What Monkeypox Could Mean for These 2 Stocks?
As the COVID-19 pandemic eases its way toward endemic levels -- meaning the illness would still exist but not disrupt daily life on a mass scale -- another pandemic may be slowly growing. Monkeypox is a rare disease that has seen an increase in cases globally -- nearly doubling between July 6 to July 15 -- and though it can be fatal, it hasn't reached the height of fatality as COVID. The fatality rate for monkeypox is 3% to 6%, compared to 1.1% for COVID-19, but the number of monkeypox cases is far less at 12,000 compared to the 562 million we've seen for COVID.
Nonetheless, after seeing COVID's effects on people and businesses, and its impact on healthcare, it's not unreasonable to think that aggressive action may be taken to combat the disease before it spreads widely through the population. Unlike COVID when it emerged in 2019, monkeypox is a familiar disease to the World Health Organization (WHO). It's related to smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980; this gives the world -- and companies focusing on a vaccine for the disease -- a leg up in the fight to combat a spread.
Investors in top pharmaceutical companies like Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson benefited from stock spikes from early 2020 through late 2021. Today there are two companies in the fight against monkeypox that could see similar boosts.
Source Fool.com
