37 ms·

The U.S. may be losing the fight against monkeypox, scientists say

63 points by jasonhansel 4y ago

LeapingPanda 4y ago
https://archive.ph/HvQvC https://archive.ph/HvQvC
wonderwonder 4y ago
This article seems to want to paint the government as at fault for the spread of the disease. Then this line appears further down: "In San Francisco, B, a 43-year-old medical writer who asked that his name be withheld for privacy reasons, found himself shivering uncontrollably with a high fever on June 14, eight days after he had multiple sexual encounters at a bathhouse in Chicago" At this point in time Monkey Pox is a known disease and the fact that it is highly transmissible via male on male sex is a known transmission vector. If people insist on engaging in high risk sex with multiple partners while a communicable disease is running rampant, at what point does it become their responsibility? HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. I see no reason why if people just eased up on the high risk sex with multiple partners for a couple of months that this disease would not return to dormancy. Virtually all reported cases have been traced to this transmission vector. There is only so much government money and resources to fight diseases, this one seems like low hanging fruit that the affected community could solve with some leadership, personal responsibility and group effort.
- ejb999 4y ago
  not to mention not a single death in the USA (at least yet) - I really don't want the government over reacting every time a virus pops up; there is value in waiting to see how things play out first. Seems like the media is trying really hard to hype this one now that Covid story is getting stale.
  - christkv 4y ago
    You are going to love the just breaking news about another possible Marburg (Ebola cousin) outbreak in Ghana.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >there is value in waiting to see how things play out first No, when it comes to managing diseases the value is in acting before things have gone bad. It completely blows my mind how after a million covid deaths in the US alone, and the pandemic not even being over, people repeat the same kind of arguments again. or HIV for that matter if you want to draw a comparison to another sexually transmittable disease that was not taken seriously either.
    - thisiscorrect 4y ago
      The comparison to HIV is apt. At its peak, in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone was taught to dread this disease. Officials acted as though everyone was equally at risk of contracting it. That was incorrect, and pretending otherwise helped noone.
      - Barrin92 4y ago
        >At its peak, in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone was taught to dread this disease And have you considered that is precisely why it peaked? HIV has killed 50 million people worldwide. 35 million of them in Africa. It still kills almost a million people a year. In countries without appropriate response, it has infected large segments of the population, and you're out here in 2022 unironically saying "It's a gay man's disease", seriously?
        thisiscorrect 4y ago
        > and you're out here in 2022 unironically saying "It's a gay man's disease", seriously? I'm out here unironically showing you data on the CDC's website: https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html. Anal intercourse is far likelier (18x the risk from vaginal interourse per encounter) to result in HIV transmission from an infected partner. Internal tearing is likelier and hence contact of other fluids with one's blood stream. In Africa, HIV is especially prevalent in South Africa, which happens to have a practice called "dry sex" [1] which also leads to similar internal tearing for the receptive partner. Behavior that involves having these sorts of risky sexual encounters with multiple partners only compounds the likelihood that one will contract HIV. Not all groups engage in these behaviors with equal likelihood. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    At the moment the virus is confined to that part of the gay population that attends wild orgies - healthy young men. Mortality for that segment of the population is low, although by all accounts monkeypox is still exquisitely painful. Once it gets to pregnant women we will see miscarriages in 4 out of 5 cases. Things will improve then, but not before.
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      It's not confined to just the gay population. The UK has a child in the ICU over it for example: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1614153/monkeypox-British-child-in-intensive-care-latest https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1614153/monkeypox-British-... Many states in the US are confirming there is community spread happening, i.e. it's not restricted to a subset of the gay or hetero community. Here's Seattle for example confirming there are cases with no known sexual encounter or link: https://publichealthinsider.com/2022/07/06/monkeypox-update-local-transmission-of-the-virus-in-king-county-likely/ https://publichealthinsider.com/2022/07/06/monkeypox-update-...
      - scarmig 4y ago
        As an LGBT guy: Yes, there are non-gay people who get it. But gay men, and particularly people who have sex with a dozen different partners in a week (not many straight men in that particular group), are much more likely to contract it. Efforts to limit the spread of monkeypox should be targeted at the demographics most likely to contract it, as you get much more bang-for-buck that way.
        qbasic_forever 4y ago
        The cat's out of the bag when community spread is confirmed like we see now. The time to take targeted measures for a community getting hit hard by it was a month ago when it was the dozens and low hundreds of cases. Now we're seeing 2k+ cases worldwide a day, and that's with very low testing. We need to shift into proper pandemic response mode--TETRIS, test-trace-isolate. There is nothing inherent about the DNA of this virus that makes it target men, gay men, or men who have sex with men. It will infect any human in the wrong place at the wrong time, period.
- nostromo 4y ago
  On the one hand, I agree with you. People should be more responsible. But if your strategy is "people should have less sex for a while" then your strategy will fail -- just as our "everyone stay home for two weeks" didn't work for Covid. Even if most people will follow the guidelines, enough people won't and your strategy will fail. So, yes, it is a government failure that we didn't have vaccines on hand for virus we stopped vaccinating for a long time ago. These are things we can control. We give the CDC a lot of money to help prevent these things. By the way -- you can't get a test if you're not a man that has sex with men -- and that's very likely skewing the results. On Twitter many straight people report having blisters and symptoms but are denied tests because they don't fit the profile.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    Very bizarre to me the way that avoiding covid was moralized and yet the same public health professionals seem more than a little skittish to do so around this. Particularly when the behavior is easier to avoid than breathing the same air as other people. I'd also like to add that having group sex in public places is not the only way to have sex. Your comment seems to conflate this with all sexual activity.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Yeah... I was mostly in favor of Covid restrictions but it's bizarre to say that "no doing [huge list of normal things everyone does]" is fine and if you don't play along you're a plague rat, but balk at "maybe avoid having tons of anonymous sex with strangers for a little while" because that's just unreasonable.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Reasonable or not, resistance to that suggestion is a reality. We have to play the hand we're dealt.
    - suscialmadia 4y ago
      There is a long and dark history to moralizing and even legislating how and when consenting adults can have sex with each other. So maybe it's a bit like discussing eugenics. It wasn't a particularly difficult topic when people like Plato were abstractly philosophizing about ideal societies, but it is a charged topic today because we have seen where that road leads in practice. It's also easier to ask people to make shared sacrifices which everybody should bear equally.
- krona 4y ago
  > HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. UK technical briefing (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbreak-technical-briefings/investigation-into-monkeypox-outbreak-in-england-technical-briefing-3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbrea...): > Where known, more than half had history of STI in the last year (54%, 233 out of 445); 30% (123) were living with HIV; 16% (67 out of 445) had one or no sexual partners, and 31% (134) had 10 or more sexual partners in the last 3 months. Similar stats in Europe - 40% HIV positive where known. (https://monkeypoxreport.ecdc.europa.eu/ https://monkeypoxreport.ecdc.europa.eu/)
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Relying on altruism is clearly not working. So we have to consider how to properly incentivize responsible behavior.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- perardi 4y ago
  “There is only so much government money and resources to fight diseases, this one seems like low hanging fruit that the affected community could solve with some leadership, personal responsibility and group effort.” Listen, as a gay man, I’m just going to go ahead and say we are not the greatest at self-control sometimes. But, living in Chicago? The minute they made the vaccine available for monkeypox, there were lines out the door. Through the roof demand. (Through the roof of Steamworks, because in a move that makes total sense but is also totally hilarious, the first pop-up event was at a bathhouse.) We will get this vaccine in a heartbeat. But we can’t. Because, in part…the FDA slow walked the inspection of the single plant that produces this vaccine. So it won’t be at full capacity for quite a while. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/monkeypox-vaccine-delayed-after-fda-waited-to-inspect-plant.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/monkeypox-vaccine-de...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nostromo 4y ago
    > Listen, as a gay man, I’m just going to go ahead and say we are not the greatest at self-control sometimes. As compared to whom? All those straight men and their renowned self-control?
    - n8cpdx 4y ago
      It’s pretty well documented that straight men have a harder time finding partners for anonymous/casual sex than gay men do. It’s like a whole complex for people, almost to the level of being a meme. https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Tinder-work-for-average-guys-like-myself https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Tinder-work-for-average-guy... As a gay man, I could absolutely be getting a blowjob in the next ~2 hours (conservatively) if I dropped my standards enough - almost anywhere. I don’t think that’s true for straight men; self control isn’t the limiting factor.
      - nostromo 4y ago
        So say that then. Saying gay men lack self control is a different claim entirely, not to mention offensive.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >At this point in time Monkey Pox is a known disease and the fact that it is highly transmissible via male on male sex is a known transmission vector. If people insist on engaging in high risk sex with multiple partners while a communicable disease is running rampant, at what point does it become their responsibility? HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. Some numbers on said high-risk behavior: Gay men on average have six times the number of lifetime sexual partners as straight men or women (<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3334840/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3334840/>), and Psychology Today says 50% of gay men in San Francisco have more than 500 partners (<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201703/it-s-the-mode-men-have-more-sex-partners https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/...>).
christkv 4y ago
Ok so far the us has 0 fatalities associated with monkeypox and there are well known and effective vaccines that can also be used therapeutical after infection. Seems like a bit of sensationalist trying to make it a bigger threat than it seems to be in reality. It's also not airborne and requires direct contact with infected tissue.
- smiddereens 4y ago
dathinab 4y ago
is it just me? From a external POV it looks like they didn't even start the fight. Like NR1 rule for fighting a virus outbreak is to properly educate about it. And idk. but I seem more "it's a problem of gay people" then I see "it's transmittable through skin contact and body fluids including indirect transmittance". Through I'm not in the US so I just see what "bubbles over" into various "international bubbles" I'm in.
im3w1l 4y ago
It's pretty clear that The System's capacity for rapid response to emerging situations is nil. People on every level of the hierarchy keep following the same old routines they always do. Even when it doesn't make sense anymore. There needs to be accountability. It needs investigating: Who should have done something, and why didn't they?
karencarits 4y ago
Norway has already reached (at least) 22 cases [1]. The top article at the front page of the national broadcaster is now about the lack of information and options for testing [2]. Also, many affected people do not develop the typical blisters [1] https://www.nrk.no/norge/22-tilfeller-av-apekopper-i-norge_-__vi-har-ikke-sett-en-sa-stor-utbredelse-tidligere-1.16029609 https://www.nrk.no/norge/22-tilfeller-av-apekopper-i-norge_-... [2] https://www.nrk.no/norge/er-smitta-av-apekoppar_-_-vanskeleg-a-fa-tak-i-informasjon-1.16030013 https://www.nrk.no/norge/er-smitta-av-apekoppar_-_-vanskeleg...
nickdothutton 4y ago
I am not naturally a doom merchant, but with the disease of this nature it is likely that by the time the country knows it has a problem it is already well established. We know already that the population of specific interest does not generally follow advice on limiting the spread of such diseases very rigorously. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong this time, but I doubt it. Behaviours tend not to change.
- reureu 4y ago
  Men who have sex with men (MSM) are quite adept at changing behavior as needed. Before HIV was even identified as the cause of AIDS, it was known from the basic epi that unprotected anal intercourse was a high risk activity. There was a grassroots effort to (among other things) encourage condom use, and a dramatic shift towards using condoms. It's only with the subsequent generations of MSM who did not see their friends die (thanks to better medications starting) that condom use started waning. A similar behavior shift happened after 2012, when HIV PrEP was found to be effective. If you're interested in this topic, there's a couple of really good documentaries about the early HIV epidemic and how gay men adapted: "how to survive a plague" and "we were here" are two of my favorites.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    During the early days of the HIV epidemic, front-line medical professionals in San Francisco received death threats when they when they suggested that bathhouses voluntarily close down, or at least turn up the lights so people could see if their partners were covered in KS sores. You can read about their experience at the University of California San Francisco's AIDS Oral History Project: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/oral-history-project/ https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/oral-history-proj... Death threats: https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2m3n98v1;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e3127&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e3127&brand=oac4 https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2m3n98v1;NAAN=13030&doc.v...
qbasic_forever 4y ago
- usrn 4y ago
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Sorry which planet/ alternative universe are you referring to? Example of infectious disease outbreak you wouldn't consider a "nothing burger"?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - thombat 4y ago
    "COVID-19 leading cause of death for 45-54 year olds in 2021" https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/covid-19-leading-cause-of-death-for-45-54-year-olds-in-2021.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/covid-19...
  - triyambakam 4y ago
    Bill did say "we have to prepare for the next one [pandemic]"
- immigrantheart 4y ago
  I think I have a functioning brain. I am vaccinated and also had a booster as well. Since 2019 I never got sick due to WFH, and to this day never got Covid as well, any variants. I don't use mask to go outside, and I am not the most hygiene person, growing up in a 3rd world country. I am constantly exposed to Covid positive people, including my own wife who got Covid, 24x7 and I did not do any social distancing at all. I still don't get Covid. Meanwhile, I know a friend got infected with Covid 2 times, despite having vaccinated and boosted. Is it just me or my 3rd world country - not so hygiene - probably multiple times infected with various virus - body is stronger than average 1st worlders? TLDR: This is 2022 and I still don't get Covid despite not being careful. Go figure. I wanna know too.
perardi 4y ago
Also from the Times: “Will There Be Enough Monkeypox Vaccine?” Jynneos, the company that makes the better vaccine for monkeypox, was in the middle of refurbishing the one plant that produces it. “The manufacturing facility that could make more has been shut for a planned expansion since last August. The facility is not expected to reopen until late this summer at the earliest, and additional vaccine manufactured there may not become available for at least six months after that.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/health/monkeypox-vaccine-bavarian-nordic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/health/monkeypox-vaccine-...) So that’s a bit of a problem. We do have a smallpox vaccine that seems to have significant cross-reactivity to monkeypox, but, the side effects can be unpleasant. (https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/monkeypox-vaccine-101 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/monkeypox-vac...) Will this actually become a serious pandemic? I dunno. I have friends who have contracted this. But they did so at…um…let’s say underground parties. I’m really unclear if this will spread to the general population, as it is primarily spreading within men-who-have-sex with men networks. (My friend who got it over Memorial Day shook it off pretty easily, other acquaintances contracted it too recently to judge the full course of the disease yet.)
LatteLazy 4y ago
We should stop calling it monkey pox as it's clearly a new, human adapted variant...
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  It actually spreads and comes from rodents.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
“scientists say” inspires so much confidence (speaking as a scientist).

63 points by jasonhansel 4y ago

https://archive.ph/HvQvC https://archive.ph/HvQvC

This article seems to want to paint the government as at fault for the spread of the disease. Then this line appears further down: "In San Francisco, B, a 43-year-old medical writer who asked that his name be withheld for privacy reasons, found himself shivering uncontrollably with a high fever on June 14, eight days after he had multiple sexual encounters at a bathhouse in Chicago" At this point in time Monkey Pox is a known disease and the fact that it is highly transmissible via male on male sex is a known transmission vector. If people insist on engaging in high risk sex with multiple partners while a communicable disease is running rampant, at what point does it become their responsibility? HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. I see no reason why if people just eased up on the high risk sex with multiple partners for a couple of months that this disease would not return to dormancy. Virtually all reported cases have been traced to this transmission vector. There is only so much government money and resources to fight diseases, this one seems like low hanging fruit that the affected community could solve with some leadership, personal responsibility and group effort.

ejb999 4y ago
not to mention not a single death in the USA (at least yet) - I really don't want the government over reacting every time a virus pops up; there is value in waiting to see how things play out first. Seems like the media is trying really hard to hype this one now that Covid story is getting stale.
- christkv 4y ago
  You are going to love the just breaking news about another possible Marburg (Ebola cousin) outbreak in Ghana.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >there is value in waiting to see how things play out first No, when it comes to managing diseases the value is in acting before things have gone bad. It completely blows my mind how after a million covid deaths in the US alone, and the pandemic not even being over, people repeat the same kind of arguments again. or HIV for that matter if you want to draw a comparison to another sexually transmittable disease that was not taken seriously either.
  - thisiscorrect 4y ago
    The comparison to HIV is apt. At its peak, in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone was taught to dread this disease. Officials acted as though everyone was equally at risk of contracting it. That was incorrect, and pretending otherwise helped noone.
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      >At its peak, in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone was taught to dread this disease And have you considered that is precisely why it peaked? HIV has killed 50 million people worldwide. 35 million of them in Africa. It still kills almost a million people a year. In countries without appropriate response, it has infected large segments of the population, and you're out here in 2022 unironically saying "It's a gay man's disease", seriously?
      - thisiscorrect 4y ago
        > and you're out here in 2022 unironically saying "It's a gay man's disease", seriously? I'm out here unironically showing you data on the CDC's website: https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html. Anal intercourse is far likelier (18x the risk from vaginal interourse per encounter) to result in HIV transmission from an infected partner. Internal tearing is likelier and hence contact of other fluids with one's blood stream. In Africa, HIV is especially prevalent in South Africa, which happens to have a practice called "dry sex" [1] which also leads to similar internal tearing for the receptive partner. Behavior that involves having these sorts of risky sexual encounters with multiple partners only compounds the likelihood that one will contract HIV. Not all groups engage in these behaviors with equal likelihood. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_sex
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  At the moment the virus is confined to that part of the gay population that attends wild orgies - healthy young men. Mortality for that segment of the population is low, although by all accounts monkeypox is still exquisitely painful. Once it gets to pregnant women we will see miscarriages in 4 out of 5 cases. Things will improve then, but not before.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    It's not confined to just the gay population. The UK has a child in the ICU over it for example: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1614153/monkeypox-British-child-in-intensive-care-latest https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1614153/monkeypox-British-... Many states in the US are confirming there is community spread happening, i.e. it's not restricted to a subset of the gay or hetero community. Here's Seattle for example confirming there are cases with no known sexual encounter or link: https://publichealthinsider.com/2022/07/06/monkeypox-update-local-transmission-of-the-virus-in-king-county-likely/ https://publichealthinsider.com/2022/07/06/monkeypox-update-...
    - scarmig 4y ago
      As an LGBT guy: Yes, there are non-gay people who get it. But gay men, and particularly people who have sex with a dozen different partners in a week (not many straight men in that particular group), are much more likely to contract it. Efforts to limit the spread of monkeypox should be targeted at the demographics most likely to contract it, as you get much more bang-for-buck that way.
      - qbasic_forever 4y ago
        The cat's out of the bag when community spread is confirmed like we see now. The time to take targeted measures for a community getting hit hard by it was a month ago when it was the dozens and low hundreds of cases. Now we're seeing 2k+ cases worldwide a day, and that's with very low testing. We need to shift into proper pandemic response mode--TETRIS, test-trace-isolate. There is nothing inherent about the DNA of this virus that makes it target men, gay men, or men who have sex with men. It will infect any human in the wrong place at the wrong time, period.
nostromo 4y ago
On the one hand, I agree with you. People should be more responsible. But if your strategy is "people should have less sex for a while" then your strategy will fail -- just as our "everyone stay home for two weeks" didn't work for Covid. Even if most people will follow the guidelines, enough people won't and your strategy will fail. So, yes, it is a government failure that we didn't have vaccines on hand for virus we stopped vaccinating for a long time ago. These are things we can control. We give the CDC a lot of money to help prevent these things. By the way -- you can't get a test if you're not a man that has sex with men -- and that's very likely skewing the results. On Twitter many straight people report having blisters and symptoms but are denied tests because they don't fit the profile.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Very bizarre to me the way that avoiding covid was moralized and yet the same public health professionals seem more than a little skittish to do so around this. Particularly when the behavior is easier to avoid than breathing the same air as other people. I'd also like to add that having group sex in public places is not the only way to have sex. Your comment seems to conflate this with all sexual activity.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Yeah... I was mostly in favor of Covid restrictions but it's bizarre to say that "no doing [huge list of normal things everyone does]" is fine and if you don't play along you're a plague rat, but balk at "maybe avoid having tons of anonymous sex with strangers for a little while" because that's just unreasonable.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Reasonable or not, resistance to that suggestion is a reality. We have to play the hand we're dealt.
  - suscialmadia 4y ago
    There is a long and dark history to moralizing and even legislating how and when consenting adults can have sex with each other. So maybe it's a bit like discussing eugenics. It wasn't a particularly difficult topic when people like Plato were abstractly philosophizing about ideal societies, but it is a charged topic today because we have seen where that road leads in practice. It's also easier to ask people to make shared sacrifices which everybody should bear equally.
krona 4y ago
> HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. UK technical briefing (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbreak-technical-briefings/investigation-into-monkeypox-outbreak-in-england-technical-briefing-3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbrea...): > Where known, more than half had history of STI in the last year (54%, 233 out of 445); 30% (123) were living with HIV; 16% (67 out of 445) had one or no sexual partners, and 31% (134) had 10 or more sexual partners in the last 3 months. Similar stats in Europe - 40% HIV positive where known. (https://monkeypoxreport.ecdc.europa.eu/ https://monkeypoxreport.ecdc.europa.eu/)
im3w1l 4y ago
Relying on altruism is clearly not working. So we have to consider how to properly incentivize responsible behavior.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
perardi 4y ago
“There is only so much government money and resources to fight diseases, this one seems like low hanging fruit that the affected community could solve with some leadership, personal responsibility and group effort.” Listen, as a gay man, I’m just going to go ahead and say we are not the greatest at self-control sometimes. But, living in Chicago? The minute they made the vaccine available for monkeypox, there were lines out the door. Through the roof demand. (Through the roof of Steamworks, because in a move that makes total sense but is also totally hilarious, the first pop-up event was at a bathhouse.) We will get this vaccine in a heartbeat. But we can’t. Because, in part…the FDA slow walked the inspection of the single plant that produces this vaccine. So it won’t be at full capacity for quite a while. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/monkeypox-vaccine-delayed-after-fda-waited-to-inspect-plant.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/monkeypox-vaccine-de...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nostromo 4y ago
  > Listen, as a gay man, I’m just going to go ahead and say we are not the greatest at self-control sometimes. As compared to whom? All those straight men and their renowned self-control?
  - n8cpdx 4y ago
    It’s pretty well documented that straight men have a harder time finding partners for anonymous/casual sex than gay men do. It’s like a whole complex for people, almost to the level of being a meme. https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Tinder-work-for-average-guys-like-myself https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Tinder-work-for-average-guy... As a gay man, I could absolutely be getting a blowjob in the next ~2 hours (conservatively) if I dropped my standards enough - almost anywhere. I don’t think that’s true for straight men; self control isn’t the limiting factor.
    - nostromo 4y ago
      So say that then. Saying gay men lack self control is a different claim entirely, not to mention offensive.
TMWNN 4y ago
>At this point in time Monkey Pox is a known disease and the fact that it is highly transmissible via male on male sex is a known transmission vector. If people insist on engaging in high risk sex with multiple partners while a communicable disease is running rampant, at what point does it become their responsibility? HIV is still a thing too and people continue to engage in this high risk behavior. Some numbers on said high-risk behavior: Gay men on average have six times the number of lifetime sexual partners as straight men or women (<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3334840/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3334840/>), and Psychology Today says 50% of gay men in San Francisco have more than 500 partners (<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201703/it-s-the-mode-men-have-more-sex-partners https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/...>).

christkv 4y ago

Ok so far the us has 0 fatalities associated with monkeypox and there are well known and effective vaccines that can also be used therapeutical after infection. Seems like a bit of sensationalist trying to make it a bigger threat than it seems to be in reality. It's also not airborne and requires direct contact with infected tissue.

smiddereens 4y ago

dathinab 4y ago

is it just me? From a external POV it looks like they didn't even start the fight. Like NR1 rule for fighting a virus outbreak is to properly educate about it. And idk. but I seem more "it's a problem of gay people" then I see "it's transmittable through skin contact and body fluids including indirect transmittance". Through I'm not in the US so I just see what "bubbles over" into various "international bubbles" I'm in.

im3w1l 4y ago

It's pretty clear that The System's capacity for rapid response to emerging situations is nil. People on every level of the hierarchy keep following the same old routines they always do. Even when it doesn't make sense anymore. There needs to be accountability. It needs investigating: Who should have done something, and why didn't they?

karencarits 4y ago

Norway has already reached (at least) 22 cases [1]. The top article at the front page of the national broadcaster is now about the lack of information and options for testing [2]. Also, many affected people do not develop the typical blisters [1] https://www.nrk.no/norge/22-tilfeller-av-apekopper-i-norge_-__vi-har-ikke-sett-en-sa-stor-utbredelse-tidligere-1.16029609 https://www.nrk.no/norge/22-tilfeller-av-apekopper-i-norge_-... [2] https://www.nrk.no/norge/er-smitta-av-apekoppar_-_-vanskeleg-a-fa-tak-i-informasjon-1.16030013 https://www.nrk.no/norge/er-smitta-av-apekoppar_-_-vanskeleg...

nickdothutton 4y ago

I am not naturally a doom merchant, but with the disease of this nature it is likely that by the time the country knows it has a problem it is already well established. We know already that the population of specific interest does not generally follow advice on limiting the spread of such diseases very rigorously. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong this time, but I doubt it. Behaviours tend not to change.

reureu 4y ago
Men who have sex with men (MSM) are quite adept at changing behavior as needed. Before HIV was even identified as the cause of AIDS, it was known from the basic epi that unprotected anal intercourse was a high risk activity. There was a grassroots effort to (among other things) encourage condom use, and a dramatic shift towards using condoms. It's only with the subsequent generations of MSM who did not see their friends die (thanks to better medications starting) that condom use started waning. A similar behavior shift happened after 2012, when HIV PrEP was found to be effective. If you're interested in this topic, there's a couple of really good documentaries about the early HIV epidemic and how gay men adapted: "how to survive a plague" and "we were here" are two of my favorites.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  During the early days of the HIV epidemic, front-line medical professionals in San Francisco received death threats when they when they suggested that bathhouses voluntarily close down, or at least turn up the lights so people could see if their partners were covered in KS sores. You can read about their experience at the University of California San Francisco's AIDS Oral History Project: https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/oral-history-project/ https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/oral-history-proj... Death threats: https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2m3n98v1;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e3127&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e3127&brand=oac4 https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2m3n98v1;NAAN=13030&doc.v...

qbasic_forever 4y ago

usrn 4y ago
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Sorry which planet/ alternative universe are you referring to? Example of infectious disease outbreak you wouldn't consider a "nothing burger"?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thombat 4y ago
  "COVID-19 leading cause of death for 45-54 year olds in 2021" https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/covid-19-leading-cause-of-death-for-45-54-year-olds-in-2021.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/covid-19...
- triyambakam 4y ago
  Bill did say "we have to prepare for the next one [pandemic]"
immigrantheart 4y ago
I think I have a functioning brain. I am vaccinated and also had a booster as well. Since 2019 I never got sick due to WFH, and to this day never got Covid as well, any variants. I don't use mask to go outside, and I am not the most hygiene person, growing up in a 3rd world country. I am constantly exposed to Covid positive people, including my own wife who got Covid, 24x7 and I did not do any social distancing at all. I still don't get Covid. Meanwhile, I know a friend got infected with Covid 2 times, despite having vaccinated and boosted. Is it just me or my 3rd world country - not so hygiene - probably multiple times infected with various virus - body is stronger than average 1st worlders? TLDR: This is 2022 and I still don't get Covid despite not being careful. Go figure. I wanna know too.

perardi 4y ago

Also from the Times: “Will There Be Enough Monkeypox Vaccine?” Jynneos, the company that makes the better vaccine for monkeypox, was in the middle of refurbishing the one plant that produces it. “The manufacturing facility that could make more has been shut for a planned expansion since last August. The facility is not expected to reopen until late this summer at the earliest, and additional vaccine manufactured there may not become available for at least six months after that.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/health/monkeypox-vaccine-bavarian-nordic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/health/monkeypox-vaccine-...) So that’s a bit of a problem. We do have a smallpox vaccine that seems to have significant cross-reactivity to monkeypox, but, the side effects can be unpleasant. (https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/monkeypox-vaccine-101 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/monkeypox-vac...) Will this actually become a serious pandemic? I dunno. I have friends who have contracted this. But they did so at…um…let’s say underground parties. I’m really unclear if this will spread to the general population, as it is primarily spreading within men-who-have-sex with men networks. (My friend who got it over Memorial Day shook it off pretty easily, other acquaintances contracted it too recently to judge the full course of the disease yet.)

LatteLazy 4y ago

We should stop calling it monkey pox as it's clearly a new, human adapted variant...

qbasic_forever 4y ago
It actually spreads and comes from rodents.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

“scientists say” inspires so much confidence (speaking as a scientist).