Monkey Pox

A note from my doctor (not to me personally, but to all COPC patients):

"We don’t know whether it [monkey pox] can be spread from someone without symptoms and that is also being researched. At the time of this writing, the infection is being seen mostly in gay and bisexual men. Therefore, this group should be extra vigilant in monitoring for symptoms and take precautions to limit their exposure.

Avoid skin-to-skin contact with anyone with a rash that looks like Monkeypox and avoid sharing objects or clothing that someone with a rash has used. Frequent hand washing with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer is also recommended."

Do you suppose if someone shows up at work or school classes, they will be asked to leave because work spaces are tight or work items--door knobs, pencils, books, copiers, toilets--have to be shared, or would that be homophobic?  The pictures I've seen look a lot worse than a "rash."  If they show up at ER, how will others be protected?

Also, Biden didn't act quickly on this and the vaccine is in short supply. The first U.S. case was identified in May 2022, and now it's called a global health emergency.  How are we to avoid it if it is also on people's hands? I've looked at the photos and it looks very painful, plus disfiguring.  Time to bring out the hand sanitizer and gloves?

This video is so low key and careful about saying anything that might upset anyone. But it sounds like how HIV got out of control in the 80s after it began in the gay community.

https://youtu.be/1eJw-KH0wcI

The July 2021 outbreak among the vaccinated

Although the breakthrough infections among the vaccinated were reported, the Provincetown, Massachusetts, mini epidemic in July 2021 was the first big one I heard about. (And haven't heard of another one.) Over a thousand people developed Covid, and over 900 of them were vaccinated. This article in CDC's January 2022, Emerging Infectious Diseases, "Multistate Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings, United States" https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/1/21-2220_article? is an interesting description of the investigation which was a major warning that vaccines might protect from death or serious illness, but not from getting or transmitting the disease. There is no comment in this article that P-Town is mecca for the LGBTQ community. Special guides are printed to promote this. I can't even link to some of the articles about the activities. Even the titles were pornographic.  We visited there in the late 1970s and it was true then. In this discussion there's no mention of the immune compromised state of untreated or controlled HIV or whether the drugs given to gay men for long term treatment of AIDS might affect the efficacy of the vaccines. I know there is research on this--I saw it in Lancet. Also, perhaps it was the serial intimacy and not the "large gathering" that was the problem? Masks, which are recommended for vaccinated people in this discussion, won't help with that. 

The main author, Radhika Gharpure, concludes that with all this data, "major epidemiologic QUESTIONS about BREAKTHROUGH INFECTIONS, such as the comparative infectiousness of fully vaccinated and non–fully vaccinated persons, duration of viral shedding, and duration of vaccine-derived immunity, REMAIN." The obvious question probably couldn't be pointed out without damaging her career.

Rolling Stone did an anecdotal account of those who were in P-Town and how the gay community stepped up to alert others, but it too seemed to suggest more masking as the solution to a terrible infection rate.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/covid-delta-variant-provincetowns-gay-community-1214665/?