Monkeypox. Why is it mainly affecting gay men?

The vaccine is being offered to healthcare workers in areas specialising in monkeypox cases too. The vaccine is on short supply apparently.

I don’t think it’s an intentional cover up, but I do think that sloppy reporting and entrenched homophobia is playing a part.

Doodledog

I think it's important that we are told unambiguously how it is transmitted. If we aren't, then as AmberSpyglass says, there will be rumour and blame, and people will think that they don't need to protect themselves.

I don't think that there is a cover-up of any kind, though. I think that it's more a case that at present the majority of people in the UK with it are gay men. Correlation rather than causation.

They can’t tell us unambiguously how it’s transmitted Doodledog because they don’t know. It’s all in the WHO report I posted above.

Except the danger of focusing the coverage and comms around men who have sex with men is that the general public will assume that that means it’s transmitted through anal or oral sex when that is not the case. So the people who don’t do that, especially who don’t do it with men, will assume they aren’t at risk.

And the more it’s associated as a gay male problem, the worse the backlash will be when cases start to really hit in children - because more assumptions will get made, and those assumptions will get people hurt.

Are you suggesting the BBC should not say the majority of cases are in gay men.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. They should make it clear that it’s not an STI and that while the current majority of cases have been diagnosed in gay men, that’s likely because they’re more likely to be frequently tested, especially around unusual skin conditions, that it’s transmitted in XYZ ways and there is no reason to believe that only gay men are affected.

AmberSpyglass

Except the danger of focusing the coverage and comms around men who have sex with men is that the general public will assume that that means it’s transmitted through anal or oral sex when that is not the case. So the people who don’t do that, especially who don’t do it with men, will assume they aren’t at risk.

And the more it’s associated as a gay male problem, the worse the backlash will be when cases start to really hit in children - because more assumptions will get made, and those assumptions will get people hurt.

I agree.

Sorry, that should read ‘the current majority of diagnosed cases are among gay men’. And ‘men who have sex with men’ is more accurate terminology - which I think we have a right to expect from the BBC!

I watched a similar strategy at very close quarters with HIV, it was a mistake back so I am very wary of taking that strategy again.

As did I - but my point is that it’s precisely because of HIV that we’re seeing more men who have sex with men get tested for unexplained rashes. It’s also why people assume ‘gay men are being disproportionately diagnosed’ = ‘gay men are getting it because of the way they have sex’, which is untrue in this case because it’s not an STI.

I’m not saying it isn’t a concern for the community, I’m saying correlation isn’t causation and letting that go unchallenged isn’t doing anyone any favours.

No I am not saying it's an STI. I just worry that if we pretend that it isnt impacting a section of the community more than others, well the ones who will suffer from that pretence will be gay men. And I dont want that to happen again. I suppose I think it's better to try to deal with the homophobia that may surface than risk the lives of gay men by not prioritising them IF they are most at risk.

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This situation update is also worth reading, it identifies that the current outbreak differs from previous outbreaks, which were primarily in children, and why older people are less likely to be infected as they have been vaccinated against smallpox.
www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON393

This thread sums it up fantastically:

twitter.com/jessdkant/status/1550862221906935813

No one has breathed a word about who is most vulnerable here. We simply have no clue but it tends to be how things are these days.

I have heard it's because gay men are more likely to have multiple partners than most other groups.
I'm not sure if there's any truth in it, which is why I was interested in others opinions.

This post has been deleted as it quotes a deleted post.

casdon

An extract from your own link

Speaking on a conference call, Dr Jennifer McQuiston, the deputy director of the CDC’s division of high consequence pathogens and pathology, said it was not a surprise that pediatric cases of monkeypox had emerged, but “there is no evidence to date that we are seeing this virus spread outside” the communities of gay, bisexual and other men who had sex with men

She said 99% of the 2,891 monkeypox cases confirmed in the US involved men who have sex with men, but there had been a handful of women and transgender men who had become infected

So I’m not quite sure why you’re saying there’s no sexual link?

If you read the other report from the WHO it explains Kandinsky. Previous outbreaks have been in different groups. What they are saying is that they have no evidence that sexual transmission is the cause, they don’t know that gay men are transmitting it through intercourse. Maybe in time there will be proof that is the case, or not, but in the meantime the WHO is a better source of information than the media.

Just an uninformed thought here,if as said previously can last on fabric for up to two weeks,could it be passed from buying clothing where workers may be have the virus.

Downtoearth that’s reminded me of the story of ‘the plague village’ Eyam; where the disease arrived via a roll of fabric from London.

Scary thought Fanny

Men who have sex with men must be thought to be at particular risk because they are one of the very small group of people being offered the vaccine. From the NHS website:

This includes:

some healthcare workers

some men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with other men

people who have been in close contact with someone who has monkeypox

NHS

Surely if the disease starts with a few gay men who are having multiple partners then it will pass to more gay men and so on. Skin to skin contact with multiple partners is obviously going to spread it quickly. It stays mostly in the gay community that way, but like Aids will start entering the wider population once bisexual men start having contact with women.