph Osmanson, a molecular microbiologist, writer, and clinical assistant professor at

New York University, knows this well. It's a focus of his latest book, Verology. Essays

for the living, the dead, and the small things in between. Osmanson's essays examine the

social impact that viruses have on human life, offering digestible introductions to scientific

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