Telling the people most at risk for contracting #Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect!

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It seems that some people have suggested that the name “Monkeypox” somehow discriminates against blacks and homosexual males, and should be changed, which immediately became the subject of jokes:

The apparently odd notion that, with Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, should make them question whether they really need to copulate with that cute guy at the end of the bar just never seems to occur.

‘It’s Scary’: Gay Men Confront a Health Crisis With Echoes of the Past

Monkeypox has sparked frustration and anxiety among gay and bisexual men in New York, who remember mistakes and discrimination during the early years of the AIDS crisis.

by Liam Stack | Thursday, July 28, 2022

It was happy hour at a gay bar in Harlem, 4West Lounge, and the after-work crowd had come to drink rum punch and watch “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

But instead, perched on stools, the men talked about the rapidly spreading monkeypox virus: their efforts to snag a coveted vaccine appointment, in a city where demand for the shots far outstrips supply; the slow government rollout of vaccines and treatment; and their confusion about how the disease spreads and how to stay safe.

“It feels like survival of the fittest, with all the pandemic waves and now monkeypox and all these vaccine problems,” said James Ogden, 31, who secured a vaccine appointment after weeks spent navigating the city’s glitchy online sign-up process.

Kelvin Ehigie, 32, the bartender, agreed. When asked about the future, he said: “I do not feel confident.”

For gay and bisexual men in New York, the summer has been consumed with similar conversations as monkeypox cases spike among men who have sex with men.

There is widespread fear of the virus, which primarily spreads through close physical contact and causes excruciating lesions and other symptoms that can lead to hospitalization. There is fear of the isolation and potential stigma of an infection, since those who contract monkeypox must stay home for weeks. And some fear the vaccine itself, in an echo of the hesitancy and mistrust that hindered the coronavirus response.

Many are also furious at the lags and fumbles in the government’s effort to contain the disease, including delayed vaccines and mixed messaging about how the virus spreads and how people should protect themselves.

Oh, bovine feces! Nobody who has paid any attention to the news and who has an IQ above room temperature does not know how the virus spreads. While it spreads by “close personal contact,” in theory, it has been spreading, in actual practice, by sex. Given that the vast, vast majority of cases are “among men who have sex with men,” that has meant it has been spread primarily by homosexual sex, but it’s just way too politically incorrect to say that.

And some are anxious that monkeypox could be twisted into a political weapon to be used against gay and transgender people, whose rights have come under increasing fire from Republicans in recent months.

Last week, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, after it spread from parts of Africa where it is endemic to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people around the world over the course of three months. As of Thursday, there were more than 3,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and 1,148 in New York, but experts suggest cases are being undercounted.

Mr. Ehigie received the first shot of the two-dose vaccine regimen after a referral from his therapist, but worried the city might never give him a second.

And, while he said everyone understands how H.I.V. spreads, monkeypox still felt like a mystery to him and many others. “Especially being in New York,” he said, “where everyone is in close contact with everyone else all the time, it’s scary.”

No, not everyone is “in close contact with everyone else all the time,” just because the streets are crowded, because that’s not the “close contact” that is meant. While close contact does not necessarily mean sex, the “close contact” meant is not just bumping shoulders with someone on the corner of Morningside Avenue and 116th Street. Close personal contact can mean kissing, or hugging, holding hands, or otherwise reasonably intimate contact, but, in practice, it has meant sex.

Nearly all of the cases outside of Africa have been in men who have sex with men. In New York, only 1.4 percent of monkeypox patients self-identified as straight, with the rest describing themselves as gay, bisexual or declining to say, according to city data.

There’s that weird expression, “men who have sex with men,” which must be the new word formulation designed to reduce, as much as possible, any stigma associated with homosexual sex.

Disagreements within the New York City Department of Health about how to communicate the risks of the disease spilled into public view last week. Some epidemiologists have argued that officials should more explicitly advise men who have sex with men to reduce their number of partners, or even consider short-term abstinence. (The director general of the W.H.O. made a similar recommendation this week, including that men should reconsider having “sex with new partners,” according to STAT News.)

A department spokeswoman has said messages advising men to abstain from sex in particular could stigmatize gay and bisexual men and repeat the mistakes of the past.

Translation: it’s just too politically incorrect to suggest that the best way to assure that you do not contract schlong covid is to not do the things which can expose you to monkeypox. Rather, the government is responsible for providing a vaccine which allows homosexual males to continue their pattern of risky behavior, rather than advising people to change their behavior to minimize infection risk.

Yet advising people to change their behavior to minimize infection risk was exactly what governments were pushing when it came to COVID-19! Avoid other people, lock yourself indoors, and definitely, definitely wear a face mask. Even now, the various governments are mandating masks, despite the fact that vaccines are available, telling people that they must change normal behavior, to minimize the spread of that virus.

One thing has become blatantly obvious: it is far, far, far more important to be politically correct than actually fight the schlong covid virus,

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