Monkeypox is barely a presence in America, and it may never be widespread here, but right-wing edgelords are already hard at work on monkeypox denialism. Here's Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers, an election truther who's a star on the right:

This is business as usual for Rogers, who never met a far-right conspiracy theory she didn't like -- she's also been proclaiming recently that she believes the federal government was responsible for the recent mass shooting in Buffalo -- but she's not alone. Here's an excerpt from a recent Gateway Pundit post:

With midterms fast approaching, Democrat approval ratings cratering out of control, the hysteria surrounding Covid-19 rapidly waning, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before another crisis developed that would help the Left reinstitute the tyrannical control mechanisms they used throughout the China-virus pandemic.

Well,now we have monkeypox – a viral infection that is traditionally mild and rare in humans – popping up all across the Western countries. Oddly enough, the virus is seemingly spreading from person to person like never before, leaving many people, including those in the scientific community, scratching their heads and asking themselves: ‘what is going on?’ Now, we are obviously a long way off from what we experienced with the last pandemic, but, either way – whether the origins of this more transmissible monkeypox virus are natural, or something else (like Covid-19, Wuhan, etc.) – the timing of this new outbreak is curious – to say the least....

The main concern with this latest outbreak is that the cases seem to be spreading through human-to-human transmission at an alarming rate. Traditionally, the virus has been zoonotic and normally has a hard time making the jump from animals to humans, so the new developments are worth keeping an eye on – especially with what Gates, Fauci, and the rest of the so-called ‘public health experts’ have been up to for the past few years.

Clearly, they are prepping the needles for more vaccinations, but what else is in store this time around?

And on Twitter, many people are spreading the mistaken notion that monkeypox is actually shingles, citing this as evidence:

When I first saw this, I assumed it was Photoshopped, but unfortunately it wasn't -- a photo of a shingles rash on the website of the health department of Queensland, Australia, was used to illustrate a 2021 post about monkeypox at TheHealthSite.com, a Mumbai-based medical information site. (There were a couple of monkeypox cases in the U.S. in 2021, which prompted the post.) A recent post at the same site is illustrated with an accurate photo of monkeypox on the skin, but the damage has been done.

I won't try to embed the tweets I'm seeing because Twitter (which Elon Musk doesn't own yet) might take them down, but here are some of the messages:

Make this viral. #Monkeypox is an adverse reaction from the clot shot. AKA... Shingles.
PLANDEMIC 2.0

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Shingles.. sorry.. Monkey Pox

Not that Shingles is a side effect of any jab now is it?

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So are they just going to rebrand shingles as Monkeypox the way they rebranded the flu as covid?

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Of course...They use the same picture as if you won’t notice!

That’s how STUPID [they] think you are.

Don’t prove them right!

I know this has been brought to light already, but it’s so important to let it sink in how deceitful our #FakeNews has become...

😎#CanYouSeeItYet😎

(You know what actually can increase your risk of getting shingles? A COVID infection.)

Living in an idiocracy is exhausting. Let's hope that the monkeypox outbreaks are contained, because we're not ready -- to put it mildly -- for a new contagious disease crisis.

And yes, I know that a few days ago I predicted a different reaction from the right to monkeypox: that non-whites and LGBT people would be scapegoated for any outbreak, because the disease is usually seen in Africa, and because public health officials say it's spreading in Europe and elsewhere among gay and bisexual men. But the right can argue that monkeypox is dangerous and fake at the same time -- that's certainly happened with COVID. There's often a choose-your-own-adventure aspect to right-wing propaganda -- is Joe Biden a drooling old man who gets lost wandering the White House or is he the co-mastermind (with his son) of a vast moneymaking criminal enterprise? Well, he's both, obviously, as your right-wing relatives will tell you. If monkeypox spreads in America, we'll hear that it's spread by gays and Blacks and that it's a fake disease. I hope we can avoid all this.

Published with permission of No More Mr. Nice Blog