Everything you say is true and perfectly reasonable.
One terribly significant problem is the fact they left their game plan laying on the table. And I read it. (you can too, if it’s still at the website!)
It is simply inconceivable to me that this is a naturally occurring event.
So they gamed an outbreak of a bioweapon developed from monkeypox. Why wouldn’t they? Monkeypox has been on the radar as an emergent disease the past ten years or so, since more cases started showing up in Africa as more and more people who never received the smallpox vaccine became infected and at older ages. Thinking was, that terrorists who had no access to smallpox virus might play around with monkeypox.
Around the same time, they gamed a bioterrorism attack using lab-created synthetic smallpox (a real worry now). They’ve gamed various hypothetical epidemics for years and years.
This outbreak has so far not extended beyond the aforementioned “sexual networks”. If it were some engineered “bioweapon” it sure is a dud. No one on the planes with these infected guys, no one who rode in the same taxi, shopped at the same store, etc. has come down with it as of yet. Only those with whom they they engaged in those highly risky acts.
Why can’t it be a natural event? It’s hardly the first outbreak outside Africa, just the first that got loose in an extremely promiscuous segment of the gay population:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4064852/posts?page=63#63
HIV/AIDS started out in Africa with “bushmeat” at least a century ago, also one of the more common culprits in human cases of monkeypox in Africa. But once it found its way to gay men ....
The difference here, is monkeypox is a known disease, unlike HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. Incubation period is only 5-14 days (can be as long as 21). It takes many months, sometimes years, before symptoms show up after HIV infection.
Monkeypox can be fairly quickly identified and dealt with. Although it will be challenge, as at least some of those who have monkeypox now probably can’t name all their sexual contacts, having done that thing they do with strangers.