It seems like decades since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic shut down the world economically and socially, and even now we are not fully out of the woods. The COVID-19 coronavirus continues to persist, hovering on the cusp of becoming an endemic disease after having caused over one million deaths in the United States alone out of over six million deaths worldwide since the first reported cases in 2019. Although the various coronavirus vaccines have conferred some level of herd immunity across the globe, the danger of mutations causing variants that might escape vaccine protection is real, so continued vigilance and best practices are key to returning to normalcy. Perhaps our resolve as a global community and as a species will be tested in short order as the monkeypox outbreaks surge.