Monkeypox: It's out the door, Gottlieb says

I still don't think our worry level needs to be as high as Jessica Wildfire had it a month ago, but ...

Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb (who pleasantly surprised me there and is one of many non-Orac professionals who thinks the lab-leak hypothesis on COVID needs a further look) thinks there are thousands of cases we don't know about, and used the word "endemic":

“I think they’re going to be reluctant to use the word pandemic, because it implies that they’ve failed to contain this, and I think at this point we’ve failed to contain this,” Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.

“We’re now at the cusp of this becoming an endemic virus, with this now become something that’s persistent that we need to continue to deal with,” he added.

That's just the first in a set of comments that needs extracting. Next is the possible undercounting:

Although cases have primarily been detected among men who has sex with men, Gottlieb says the virus has “spread more broadly in the community,” and the current reported trends are in part because testing has focused on sexual health clinics. 

“We’re probably detecting just a fraction of the actual cases,” he said.

And, the biggie? The "horses are already out the board door":

“I think the window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed, and if it hasn’t closed, it’s certainly starting to close,” he added.

Oops.