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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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A new mpox outbreak is driving a "do not comply" movement among conspiracy theorists who fear that health-related lockdowns will affect this year's presidential election.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency after a new strain of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, killed at least 450 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The highly contagious disease is now spreading across parts of Central and East Africa.
A day later, Sweden's public health agency announced that it had confirmed the first known case of the new strain outside of Africa, prompting warnings that a "coordinated international response is essential" to stop the spread of mpox, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Wednesday marks the second time in just over two years that the WHO has declared mpox as a global emergency.
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The outbreak has generated fears that mpox could cause the next pandemic, resulting in global shutdowns and stay-at-home orders. Those worries have caused some panic among those who point out that the threat of a deadly virus comes during an election year again.
"Do not comply! We will not comply! Another election, another pandemic scare. Monkeypox - Imagine that. Get out of here with that Mpox nonsense. We will not listen to the WHO," a MAGA supporter said in response to a video of Valentina Gomez, a former GOP candidate for Missouri's secretary of state, on X (formerly Twitter).
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In the video, Gomez, a self-described "America First-MAGA" Republican, said that she never got vaccinated against COVID and that she was "definitely not getting vaccinated for the monkeypox bull**** that is coming right on time for election season."
"To all of my patriots, do not comply," Gomez tells the camera.
Another X user tweeted, "I will NOT comply with any Monkeypox lockdown or take any Monkeypox vaccine if it is mandated. Who's with me?"
In early 2020, the coronavirus swept across the world, and the U.S. reported its first case of COVID-19 on January 20. Public health officials in the U.S. sought to contain the spread of the virus through lockdowns and other restrictions, but government-mandated orders quickly divided the nation and brought protests across the country.
The global health emergency also led many states to change their policies to increase mail-in voting, often called absentee voting, in an effort to reduce the risk of infection. Casting ballots by mail become popular in 2020, accounting for just over half of primary votes cast in 37 states, but it also polarized voters who supported then-President Donald Trump and those who backed Joe Biden.
Biden voters were nearly twice as likely as Trump voters to vote by mail, according to a Pew Research Center study. It found that 37 percent of Trump voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day in 2020, compared with 17 percent of Biden voters.
The uptick in mail-in voting, and Biden's electoral victory, prompted Trump to partly blame his loss on absentee voting, which he repeatedly and falsely said resulted in widespread election fraud. Trump and the rest of the Republican Party have since embraced the mail-in ballot process.
A video of Trump addressing the rise of COVID variants in 2023 has recirculated amid the mpox outbreak, and the "do not comply" movement has used it as a further reason to push back against concerns about a global health emergency.
The video has been shared on X with false claims that Trump is talking about mpox. Users responded to the clip by writing "Trump warns about lockdowns and election fraud with monkeypox," and "Refuse to comply!"
In the August 2023 video, Trump said: "The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fearmongering about the new variants that are coming.
"Gee whiz, you know what else is coming? An election. They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots," he said.
At the time, a highly mutated COVID-19 variant called BA.2.86 was being closely monitored by health officials as it joined HV.1 and EG.5 as one of the most prevalent strains in the country. The HV.1 subvariant was still the dominant strain at the time, accounting for 31 percent of cases.
Mpox does not spread as easily as COVID, and vaccines that prevent the disease already exist. However, the vaccines are usually available only for people at risk or those who have been in close contact with an infected person, which is how the disease is transmitted. Mpox causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions, and 4 in 100 cases lead to death.
The WHO first declared mpox a global health emergency in July 2022, when a different strain spread to over 70 countries and was tied to more than 99,000 cases and more than 200 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The WHO revoked that status in May 2023 amid a decline in cases.
Outbreaks have been reported in 15 countries so far, with most of the cases still in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As of Wednesday, there are no known cases in the U.S. The CDC has said the risk of the outbreak reaching this country remains very low.
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