The man was undergoing cancer treatment and had a suppressed immune system because of the drugs, which may have contributed to the severity of his illness, the bulletin said. It described him as elderly but didn’t provide his age.
Alaskapox, also known as AKPV, is related to smallpox, cowpox and mpox, health officials said. Symptoms can include a rash, swollen lymph nodes and joint or muscle pain.
Only six other cases of the virus have been reported to Alaska health officials since the first one in 2015. All involved people were living in the Fairbanks area, more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) from the Kenai Peninsula, health officials said.
This has all the hallmarks of yet another panic-bait-article… One sentence in the whole article renders it completely and utterly irrelevant. About the other cases, the article itself says:
So all that’s in this “news report” is that there are diseases that affect animals but not humans which can on occasion jump to humans but usually are pretty harmless then because they are equipped to deal with a cat’s immune system, but not with a human immune system. This becomes irrelevant once said human immune system isn’t working right.
This is not “breaking news”. There is a loooong and ever changing list of pathogens in exactly this situation and there always will be.
Anyone who’s played Plague Inc knows you can’t make your virus too deadly too quickly or it will burn itself out. Mild symptoms allows it to become a pandemic and then endemic.
There is a more complete article in one of the science subs. I’m sorry I can’t find it right now, I believe it is in the last 24 hours or so.
Your second paragraph sums up what I remember from it though.
ETA: this post in c/publichealth https://lemmy.nz/post/6766151