Orthopoxviruses are very large (for a virus) double-stranded DNA viruses which self-repair during replication.
They are about as far as possible from a single-stranded RNA virus (COVID, hepatitis C, influenza, HIV) which lack self-repair and which (therefore) mutate during replication all the time.
Smallpox changed very little if at all from Egyptian mummies to the last human case.
This MPOX isn’t a variant, but African villagers do not deposit the virus into each other’s throats and rectums, which is proving to produce what looks like a new disease - but with the same old virus.
Two things need to happen. First Africans need to be discouraged from hunting and eating bush meat (monkey and ape meat). Second, the WHO needs to relax its restrictions on availability of Smallpox vaccines as that is what is used against Monkeypox. If the whole native human populations in potential contact with infected animals were vaccinated against Smallpox, it would greatly diminish the transmission of Monkeypox to humans in Africa and prevent transmission visitors to Africa.
Wonder if any of the afflicted have received an orthopoxvirus vectored CoupFlu vaxx...?