Over the past month, the number of people identified with monkeypox in New York City has multiplied by 30, from 10 to 336, a figure that surely underestimates the incidence rate, given that many cases have gone undiagnosed. During this time, Mayor Eric Adams was busy celebrating Pride, celebrating a party at Gracie Mansion and reminding the world how much New York embraces the LGBTQ community, while so many other parts of the country seem prone to regression. towards the time before Stonewall. era.
“Here in New York,” the mayor declared, “we’re happy to say ‘we’re gay.’
But “we” don’t suffer from monkeypox, a disease that mainly (and currently) affects men who have sex with men. The lack of public information about the disease, along with difficulties in accessing the vaccine, have shown how the professed love and support of the left can feel rhetorical.
In the more liberal parts of the country we are apparently in the midst of a new wave of liberation and understanding around sexual and gender identity, which transforms the social order and expands our cultural advantage. Movies like “Fire Island,” to take a recent example, a romantic comedy set between a group of strange and ethnically diverse friends during a hedonistic week in the Pines, enjoy widespread popularity that would have eluded them even long ago. a decade. And yet, at the same time, here we are, decades after the AIDS crisis, unable or unwilling to effectively manage a virus that disproportionately affects gay men.
Although smallpox has not killed anyone in the United States, it has smallpox-like symptoms: fever, chills, muscle aches, a violent rash that can disrupt a patient’s life for weeks. Among gay men in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak across the country, anxiety has been on the rise. “This summer there’s this mess about the community,” Michael Donnelly, a public health activist, told me. “There’s a real sense of injustice because we just went through that. A lot of us have tried to do the right thing.”
The “this,” of course, is the Covid, which gay men have taken very seriously; from the early days of vaccination, Hell’s Kitchen, where many live, maintained one of the highest inoculation rates in the city.
What you need to know about the monkeypox virus
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What is monkeypox? Smallpox is a virus endemic to parts of central and western Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958, after outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What are the symptoms? Monkeypox creates a rash that begins with flat red marks that rise and fill with pus. Infected people can also have fever and body aches. Symptoms usually appear between six and 13 days, but can take up to three weeks after exposure and can last between two and four weeks. Health officials say smallpox vaccines and other treatments can be used to control an outbreak.
How infectious is it? The virus spreads primarily through body fluids, skin contact, and respiratory droplets, although some experts suggest that it could occasionally pass through the air. It does not usually cause major outbreaks, although this year it has spread in unusual ways and among populations that have not been vulnerable in the past.
What is the situation in the United States? Experts say the rapid spread of monkeypox throughout the country and the government’s slow response raise questions about the nation’s readiness for pandemic threats. Tests will not be available until the end of this month and vaccines will be scarce for months. The official case count, now by the hundreds, is likely to be an understatement.
By trade, Mr. Donnelly is a data scientist who served as a New York State consultant during the first year of the pandemic. That’s why his friends have turned to him for help figuring out what to do with the monkey’s smallpox. A friend, he said, has been suffering for eight days and has not yet received test results. “They get conflicting messages. Is this an STI or not?” Quite vaguely, the Centers for Disease Control explains that people with smallpox “usually report having close and sustained physical contact” with other people who have contracted the virus.
“The system has been very slow in responding to this crisis,” Mr. Donnelly. “There’s antiviral treatment for that, but people don’t get treatment because of regulatory barriers. And beyond that, there are other people who would settle for pain management, but I think doctors aren’t aware of it. how painful that is: they are knives every time you go to the bathroom, and people go home with Tylenol recipes. ”
On Tuesday, the third time the city’s health department offered registration for vaccine appointments, the scheduling site closed quickly, prompting Erik Bottcher, a city councilor representing Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea and he knows four people who contracted the virus last week. , to write on Twitter: “Aaa and the website is blocked immediately. Who could have predicted this? to everybody.”
The first times appointments for vaccines were available in late June and again earlier this month were also plagued by problems. On the morning of July 6, the city’s health department said on Twitter that a new round of appointments was underway, but did not follow up again until early in the afternoon, at which time officials announced that an “error” had caused the appointments already being taken.
The supply of vaccines has not been close enough to meet demand, in large part because hundreds of thousands of doses have been seized in Denmark as a result of the FDA’s refusal to release them because it had not recently inspected the vaccine. factory where they were even manufactured. although the equivalent of the European Union agency had done so.
“I think it’s embarrassing for us as a country that immediately after the Covid-19 pandemic we are surprised by another pandemic and we can’t address it properly,” Mr. Bottcher.
Faced with growing pressure, Mr Adams called on the Biden administration earlier this week to deliver more vaccines to the city beyond what has already been allocated, which includes 14,500 new doses just released. arrive and that the city plans to distribute to each district. But that figure accounts for about 10 percent of the national total, even though the city has 32 percent of the country’s cases. Issues related to fair access are also worrisome, as the city’s reliance on Twitter to distribute information on vaccine availability has privileged those who have time to stay online.
Among those lucky enough to have received their photos, many were able to book appointments through a whispering network of well-connected men in technology, health and media, when a much wider demographic group would have benefited from the use. of an extensive public information campaign.
Given the conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion in almost every sector of contemporary life, was this really the way forward?