Monkeypox Is Not The Same As Shingles Despite Covid-19 Vaccine-Related Claims

Monkeypox is not the same thing as shingles. They are caused by two different viruses. But that hasn’t stopped people on social media from claiming that they are the same. After all, truth and social, meaning truth and social media, don’t always go together, right?

For example, the following tweet from an anonymous social media account claimed that “95% of Monkeypox cases are really shingles in Canada,” providing what, at first glance, appeared to be an article from CTV News in Canada:

Ah, but what you CTV here is not necessarily what you get. Borrowing some words from The Talking Heads, you may ask yourself why did the tweet include only a screen shot of this supposed CTV News article rather than a link to the specific article? After all, Twitter has this neat little feature that allows you to paste a link to an article website into a tweet. Hmmm, could there in fact be no such link? Indeed, a search of the CTV News website revealed no such article. That’s why a Reuters Fact Check determined that this so-called CTV News image was in reality digitally altered. Spreading a digitally altered image? Has that ever happened before on social media?

You may also be asking yourself why even claim that monkeypox cases are shingles cases? The answer seems to rhyme with Movid-19 blue jeans. Yes, posts from anonymous social media accounts have been suggesting that shingles is actually a side effect of the Covid-19 vaccines as you can see in the following tweet:

And this one as well:

Yeah, in general, you don’t want to get health advice from someone or something named MaryTay41897696 or Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels may have told you to do a lot of things in college, many of which you may have ended up regretting. And the name MaryTay41897696 makes you wonder what may have happened to the 41,897,695 other MaryTays.

While both shingles, otherwise known as herpes zoster, and monkeypox can result in a red rash that at some point progresses to fluid-filled blisters that eventually crust over, these two different disease are quite different. Comparing the two would be like comparing Katy Perry and The Band Perry (not to say that either Katy Perry or The Band Perry will give you fluid-filled lesions). Monkeypox is caused by the monkeypox virus whereas shingles is not. Monkeypox is contagious. Shingles is not. Having monkeypox is significantly more serious than having shingles with the former being a lot more likely to be life-threatening.

The lesions produced by monkeypox and shingles are not even identical and do not go through the exact same progression. While monkeypox lesions often first appear on your face and then spread to other parts of your body, shingles lesions tend to form instead just as a single band or stripe on your skin on either your right or left side without crossing the midline of your body. This band typically corresponds to what’s called a dermatome, the area of your skin that’s supplied by a single given nerve that comes from your spinal cord. So when you see shingles, think, “oh the nerve of the chickenpox-causing virus.”

That’s because shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is the cause of chickenpox and can remain “dormant” within one or more of your nerves for years, long after you’ve recovered from chickenpox. Shingles results when this virus somehow gets reactivated to then cause this painful rash and blisters that crust over after seven to 10 days, eventually disappearing within three to four weeks. Although your body has 30 different dermatomes, the most commonly affected dermatomes are on your trunk. In this case, trunk refers to the chest, abdomen, pelvis, and back part of your body and not the storage bin where you keep your old *NSYNC paraphernalia. Occasionally, the shingles rash may involve more than one dermatome, even three or more.

If you do have some blisters on your body, don’t rely on people on social media to tell you what you may have. That would be like walking up to random people on the street and showing them your lesions. Instead, contact a real medical doctor, who should be able to readily tell shingles and monkeypox rashes apart from each other.

Is there any evidence that shingles may be a side effect of Covid-19 vaccines? A Kamalpreet Singh, whose Twitter profile lists him as a nutrition therapist, claimed that “13,783 cases of Singles (one of the adverse effects of C19 jab) are reported on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System,” with the following tweet:

Keep in mind that not all cases of anything reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have been verified. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) simply does not have the resources and staff to double-check each and every entry, especially when people or bots may try to load VAERS with bogus entries. In theory, you could submit a report to VAERS claiming that the Covid-19 vaccine caused you to grow some extra arms or turned you into Simon Cowell. Or perhaps both, making you either a Simon Cowell octopus or an Octo-Cowell.

A systematic review published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology in November 2021 did find a possible association between Covid-19 vaccines and very rare cases of shingles with emphases on the words possible and very rare. Could one’s immune system response to the Covid-19 vaccine possibly in some rare cases help reactivate the varicella zoster virus? Potentially, maybe, perhaps. Remember, though, an association does not necessarily imply causation. More studies are needed to confirm whether such a link really exists.

Before you believe anything that you hear about Covid-19 vaccines, check out what real science and scientists are saying. And not what politicians, TV and podcast personalities, and others may be claiming. This is especially true with anonymous social media accounts, as listening to them can be like listening to the graffiti on a bathroom stall. Don’t assume that Mary is bleep. Double-check with trusted sources who actually know Mary to make sure. Similarly, don’t assume that the Covid-19 vaccines can cause a problem just because of a random claim. Double-check with real scientists who actually have track records in the relevant areas. There are many anonymous social media accounts with hidden agendas such as trying to tout bogus treatments, eliminate regulation, sow mistrust, or cause chaos in general.

As I wrote for Forbes on May 22, it was only a matter of time before people started blaming Covid-19 vaccines for the monkeypox outbreak which has already spanned at least 12 different countries. And these claims that the monkeypox cases are actually herpes zoster cases are basically bleep on a shingle.