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In the 1980s and early 1990s, confusion reigned, and some Americans worried needlessly about having incidental contact or even being in the same room with a person with AIDS. The United States is still dealing with the baggage of the HIV/AIDS crisis. I worry that we are making the same mistakes we did when HIV first began to surface. AIDS was routinely framed as an unusual disorder among a small cluster of gay men in San Francisco and New York, but the pathogen that caused it had already circulated far more widely. Yet though the number of documented cases remains small, the presumption that the outbreak is an anomaly is precisely what misled medical authorities, journalists, and even gay people themselves 40 years ago, when HIV first entered the headlines.
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I understand the instinct not to overreact. Read: The LGBT health movement, 40 years since homosexuality was a mental illnessįor the moment, both the media and public officials continue to frame monkeypox as rare. In the past, HIV prevention and treatment efforts reached white men but not the large number of men of color and working-class and poor men who became infected with that virus. These outreach efforts should pay particular attention to the most marginalized people who might be at risk. Therefore, public-health agencies should also press gay social-media apps and other online platforms to tell their users that men who have sex with men have been disproportionately infected by the virus. Public-health officials need to work with gay-community health centers and other LGBTQ organizations to deliver information about monkeypox symptoms to doctors and their patients.Īlthough gay activist groups and clinics may be carefully monitoring the outbreak, I am concerned about gay men in areas where doctors may be unaware of the pathophysiology of the virus. Monkeypox, which is related to smallpox and causes symptoms that include a rash, had not previously been viewed as a sexually transmitted infection, but many people who have contracted the disease recently have exhibited symptoms, such as lesions around the genitals or the anus, consistent with sexual transmission. Yet many other well-intentioned officials appear fearful of saying something homophobic, and news outlets have published articles emphasizing that monkeypox is “not a gay disease.” Their caution is warranted, but health agencies are putting gay men at risk unless they prioritize them for interventions such as public-awareness campaigns, vaccines, and tests. Director Rochelle Walensky noted Thursday that, of the nine monkeypox cases identified in the United States as of midweek, most were among men who have sex with men. In recent days, CDC officials have been acknowledging this forthrightly. Gay men are not the only people at risk, but they do need to know that, right now, the condition appears to be spreading most actively within their community. For many years, following the outbreak of HIV, the fear of being judged or shamed has dissuaded some gay men from being tested.īut as a gay man who studies the history of infectious disease, I worry that public-health leaders are not doing enough to directly alert men who have sex with men about monkeypox. “Experience shows that stigmatizing rhetoric can quickly disable evidence-based response by stoking cycles of fear, driving people away from health services, impeding efforts to identify cases, and encouraging ineffective, punitive measures,” Matthew Kavanagh, the deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, recently said. And as public-health authorities investigate possible links to sexual or other close physical contact at a Pride event in the Canary Islands, a sauna in Madrid, and other gay venues in Europe, government officials are trying hard not to single out a group that endured terrible stigma at the height of America’s AIDS crisis. Pic.A disproportionate number of cases in the recent monkeypox outbreak have shown up among gay and bisexual men. Big Black Cock Turning White Bois Into Shemalesĭicky Vicky (Fairly Odd Parents) Jay Marvel | Comics Manics