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It is but the risk here is that this may be bad information: there’s no reason to believe it can only spread among gay men, or that it will continue to do so. A

It is but the risk here is that this may be bad information: there’s no reason to believe it can only spread among gay men, or that it will continue to do so. And simultaneously it may be spreading elsewhere but we’re only seeing a subset of the infections because the gay community has been alerted and is looking. So if you do too much messaging about this, you’re potentially going to give people bad information. Not to mention that the last time we had a major outbreak of a “gay men’s disease” it led to some terrifically bad and discriminatory outcomes that were bad for patients and broad public health at the same time. (And no matter how much you might think the US has learned from that episode, plenty of countries still discriminate in law.)

nieve 4y ago
In fact some of the cases documented so far haven't been men who have sex with men and it's not uncommon in Africa, so encouraging people to believe they're safe if they're not MSM is potentially damaging. It's much like HIV in this case, the number of heterosexuals infected with that is much higher than most straight people want to believe.
- jhgb 4y ago
  The problem with this argument is that for the public health system of a random country X that happens to be not located in Africa, the spread patterns in Africa matter very little. If you're trying to prevent the spread of a certain disease in country X, you're looking at the known spread pattern in X. And the same goes for HIV.
  - sh4un 4y ago
jhgb 4y ago
> there’s no reason to believe it can only spread among gay men, or that it will continue to do so But epidemiologically, the difference between a disease that only spreads among gay men and a disease that overwhelmingly spreads among gay men is way smaller than the difference between a disease that overwhelmingly spreads among gay men and a disease that spreads with no discernible pattern at all. Just because it can do something else as well doesn't mean that if you want to stop the spread of this as quickly as possible, you shouldn't inform your actions with all the information you know. From the public health perspective, considering the possible consequences, ignoring the information you have would be nearly criminal.

nieve 4y ago

In fact some of the cases documented so far haven't been men who have sex with men and it's not uncommon in Africa, so encouraging people to believe they're safe if they're not MSM is potentially damaging. It's much like HIV in this case, the number of heterosexuals infected with that is much higher than most straight people want to believe.

jhgb 4y ago
The problem with this argument is that for the public health system of a random country X that happens to be not located in Africa, the spread patterns in Africa matter very little. If you're trying to prevent the spread of a certain disease in country X, you're looking at the known spread pattern in X. And the same goes for HIV.
- sh4un 4y ago

jhgb 4y ago

> there’s no reason to believe it can only spread among gay men, or that it will continue to do so But epidemiologically, the difference between a disease that only spreads among gay men and a disease that overwhelmingly spreads among gay men is way smaller than the difference between a disease that overwhelmingly spreads among gay men and a disease that spreads with no discernible pattern at all. Just because it can do something else as well doesn't mean that if you want to stop the spread of this as quickly as possible, you shouldn't inform your actions with all the information you know. From the public health perspective, considering the possible consequences, ignoring the information you have would be nearly criminal.