Alaskapox

Submission 3,445

About

Alaskapox, sometimes spelled Alaska Pox, is the name given to a disease that's part of the Orthopoxvirus genus that targets mammals, including humans, which was discovered and documented in 2015 in Alaska. The disease, claimed to be similar in virality and nature to Monkeypox and Smallpox, began to receive mainstream attention after claiming its first human victim in early 2024. The viral disease began to be at the center of conspiracy theories due to its name with people relating it to COVID-19 as it garnered more attention online.

Origin

First discovered in 2015, the Alaskapox virus became a topic of widespread interest after a report of a man dying of it in early 2024 emerged. On February 9th, 2024, the Alaska Beacon^[5] released a news report stating that the virus had claimed the life of an elderly man and noted that all human cases of the virus had originated from the same area in Fairbanks, Alaska.

This report was later shared to X on February 10th, 2024, by X user @BohemianAtmosp1,^[1] who captioned it by stating they didn't know what to say (shown below). The post received over 12,700 views and 300 likes in three days.

Spread

News of Alaskapox quickly began to spread on social media, with various news outlets running their own coverage of the fatality.^[6] On February 12th, 2024, the official X account for @NewsNation^[2] posted a graphic with information obtained by the Alaskan Department of Health that went into detail about the virus, including its original region and showing an example of what it looks like when infecting someone, which received nearly 7,000 views in one day (shown below).

As news continued to spread about Alaskapox, so did detractors who were against the virus. For example, on February 12th, 2024, X users @Raymond82310289^[3] and @Matttttt187^[4] both made posts that questioned the credibility of the entire thing. With Raymond's post, the caption he wrote over his post of a news article detailing the first human fatality was calling the entire thing nonsense, and Matt's post was directly calling attention to the COVID-19 vaccine (shown below).

Discussions surrounding Alaskapox also emerged on Reddit in mid-February 2024. For example, a post on February 12th, to the /r/collapse^[7] subreddit, which is a community revolved around "the potential collapse of global civilization," stated it was "something to keep an eye on" and received over 300 upvotes and 30 comments in 20 hours. That same day, discussions of Alaskapox also appeared on the /r/unvaccinated^[8] subreddit, with some users theorizing it would result in additional vaccinations pushed by the government.