We shouldn't tiptoe around monkeypox risk

Updated on August 19, 2022 19:10 PM by Anna P

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In Race Deconstructed newsletter, this story was told in a different way. Sign up here for free to get it in your email every week. This month, the Biden administration called a public health emergency over the spread of monkeypox, a virus that is more likely to spread among men who have sex with other men. Some people say that it could be dangerous to say which group is most likely to get monkeypox because they don't want to bring back the kind of anti-gay stigma that was around during the early days of the AIDS crisis.

Experts say that making warnings too general hurts outreach to the most vulnerable people, like Black and Latino men, and simplifies the lessons of the AIDS crisis, which showed how important it was to fight stigma and push for care for those who needed it.

Read also; vaccines-are-getting-people-at-risk/">Ongoing Monkeypox outbreak in the US! Monkeypox vaccines are getting people at risk!

Columbia University Medical Center

"We don't want to add stigma to a sensitive situation," Robert Fullilove, a professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, told Media. "But then our messaging gets so broad that nobody knows who we're talking to, and that's a big problem." In short, experts say we shouldn't avoid the problem. Instead, we should face it head-on and work to make it easier for people to get care. Melanie Thompson, an HIV doctor and researcher in Atlanta, says that when we talk about monkeypox in vague terms, we end up putting too much emphasis on who can get the virus and not enough on who does.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published this month a detailed list of cases of monkeypox. Yes, anyone can get the virus, but a study by the CDC found that 94% of cases were in men who had recently been sexually active or had close personal contact with another man. Also, 54% of the people who got sick were Black Americans or Latinos. Early data from the Georgia Department of Public Health and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show the same pattern: In both states, Black men are most likely to get monkeypox. Thompson talked about how important it is to be clear and tell people exactly where the virus is.

Providing help to the affected people

"The point of data isn't just to add up numbers," she said. "It's to make sure that the people most affected by monkeypox or any other disease get the help they need." He also said, "Fear is spread among the general public by the idea that anyone can get monkeypox. It takes attention away from the message we need to send to people who might get monkeypox." And this kind of confusion doesn't just take attention away. She said that it hurts people in a different way.

Jim Downs, a historian of epidemic diseases at Gettysburg College and the author of "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine," agreed with some of Thompson's points. "The facts show that men who have sex with other men are more likely to get HIV than any other group or population," he said. "So, when we talk about directing messages and, more importantly, directing vaccines, we need to make sure that our efforts are aimed at the people who are most at risk, not at people who might think, "Well, why not get vaccinated?" It just makes sense.'"

Black men seem to get monkeypox more often

Experts say it's important to point out that even though Black men seem to get monkeypox more often, it's not because they're Black. "When we use race as a way to tell what's wrong with a sick person, some people think race is biologically active. There must be something about having brown skin that makes it more likely to get monkeypox," Fullilove said. "But that isn't true. We're looking at how people hang out with each other and where they do it." Thompson also brought up a warning into the conversation.

Monkeypox isn't more likely to happen to people of a certain race

She said, "Monkeypox isn't more likely to happen to people of a certain race." "It has to do with the way racism is set up in society and the way communities and cultures work." She said that, for example, Georgia is still very divided by race and sexuality. Thompson said, "This means that Black people are likely to have sexual partners who are also Black." "And because they make up a smaller part of the population, there is a higher chance of getting the virus." If there is a silver lining, it is that we now have a better idea of where most of the monkeypox is, which should make it easier to contain and get rid of it.

AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s

Some people want generalised messages about monkeypox because they want to stop the harsh anti-gay stigma that grew during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. But that takes away some of the complexity of the time. "I think there's a good intention to not add to the idea that gay people are bad. Many people have a general idea of how that worked during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic. Dan Royles, an associate professor of history at Florida International University and the author of "To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS," says, "I don't think it's necessarily a nuanced understanding of how it happened, but there is an awareness that it happened and a sense that we shouldn't do it again." "told CNN, adding that all of this is happening because the right is trying to take away LGBTQ rights.

Royles said that AIDS activists had big goals that went beyond just spreading the word. He said that being an AIDS activist wasn't just about saying the right things. "The goal was to get care to those who needed it."

Think about some of what the group ACT UP does to fight AIDS (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). More than 1,000 protesters broke into the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 21, 1990. Their goal was to get the NIH to speed up AIDS research and treatment, which activists saw as moving at a snail's pace. Because the government wasn't doing enough to stop the epidemic, activists took matters into their own hands and fought for a more humane health care system. (Notably, queer communities do something similar today because the government isn't doing enough to stop monkeypox.) This isn't to say that careful, kind messages aren't important. Thompson thinks that monkeypox has a lot of negative connotations. She said that doctors are hearing from some people with the virus that they are embarrassed to have it.

Royles

She also said that things are made worse by the fact that some doctors don't want to see people with monkeypox. This means that people with the virus have fewer places to go to get treatment. Messages that don't shame people matter a lot, and my CNN colleague Jacqueline Howard recently reported that this is part of what's going on in the debate over whether or not monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease. Still, Royles' deeper point is crucial. As we keep fighting monkeypox, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the main goal is to make care more available to more people.

Royles said, "Our politics are often boiled down to arguments about language and messages that have nothing to do with people's real lives." "If you get monkeypox, it has effects on your body that are similar to those of HIV and AIDS. It's so embodied that it's ironic that so much of the talk is about discourse, which is in so many ways not embodied." Or, as Joseph Osmundson, a clinical assistant professor of biology at New York University, put it so well: "It's hard to get care." "You can't text away a disease that spreads. We need tests, treatments, and vaccines, but none of them came in time."

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