Some For several weeks this summer, the world worried that chickenpox could become the next global pandemic. Peaking in early August, the US recorded 600 infections a day and the fumbling response of health authorities was like the early days of Covid-19. vaccines are come slow and in short supply for most of the fall. The old test was jam. Antiviral drugs, although they exist, are virtually impossible to buy because they are not federally authorized to treat the disease. While most cases are in gay and bisexual men, there are concerns that the infection is rarely fatal but is often extremely painful, can take weeks to subside, can spread to broader community.
Things look very different today, at least for now. By mid-December, mpox, as the World Health Organization has now renamed, appeared in 110 countries, but the spread has slowed dramatically. America has recognized 29,740 cases as of December 21—more than a third of the global total—only a handful of registrations per day.
While one reason is improved access to vaccines and testing, and another is that mpox is inherently much harder to transmit than Covid, the biggest reason, most agree. , are the people most at risk who have protected themselves during those critical early stages. weeks when the authorities failed. “Success is down to community mobilization,” says Joseph Osmundson, a gay activist, molecular microbiologist and clinical assistant professor at New York University.
Osmundson helped broker what could become a symbol of the response to the mpox: a fleet of tall, white-painted vans with sealed windows for privacy. Inside, each truck is a mobile vaccine clinic, run by the New York City health department. Between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, these vans park late at night outside bars and clubs that cater to gay and bisexual people, including some that host love parties. sex. (Many of those parties are also voluntarily closed for a while.) The gay community told the city where people would be most at risk, and venue owners agreed it was protecting those. Their patronage deserves the stigma of leaving the truck parked outside. The valve vaccination program has administered more than 3,000 doses.
The show shows where the health department is smart in finding people who need help, but also, it represents a community that isn’t willing to wait for health authorities to find them. From the very beginning of the mpox pandemic, gay and bisexual men and others in the gay community have been approached, harassed, and incited. Some sufferers have posted online videos or given press interviews detailing their symptoms, despite the risk of social shame (“He has chickenpox, guess what? what he did”) to warn others of the risks. People have been posting on social media and WhatsApp groups about which clinics have vaccines left or how to diagnose when most doctors have never seen a case of mpox before. Those lucky enough to receive antiretroviral treatment before they were given widely available advice for people to turn to their doctors on how to navigate the mind-crippling bureaucracy to personally authorized.
Most would agree that homosexual men, especially those with multiple sexual partners, get credit for that decline in skiing. According to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show in the fallmen who feel at risk voluntarily abstain from sex, be with only one or a few partners, log out of networking apps, or skip parties that involve group sex .
