We had a chance to control monkeypox. It’s been around for a long time, so it’s pretty well understood. It’s not that contagious. We have tests and vaccines for it. But the sluggish official response to the disease has lost us many of the advantages we had, and we could see a major outbreak soon, starting in the gay community and spreading out from there.
As Adam Pasick points out in the New York Times,
[T]he U.S. has fallen short at every turn, whether in rolling out mass testing or ramping up vaccine supplies. It has been a troubling replay of the coronavirus pandemic …
There are already at least 700 cases in the U.S. There probably will be many more infections before the outbreak can be controlled — if at this point it can be controlled at all.
Monkeypox isn’t a sexually transmitted disease, but it spreads most effectively through skin-to-skin contact, and obviously there’s a lot of that during sex. So it may not come as a shock to learn that the disease has spread most quickly amongst men who have sex with men.
But there may already be many more cases outside the gay community; we don’t know, because we aren’t testing anyone outside of “high risk” categories. We know about the outbreaks we’ve seen so far in some populations of gay and bi men because these are basically the only people getting tested.
By all accounts, getting monkeypox is a miserable experience; there’s nothing funny about the growing possibility of large outbreaks. But some people seem to think it’s hilarious, largely because, at least at the moment, it’s mainly affecting gay men.
Others strike a more somber note, suggesting that gay men who get the disease deserve it because of their “lifestyle.”
Monkeypox is rarely fatal, but fuck you anyway.
Other commenters make crude insinuations.
Off of Twitter, the far-right Western Journal took a cruelly lighthearted approach to reporting the latest news on the disease. “Just One Week After End of ‘Pride Month,’ Liberal Cities Are Monkeypox Hotspots,” read the headline. The article itself began:
To paraphrase the old adage, “Pride Month” cometh before a rise in monkeypox cases.
We may not be able to predict the course of the monkeypox outbreak, but there’s one thing we can be sure of: right-wing homophobes are going to use it as an opportunity to attack LGBTQ+ people. As a piece by Andrew Sciallo in the Advotate notes
During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan successfully weaponized the disease to demonize our community. … Today we are seeing a similar effort from the right as it continues to cause uproar over drag queen brunches and wish-label us as “groomers” and “pedophiles.”
Let us learn from our own queer history. …
The question is not “Will they use monkeypox against us?” It is “Will we be ready for them when they do?”
I think we’d better get ready fast.
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The same people denigrating Pride are the ones who unironically love the “Proud to Be an American” (or Canadian) song.
I guess covid 19 is god’s judgement against immoral fools who don’t believe in vaccination and germ theory.
We know about the outbreaks we’ve seen so far in some populations of gay and bi men because these are basically the only people getting tested.
Uh-huh. And so the group that first reports a disease gets branded as the Cootie People—cf. the so-called Spanish Influenza, whose patient zero was in Kansas.
@ full metal ox
As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s only called Spanish Flu because Spain was neutral in WW1.
As you point out the virus was rife in the US, and a number of other European countries.
However as this was wartime, press censorship was in place.
All the warring countries prohibited reporting of the pandemic for fear that would assist enemy intelligence (possible troop shortages; loss of industrial capacity on the home front etc.).
Ironically the disease was also in Germany; but they censored too.
The only place the press could freely report on the pandemic was in neutral Spain. And so the myth was established that that was where it originated.
Now, the WHO disavows the naming of diseases after any locale, animal, or group just so as to avoid such prejudice.
I see that we can add another data point to the “it’s Nazis who call things ‘degenerate'” pile. Those symbols flanking the nym “Ghost of Almogavers” are the wolfsangel, a Nazi symbol a bit less well known than the infamous swastika to which it bears more than a slight resemblance. Currently in use by American white nationalist groups like Aryan Nation as well as assorted Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups.
At least they’re not denying its existence?
Re: the slow response
I’m increasingly thinking that this is malice, not incompetence, and the powers that be – not just Trump and his cronies but most of the political class and bourgeois – actually want mass death. Likewise with their useless response to global heating. IDK if they assume they’ll survive and come out on top, or what, but it’s very depressing.
Re: monkeypox
I’m on Humira, so if I get it I’ll probably die – that class of viruses is much more dangerous to people on TNF-a blockers than COVID is, IIRC. Fun times.
What do these people imagine the 2003 US outbreak of monkeypox was “God’s judgement” against? Owners of pet prairie dogs?
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/outbreak/us-outbreaks.html
Another of the many pernicious effects of this sort of homophobic demonization is that if the current outbreak does spread more widely, many idiots will be reluctant to seek treatment or cooperate with health authorities on it because they’ll be afraid of people thinking they’re gay.
(Summertime poison ivy sufferers are also going to get some of the backwash of this toxic (toxodendritic?) attitude.)
@Trying:
The same people denigrating Pride are the ones who unironically love the “Proud to Be an American” (or Canadian) song.
Oh, lord. I remember the night some members of my old anime club went out to some honky-tonk joint—this would’ve been circa Operation Desert Storm—where, on the stroke of midnight, they passed out little American flags to wave in time to that song. (My seatmate and I dueled with ours; they had pointy ends.)
At least “God Bless the USA” was written and intended as an expression of unexamined sentimental knee-jerk patriotism; what grates is the use of songs that make me want to assemble a Time-Life compilation entitled “PAY ATTENTION TO THE DAMN LYRICS.” Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”, of course, heads the playlist in patriotic contexts; another hardy perennial at my neighborhood July 4th fireworks display was Bowie’s “Young Americans”—which, last I checked, was an English expat’s snapshot of post-Watergate angst and malaise.
Another thing to consider is that monkey pox could be getting into the animal reservoirs in other countries now, making it more endemic outside of Africa. It is mainly spread via rodents (not monkeys).
Unfortunately, that is less than useless. Note that everyone knows Covid came from China, regardless of what it was called.
Okay, this bugs me. It’s like they don’t know that one word can have different nuances in different contexts. The expression “pride goes before a fall” means something like “you can be sure about something and then it can go to shit, so don’t be overconfident.” It’s about pride in achievement, not in identity.
@Dave:
In fairness, everything comes from China these days.
@epitome of incomprehensibility:
Not even pride in achievement per se; specifically, hubris. Which tends to have more to do with counting your chickens before they’ve hatched, rather than after.
“Pride” is another of those words like “love” that causes no end of problems because of conflating multiple things. With “pride” there’s hubris (bad), self-respect (good), and feeling accomplished (good, if it’s after they’ve hatched). With “love” it’s, at the very least: empathic/sympathic love (their needs, joy, happiness are as important to you as if they were your own); that “awwww!” sort of feeling that accompanies something cute or beautiful where you feel protective toward it; lust; and avarice, which is desire-to-possess or loving what something can do for you. Of those, avarice can be bad, particularly if it’s directed toward a person. “Romantic love” tends to be a mixture of up to all four of these things. The first two likely evolved with our long period of parenthood before our sprog become fully independent, aiding in pair-bonding and in being protective of children and placing their interests level with or above our own. The third, obviously, helps get those children born in the first place. The fourth, when directed at a paramour, is the wellspring of much evil, from jealousy to the motivated misogyny (as it’s usually possessive of women, specifically) that leads to controlling-type abuse and DV and that is the major source in turn of generalized misogyny. And all of those distinct, though sometimes comorbid, things lumped together with just one word, at least in the English language.
I wonder how many supposedly straight men will explain getting monkeypox, then? There’s a lot of married, loudly hetero guys out there on the DL.
Gonna be tough for these ‘phobes to explain how they got it — particularly if the wife gets it.
I may or may not laugh at them (but feel sorry for all their partners). They won’t think these kind of comments are so funny when Bubba from the factory tells everyone in their favorite bar. “Har, har, Cletus done got the monkeypox! He must be a (slur)!” Particularly if he got it from a woman who got it from a man, who etc.
You know they’ll lie. Literally their “best” option will be to blame a (female) prostitute — which is what these guys do all the time anyway.
If this is “God’s judgement”, then, like AIDS before it, God must *really* love monogamous lesbians.
@Kimstu: That thought occurred to me right away too. And also hedgehogs. And all the other rodents. And actual monkeys, I guess.
@ Surplus to Requirements
“What is love? Baby don’t hurt me…”
Sad that people react this way. Their homophobia is disgusting. Why’s it always the gay or bisexual men they accuse of God slaying out of no where?
….
Also sad how trans men who have you know what with men are the trans male group at highest risk of STDs or other and no one seems to care…..
Considering I’m one of those, I’d like to change that.
Another scary disease, when everybody who works in healthcare is already exhausted.
Signed, she who sent up the HIPAA violation alert Thursday evening and spent way too much time proving that it was the other vendor’s fault (which they eventually admitted to).
I wonder what Freud would have to say about this typo. Assuming it is a typo.
https://twitter.com/Freddygray31/status/1550056892566839296/photo/1
@Alan: Freud would say whatever is German for “I told you so.” Or in the idiom of some of his people, “So, nu?”
I would say “Wow, that guy sure gets around”.