Viral SF mpox video is two years old, was filmed in Florida

A viral video that was billed as footage of a San Francisco man infected with mpox (previously known as monkeypox) has stoked fears of a local outbreak — but was actually filmed in Florida two years ago, the original creator of the video said.

Tiktok user @Hi.Im.Josh documented his quarantine process while infected with the mpox virus during the summer of 2022. The clip was widely viewed at the time. In a follow-up video posted Thursday, he expressed confusion why the video is circulating again, poking fun at his unofficial status as the “spokesman of monkeypox.”

“Why are they spreading all this false information?” he says in the video, before adding that it was filmed two years ago in Fort Lauderdale.

The video — which is being circulated by a number of Twitter accounts — is often accompanied with statements saying that the disease has been detected in San Francisco wastewater and that the World Health Organization recently declared it a global health emergency. Google data seen Thursday shows a spike in search traffic for the term “monkeypox” in San Francisco and throughout California. 

Here are the facts: There have been zero cases of mpox in the city over the past seven days, according to a San Francisco Department of Health dashboard. Wastewater detection also shows a low occurrence of mpox in the city’s sewage across both treatment plants.

Concerns about mpox reappearing in San Francisco are being conflated with the news about a new subvariant known as clade 1b, which is linked to higher mortality and is spreading around parts of Africa. The new variant recently recorded its first case in Europe. There are no known cases of the new variant in the United States.

“At this time, mpox cases in San Francisco remain very low. The seven-day average for mpox cases is currently zero,” the public health department said in a statement. “SFDPH strongly recommends and encourages two-dose vaccination for all people living with HIV, anyone taking or eligible to take HIV PrEP, and all men, trans people, and nonbinary people who have sex with men, trans people, or nonbinary people.”

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said during previous outbreaks that infection was mainly limited to men who have sex with men. He cautioned that the new subvariant could spread more easily to other populations. 

Chin-Hong said when the virus was spreading widely around the country in 2022, the mortality rate was under 1%, and most of those who died were severely immunocompromised.   

This year, some outbreaks of mpox were documented in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The San Francisco Bay Area, however, was left largely untouched. No significant uptick in cases was recorded after San Francisco’s Pride celebration, Chin-Hong said.  

Last year, the U.S. saw fewer than 2,000 cases of mpox, compared to more than 30,000 in 2022. Year to date, there have been around 700 cases of the disease nationally. Chin-Hong said he hasn’t personally treated any mpox cases at his San Francisco hospital this year. 

Chin-Hong attributed the declining case counts to a few factors, including previous infection — which imparts lifelong immunity to the disease — along with greater public awareness of risk factors and vaccination.

Still, he said that among those eligible for vaccination, only around 25% have received both doses of the vaccine. 

“My advice is just staying aware and not panicking,” Chin-Hong said. “You’re not getting it from Muni, and you’re not getting it from a doorknob.”