Monkeypox. Why is it mainly affecting gay men?

Well of course this will leave the gay community when men who pick up other men go back to their wives/partners and infect them. Ultimately, this kind of disease is always spread most quickly through people having multiple partners.

Caleo

It just so happened it started off with gay men and it snowballed from there because gay and bisexual men form a closed community. However eventually monkey pox will spread to heterosexual people too, perhaps via bisexual men.

It already has transmitted into females in the UK, there were 14 cases in women as at last week. 73% of cases are in London so far, but it is becoming widespread across the UK.

It just so happened it started off with gay men and it snowballed from there because gay and bisexual men form a closed community. However eventually monkey pox will spread to heterosexual people too, perhaps via bisexual men.

Just to add that any disease which is passed through close contact with another human is certainly going to spread quickly if people have multiple partners, and lots of them.

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.

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

Scary thought Fanny

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

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.

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.

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?

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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.

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.

This thread sums it up fantastically:

twitter.com/jessdkant/status/1550862221906935813

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

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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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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