Monkeypox reminds gay men of the early days of HIV/AIDS.

“in the meantime monkeypox says Sawyer, a longtime activist who was on the ground floor of ACT UP, a group that promised to end the AIDS epidemic in 1987. “It opens up a lot of raw wounds and brings back the interrupted grief from the loss of so many friends.”

Since May 17, there have been nearly 5,200 confirmed monkeypox cases in the United States, none fatal. The overwhelming majority of those infected worldwide are men who have sex with men, a demographic whose extensive and dense sexual networks are viral conduits that spread through close, often intimate physical contact. It has become.

The epidemic may not be as severe as HIV or the new coronavirus is still causing covid-19, but monkeypox comes at a time when gay Americans are already feeling stressed and vulnerable. Did. Sawyer thinks about the recent surge. contains homophobia anti-gay laws at the state level A surge in threats and attacks About LGBTQ people. A social symptom of monkeypox is the fear that the country is headed for a time warp. In the 1980s, AIDS was first mislabeled in the media as a “gay-related immunodeficiency,” and the gay community suffered not only from the disease, but from new outcasts.

“I worry that a large-scale epidemic in the gay community of something like monkeypox will exacerbate a direct and premeditated attack on our community,” says Sawyer.

But the community is more visible and visible than it was 40 years ago, thanks to the work of people like Sawyer, who said he helped vaccinate 2,000 visitors to the Pines over a three-week period in July. Powered, accepted and prepared. Coming out of the AIDS crisis, the gay community helped create pandemic response protocols, networks and models that have been used to deal with covid-19 and now monkeypox.

“There is a direct line of inheritance in terms of the culture of what we do,” says Keletso Makofane, a 35-year-old social network epidemiologist. Queer-led rapid research Guiding the Distribution of Sexual Networks and Monkeypox Symptoms in New York City limited vaccine supplyACT UP remains an important hub for mobilizing people, with queer people holding weekly meetings, breaking into committees, and planning collective action to respond to monkeypox.

“That vocabulary comes from ACT UP and intervening movements like the reverberating Occupy,” says Makofene, who mostly works out of a ninth-floor apartment in Harlem. “We are not building structures from scratch.”

Monkeypox is a very different virus than HIV, and 2022 is light years from 1981. But the current outbreak has a spiritual repercussion, “a cultural reflexive memory that exists even outside of the people who were originally infected,” Demetre says. Daskalakis, 48, director of his HIV/AIDS prevention division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There is a government response. slow and scattered, according to public health experts who criticized the initial lack of clear communication about testing, symptoms and those most at risk. During rallies at public health agencies, there is outrage against anyone who could weaponize the outbreak. And skin diseases! Kaposi’s sarcoma he was a near-certain death sign in the 1980s, but now monkeypox pustules portend burning pain, but are temporary and not fatal.

The stakes are much lower when it comes to mortality, but Ajta is higher. All heat rashes are suspected. All curly hair is a provocation. Gay men are being heckled in the streets these days as carriers of the disease. Text messages about known exposures (routine communication between gay men about common STDs) take on a more ominous aura. The LGBTQ community reviews all health guidance and all unruly tweets for signs of reprimand or sexual harassment. We are running out of new adjectives and metaphors to describe the pain associated with infection (“guts,” “unbearable,” “knife,” “curling iron”).

“I think we are all exhausted,” says Nicholas Diamond, 29, manager of editorial services for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Makofane’s husband. “We may have seen the light at the end of the covid-19 pandemic tunnel. We have to deal with the government that let us down COVID 19 so we’re all tired and we’re also afraid the last hookup made us feel sick or the last time we went to a bar It’s hard to talk about anything when you’re worried, and you have to wonder if this was what our community was thinking back in 1981.”

there is teeth Sitting in a folding chair in 2022, surrounded by other gay men sitting in folding chairs, wearing personal protective equipment and immediately wiping the empty chair with disinfectant Awaiting vaccination by health workers There’s something creepy about being there. The manager of the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Clinic in Whitman-Walker, DC explains it — That said, at age 38, she didn’t personally experience the original moment.

On a recent Thursday, Cary told the first patient she was testing for monkeypox that some laboratories had initially prohibited phlebotomists from drawing blood from suspected or confirmed cases. also wore full PPE, per CDC guidelines.

“Patients were like, ‘Wow, that sounds like the ’80s,'” Cary said, noting that patients were too young to experience the height of their crisis. “It’s stigmatizing. It’s also kind of scary, especially at first. I expressed a lot of reassurance with the first few patients. You’re going to get over this. It just goes away on its own.” I will go, treatment is available.”

Epidemiologist in the DC area in his thirties. He contracted monkeypox in mid-June and endured five days of fever and night sweats, swollen lymph nodes and groin, and genital and rectal lesions. “Deep visceral pain”.

“And there are stigma and shame triggers,” says the epidemiologist. “Oh, if you got HIV, you did it in a very lewd way” or “If you got monkeypox, you got it in a very lewd way. The health, disclosure and stigma aspects are all tied together, how do you get past it?”

One way is to remember the key lessons of the AIDS crisis. The CDC’s Daskalakis, who has disseminated guidance for safer sex and socializing through social networks and influencers, said it’s about educating communities rather than issuing categorical bans that increase stigma. said.

“Absolutism tends to close people’s minds,” says Daskalakis. “Taking seriously about harm reduction strategies is giving people the knowledge they need to make informed choices, and that’s how we win.”

Gay men have had to be more open with each other at the risk of appearing preachy or marginalized. On July 19, AIDS activist Mark S. King wrote: essaytitled “Monkeypox is a gay thing. We have to say it.”

“Is there stigma and judgment and homophobia? Of course. It has to be dealt with,” King wrote. “But that doesn’t mean we’re burying important facts in a vague, evasive message.”

Sex positivity certainly defines modern gay life, but so does disease recognition, prevention and treatment.Nicholas Diamond helped fashion hint sheet Last month, it was titled “Six Ways to Have Safer Sex in the Age of Monkeypox.”

“Girls, we hate to say it, but it may be time to end group sex and saunas until we’ve all had our first and second doses of vaccines.” . emergency for occurrence. “This is temporary, out of love for group sex and the people who enjoy it.”

who following last week By saying, essentially: cool down everybody.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “For men who have sex with men, this includes reducing the number of sexual partners for the time being” and “rethinking sex with new partners.” “It is included.

“What a lot of people don’t want to say out loud is that gay men have more sexual partners on average,” says Stephen W. Thrasher.The viral underclass: human suffering when inequality and disease collide” tracks the interplay between systemic fraud and vulnerability to disease. “But there are responsibilities that go hand in hand with the sexual side of our lives. It’s not just a free-for-all orgy.”

Communities share knowledge, inspire government action, and promote harm reduction. At the Queer Kink event in San Francisco on Friday, temperature checks, 60% capacity, and “consent and wellness check-in” were advertised on the door, with a color-coded list based on attendees’ personal space preferences. Bands were distributed. On July 25, Washington Blade hosted the Monkeypox Town Hall in person. About 50 LGBTQ citizens and public health professionals exchanged advice, observations and concerns at Eaton on K Street NW. Blade’s counterpart in Los Angeles opened its own city hall on July 27, featuring a resident named Matt Ford, who detailed his experiences with the outbreak on social media. He was one of the first American men to describe

LA panelist Dan Wallfayler said that this kind of witnessing combats stigma and makes problems real for people.

“In 1983 I saw a young man named Mark Feldman standing before such a large crowd at a San Francisco synagogue and speaking about being HIV-positive.” “Anyone who wants to come to the front of the room and see my lesions can come and do it.” People are coming forward and talking about their experiences and symptoms – thankfully not that serious but obviously painful – we owe Matt and others a real thank you I think.

But all the debate about whether monkeypox should be called a “sexually transmitted disease” or a “homosexual thing” was “because we were caught off guard because the government didn’t respond positively.” It’s just happening,” says Kenyon Farrow. Public health activist in the Cleveland area.

As Thrasher writes in his book, “Personalized shame stories not only shift responsibility from the state and society to the individual, but also isolate the individual through both policy and society.”

There is a greater lesson in this outbreak, as well as the previous ones. Lessons learned about the enduring homophobia, systemic racism and global inequality that fueled inattention to previous monkeypox outbreaks in Central and West Africa.

“The most obvious conversation we should have had, which should have been obvious to everyone from the last two years of covid, is that our public health system is letting us down, right?” says Farrow, managing director of advocacy and organizing for PrEP4All, an organization dedicated to increasing access to the United States. And we might as well start thinking about how to rethink global public health.”