Over the past month, the number of people diagnosed with monkeypox in New York City has increased more than 30-fold, from 10 to 336, a figure that likely underestimates the incidence rate, given that many cases remain unreported. undiagnosed. During this period, Mayor Eric Adams was busy celebrating Pride, holding a party at the Gracie Mansion and reminding the world how deeply New York embraces the LGBTQ community, while many other parts of the country seem inclined to a regression to pre-Stonewall. era.
“Here in New York,” the mayor declared, “we’re happy to say ‘we’re gay.’
But “we” are not getting 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 around vaccine access, have shown how the professed love and support coming from the left can feel rhetorical.
In the most liberal parts of the country we are supposedly in the midst of a new wave of liberation and understanding about sexual and gender identity, a wave that is transforming the social order and expanding our cultural edge. Movies like “Fire Island,” to take a recent example, a romantic comedy set among a group of eccentric, ethnically diverse friends during a hedonistic week at the Pines, enjoy mainstream popularity that will had escaped them even a decade ago. And yet, at the same time, here we are, decades after the AIDS crisis, unable or unwilling to effectively manage a virus that is disproportionately affecting gay men.
Although monkeypox has not killed anyone in the United States, it brings smallpox-like symptoms — fever, chills, muscle aches, a violent rash that carries the potential to disrupt a patient’s life for weeks. Among gay men in New York, the epicenter of the nationwide outbreak, anxiety has grown. “There’s such a thing about the community this summer,” Michael Donnelly, a public health activist, told me. “There’s a real sense of injustice because we just went through this. Many of us tried to do the right thing.”
“This” of course, is Covid, which homosexuals have taken very seriously; From the earliest days of vaccination, Hell’s Kitchen, where many live, maintained one of the highest vaccination rates in the city.
What you need to know about monkeypox virus
What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a virus endemic to parts of Central and West Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958 after outbreaks appeared in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By trade, Mr. Donnelly is a data scientist who served as a consultant in New York State during the first year of the pandemic. Because of this, his friends have turned to him for help figuring out what to do about monkeypox. A friend, he said, has been suffering for eight days and still hasn’t received his test results. “They are getting conflicting messages. Is this an STI or not?” In no uncertain terms, the Centers for Disease Control explains that people with monkeypox “generally report having close, sustained physical contact” with others who have contracted the virus.
“The system has been extremely slow in responding to this crisis,” continued Mr. Donnelly. “There is antiviral treatment for this, but people are not getting treatment because of regulatory hurdles. And beyond that, you have other people who would be happy with pain management, but I think doctors are just not aware of how painful it is – it’s knives every time you go to the bathroom – and people are going home with prescriptions for Tylenol.
On Tuesday, the third time the city’s health department offered registration for vaccination appointments, the appointment page quickly closed, prompting Erik Bottcher, a city councilman who represents Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea and who knows four people who were infected with the virus during the past week. , to write on Twitter: “Aaaand the website crashes immediately. Who could have predicted this? a: EVERYONE.”
The first cases in which vaccine appointments became available in late June and again earlier this month were also beset by problems. On the morning of July 6, the city’s health department said on Twitter that a new round of appointments was on the way, but it didn’t go ahead again until the early afternoon, at which point officials announced that an “error” had occurred. resulted in appointments already received.
The supply of vaccines has not been close to meeting demand largely because hundreds of thousands of doses have been seized in Denmark as a result of the FDA’s refusal to release them on the grounds that it had not recently inspected the factory where were produced, even. although the equivalent agency of the European Union had done so.
“I think it’s embarrassing for us as a country that right after the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re hit with another pandemic and we’re not able to handle it properly,” Mr. Bottcher told me.
Facing mounting 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 that have just arrived and that the city plans distribute them in every municipality. But this figure represents roughly 10 percent of the national total, though the city has 32 percent of country cases. Issues around fair access are also troubling, given that the city’s reliance on Twitter to spread information about vaccine availability has privileged those with time to spend online.
Among those lucky enough to have their pictures taken, many were able to book appointments through word of mouth from a whispering network of well-connected people in technology, healthcare and media, when a much wider demographic would to have benefited from the use. of a broad public information campaign.
With conversations about diversity, equality and inclusion front of mind in almost every sector of contemporary life, was this really the way forward?
