6 ms·

According to study published in New England Journal of medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively in men who have sex with men.

by 300bps 4y ago

According to study published in New England Journal of medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively in men who have sex with men. 41% of those infected with monkeypox were coinfected with HIV. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/monkeypox-driven-overwhelmingly-sex-men-major-study-finds-rcna39564 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/monk... For anyone worried that monkeypox will be equivalent to Covid, the evidence does not support that.

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
Well, yes, maybe. The gay community also happens to be rather well-organized when it comes to STD threats. Together with the more benign course this strain seems to take, the varied presentation, and issues of shame, it is not unreasonable to believe that self-selection and other issues may affect the statistics right now. And, either way, the statistics would have looked exactly like that in the early years of the HIV epidemic, which obviously became a huge burden on society as a whole, both in terms of infections and death as well as curtailing sexual freedom.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  This isn't really true. The continued persistence of new HIV cases, syphilis and gonorrhea isn't really an indicator of being "well organized." There's basically no reason anyone post-1995 should have gotten HIV, and yet 34k+ people a year, mostly young men, continue to get it.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Well... the US at least has also spent the last few decades decreasing funding to community sexual health centers, which were at the forefront of the AIDS response. So, that's not great. Hopefully this is a reason to reallocate money to a critical part of public health. If anyone is curious, there's a 2019 survey of "the challenges experienced by state and local public health entities at the frontline of STD prevention and control" (NCSD Phase II report): https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase-II-Final-Report.pdf https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase...
zosima 4y ago
No, it probably won't spread nearly as well outside the gay community, and never become anything resembling Covid (or smallpox fortunately...). But it's spread so extensively in the gay community, that it's also going to infect people outside that community now. And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans, it may mutate to become much more human-to-human transmissible. (like Covid did)
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans This has already been the case for a long time, maybe forever? It's endemic in parts of Africa, just never managed to gain much of a foothold outside that area. But even without that movement, the petri dish for such mutations has been open for business for quite a while.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  > And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. But in this case, we already have a vaccine for it. In the US at least, once we start opening up smallpox vaccine reserves, if you're in the gay community and you have a lot of partners, seems like a no-brainer to get the vaccine and be done with the risk of tissue-scarring pox.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Seems like a no-brainer for most people to get the covid vaccine too, and yet something like 1 in 5 haven’t done it, and maybe up to half aren’t fully vaccinated. There’s also the question of availability and it currently isn’t clear how available the monkeypox vaccinations are.
    - stu2b50 4y ago
      Compared to COVID, monkeypox is much harder to spread (as you can see in the statistics - it's mainly in one very specific group, gay men in specific cities within specific subcommunities where members have a lot of sexual partners), and in some sense, more eyebrow raising results. It's likely that Monkeypox is actually less deadly than COVID, but the possibility of lesions growing on your genitals, anus, mouth that with a quite high possibility leads to permanent tissue scaring is quite frightening. The fact that it's mainly in populations of gay men in San Francisco and New York also help - I would wager that cross section of the population is heavily left leaning, and heavily vaccine supportive. The monkeypox vaccine is just the smallpox vaccine. The US has a stockpile of it and it is still given to military members.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> According to study published in New England Journal of medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively in men who have sex with men. I've heard from various outlets that people who are not MSM were, as of a couple weeks ago, in some places being denied tests even with distinct symptoms because they didn't meet the criteria for test allocation. Case statistics can be affected by bias in how you identify cases.
- makomk 4y ago
  It's definitely not just caused by a lack of testing. The UKHSA is reporting a huge difference in positivity rates between men and women: "More adult men were screened for orthopox virus (3,467, 80% of all tests) compared to adult woman (447, 10% of all tests) and children (173, 4%). Monkeypox positivity rate was considerably higher in adult men, 54%, compared to 2.2% in adult women and 0.6% in children." See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbreak-technical-briefings/investigation-into-monkeypox-outbreak-in-england-technical-briefing-4 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbrea...

by 300bps 4y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

Well, yes, maybe. The gay community also happens to be rather well-organized when it comes to STD threats. Together with the more benign course this strain seems to take, the varied presentation, and issues of shame, it is not unreasonable to believe that self-selection and other issues may affect the statistics right now. And, either way, the statistics would have looked exactly like that in the early years of the HIV epidemic, which obviously became a huge burden on society as a whole, both in terms of infections and death as well as curtailing sexual freedom.

foobiekr 4y ago
This isn't really true. The continued persistence of new HIV cases, syphilis and gonorrhea isn't really an indicator of being "well organized." There's basically no reason anyone post-1995 should have gotten HIV, and yet 34k+ people a year, mostly young men, continue to get it.
ethbr0 4y ago
Well... the US at least has also spent the last few decades decreasing funding to community sexual health centers, which were at the forefront of the AIDS response. So, that's not great. Hopefully this is a reason to reallocate money to a critical part of public health. If anyone is curious, there's a 2019 survey of "the challenges experienced by state and local public health entities at the frontline of STD prevention and control" (NCSD Phase II report): https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase-II-Final-Report.pdf https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase...

zosima 4y ago

No, it probably won't spread nearly as well outside the gay community, and never become anything resembling Covid (or smallpox fortunately...). But it's spread so extensively in the gay community, that it's also going to infect people outside that community now. And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans, it may mutate to become much more human-to-human transmissible. (like Covid did)

CWuestefeld 4y ago
There is also a high risk that now, when it's solidly established itself in humans This has already been the case for a long time, maybe forever? It's endemic in parts of Africa, just never managed to gain much of a foothold outside that area. But even without that movement, the petri dish for such mutations has been open for business for quite a while.
stu2b50 4y ago
> And it's likely going to stay with the gay community as yet another STD for many years going forward. But in this case, we already have a vaccine for it. In the US at least, once we start opening up smallpox vaccine reserves, if you're in the gay community and you have a lot of partners, seems like a no-brainer to get the vaccine and be done with the risk of tissue-scarring pox.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Seems like a no-brainer for most people to get the covid vaccine too, and yet something like 1 in 5 haven’t done it, and maybe up to half aren’t fully vaccinated. There’s also the question of availability and it currently isn’t clear how available the monkeypox vaccinations are.
  - stu2b50 4y ago
    Compared to COVID, monkeypox is much harder to spread (as you can see in the statistics - it's mainly in one very specific group, gay men in specific cities within specific subcommunities where members have a lot of sexual partners), and in some sense, more eyebrow raising results. It's likely that Monkeypox is actually less deadly than COVID, but the possibility of lesions growing on your genitals, anus, mouth that with a quite high possibility leads to permanent tissue scaring is quite frightening. The fact that it's mainly in populations of gay men in San Francisco and New York also help - I would wager that cross section of the population is heavily left leaning, and heavily vaccine supportive. The monkeypox vaccine is just the smallpox vaccine. The US has a stockpile of it and it is still given to military members.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> According to study published in New England Journal of medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively in men who have sex with men. I've heard from various outlets that people who are not MSM were, as of a couple weeks ago, in some places being denied tests even with distinct symptoms because they didn't meet the criteria for test allocation. Case statistics can be affected by bias in how you identify cases.

makomk 4y ago
It's definitely not just caused by a lack of testing. The UKHSA is reporting a huge difference in positivity rates between men and women: "More adult men were screened for orthopox virus (3,467, 80% of all tests) compared to adult woman (447, 10% of all tests) and children (173, 4%). Monkeypox positivity rate was considerably higher in adult men, 54%, compared to 2.2% in adult women and 0.6% in children." See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbreak-technical-briefings/investigation-into-monkeypox-outbreak-in-england-technical-briefing-4 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbrea...