For pioneering AIDS activists, monkeypox outbreak evokes a sense of déjà vu

As monkeypox cases surge around the world, four pioneers of the AIDS activist movement watch in awe and nostalgia.

Some of the similarities between the two viruses speak for themselves. Like the HIV strain that caused the AIDS pandemic in the late 1970s, the current monkeypox outbreak originated in sub-Saharan Africa, I found an amazing Men who have sex with men living in the world’s big cities. Epidemiologists don’t fully understand how the current monkeypox outbreak is spreading, but Recent research Point out sexually transmitted diseases.

The four pioneering AIDS activists of the 1980s and ’90s argue that other important but less obvious parallels play out in real time.

like Early days of the AIDS crisisthey argue that the government’s message about the outbreak was flawed, that gay men were blindsided, and that public health officials were unable to defeat a serious disease plaguing the LGBTQ community. increase.

“It feels like déjà vu,” said Peter Tatchell, a gay rights activist who was a key member of the UK’s Gay Liberation Front. “The lessons from the AIDS crisis and Covid have clearly not been learned.”

Public health authorities around the world are slow in combat AIDS first began appearing in men who had sex with men in the late 1970s. announced the weekly report.

“From October 1980 to May 1981, five young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at three different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Received,” the report read. “Two of the patients died.”

Three years later, the US government announced the development of an AIDS test in addition to a vaccine, but it never materialized. By 1985, Estimate 12,000 Americans died from the disease.

Similarly, activists argue that the global response to domesticated monkeypox was too slow to contain the surging number of cases. reported worldwide Since the beginning of May, 77 countries and territories have been affected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since monkeypox was discovered in 1970, no one has died from monkeypox outside of the 11 African countries where the disease is endemic. .

Since the first case was discovered in May, the United States has distributed nearly 200,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine, a two-dose vaccine to prevent smallpox and monkeypox, to the most at-risk populations. Did. about 3.8 million gay men. France has vaccinated only an estimated 6,000 people at more than 100 vaccine centers in recent weeks, Social Affairs and Health Minister François Braun said on Monday. And in the UK, health officials last week ordered an additional 100,000 doses of the vaccine to meet surging demand.

Last Saturday, the World Health Organization Declared Monkeypox is a public health emergency of international concern and has been designated as the most threatening global disease outbreak. first abandoned to do so last month. On Thursday, more than two months after the first U.S. case of monkeypox was detected in him in mid-May, public health officials in New York City said: made a declaration Infectious disease poses an imminent threat to public health, and San Francisco officials Declared emergency.

“Interestingly, many of the scientists and clinicians who were trained or were initially there during the AIDS epidemic—people like Tony Fauci—know this history, but they are not aware of the history of monkeypox. The response has been incredibly slow and chaotic,” said Greg Gonzalves. In 1990 he joined the Act Up (a major group that fought for action to combat AIDS) and is now Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. “Personally, I’m like, ‘I’m out if I strike out.'” HIV, Covid, and monkeypox? How many times can you repeat the same mistake? ”

Representatives of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where Dr. Anthony Fauci has served as Director since 1984, and White House officials, where Dr. Fauci serves as Chief Medical Advisor to the President, were quick to respond to NBC News’ request. did not. for comments.

image of a man waiting in long line Vaccinated outside clinics worldwide, technical problem Online vaccine portals and the US government’swait and seeThe response to the outbreak — which reportedly calls for vaccine shipments only because cases have soared in the past few weeks — sees the public health response to monkeypox becoming a repeat of a flawed strategy to fight. AIDS is piling up on activist concerns that there is.

The virus began spreading in May, but the United States did not order an increase in the monkeypox vaccine stockpile until June. Regulators also did not complete testing of a major Danish facility that manufactures monkeypox vaccine until July, leaving 1.1 million doses ready for distribution in Europe stalled.

“Some governments seem to care little as long as monkeypox only affects men who have sex with men, just as they did during the AIDS pandemic,” he said. Tatchell, who was kicked out of a London hospital after being injured, said last Sunday. “What other explanation could there be? The government should have rolled out an emergency vaccination program for gay and bisexual men a few weeks ago.”

Some veteran AIDS activists argue that, as during the AIDS crisis, the message to combat monkeypox is not coordinated enough to reach the LGBTQ community.

Ron Goldberg, an early AIDS activist who joined Act Up in 1987, points to the “America Responds to AIDS” public service awareness campaign that the government launched at the height of the crisis in the late 1980s. Many of the commercials featured heterosexual couples and displayed messages such as “AIDS is everyone’s problem.”

“At the time, they were very afraid to talk about gay sex or anything like that, so they had to keep their messages low-key when trying to provide information,” Goldberg said. If it’s happening within a particular group, you have to target the message to that specific group.”

Activists have greatly applauded public health officials’ efforts to keep monkeypox from being directly linked to the LGBTQ community. However, some people have claimed that the following statements have been repeated from public health officials:Anyone can get monkeypox‘ echoes the AIDS message that ‘anyone can get the AIDS virus’ and sidesteps efforts to warn the most at-risk population.

Research overwhelmingly suggests that the current monkeypox outbreak is predominantly caused by men who have sex with men. study The New England Journal of Medicine, published last week, found that of the 528 monkeypox cases the researchers analyzed, 98% were in men who identified as homosexual or bisexual. another Recent reports Of the 699 monkeypox cases for which information was available, 97% were in homosexuals, bisexuals, or other men who have sex with men, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

“The numbers are there,” says Didier Lasttrade, who founded Act Up’s first French chapter in 1989. … We are big guys, we are adults, and we can accept that. Stigmatization is happening anyway. ”

On Thursday, the WHO announced that gay and bisexual men limit the number of sexual partners To protect against monkeypox and limit its spread.

But in the wake of two years of pandemic isolation and big summer events like last weekend’s annual Pines Party on Fire Island, some activists have warned gay and bisexual men to engage in sexual behavior. I am concerned that it will be difficult to impose restrictions.

“We reached out to people in their 20s and 30s and said, ‘Look, this is no joke. No,” said Gonzalves.

More broadly, Rastrade notes the emergence of HIV prophylaxis, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, aka PrEP, and the past decade of scientific evidence that HIV treatment can prevent infection, as well as homosexual and He claimed it was causing bisexual men to fall asleep at home. Wheels when it comes to their sexual health.

“New generations have completely forgotten about AIDS. “When that happens, they forget the reflexes we had because it was a matter of life and death.”

Regardless of the message, as the global vaccine rollout has been lackluster, activists fear the virus will become an infection that the LGBTQ community will have to live with permanently, as it did with AIDS decades ago. I am afraid of getting sick.

“A lot of people say we are past the point of containment. “If that’s true, it’s incredibly serious, because while this disease isn’t necessarily fatal, the enormous suffering and cost of all this is causing many people, many health systems, and many Because it puts a burden on the community, people who are already suffering.”

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