Monkeypox virus

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137604#Comment_119137604

No completely disagree, we don't all need to be on the watch for monkeypox, it starts with flu/Covid symptoms, chills, tiredness, fever etc then you break out in big ooze monkey spots usually starting on your face. It's one of those things you'll probably notice before going into the classroom, completely OTT to suggest this is going to start spreading in schools.

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137675#Comment_119137675

You're infectious with symptoms. So what exactly is flu/chills/tiredness/fever? Are you saying it's ok to ignore mild symptoms until you get the rash?

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137651#Comment_119137651

Nobody is being shamed, it's circulating overwhelmingly in a certain demographic that's just the reality of the situation. It's a nice gesture to spread the blame across everyone but it's not everyone's problem, I don't see why you'd want to drag then into it and worry them unnecessarily, if anything you should be playing it down as the more awareness the more stigma will be created.

We know where it came from and we know how it spread. It's under control as long the people at risk behave sensibly for a few weeks it'll have disappeared.

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137687#Comment_119137687

No I'm saying if your a teacher or anyone else for that matter and have been in close contact with someone that's been to a sauna or circuit rave in Europe recently and have symptoms you shouldn't be going to work. It could be flu, could be monkey pox either way stay at home. We don't need a campaign targeting the general public with this virus. It's a tiny cohort of a tiny community and can be easily enough traced.

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137659#Comment_119137659

Good lord, how would you advertise that vaccine campaign?

fun loving criminal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137728#Comment_119137728

Why sauna or raving with gays? The UK has community transmission and we probably have as well.

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137760#Comment_119137760

A lot were traced back to Europe, the Canaries LGBT events and Saunas. Some cases have been traced back to an African outbreak.

Community transmission is a bit of a stretch at this point, they were well able to trace it last week but now they can't trace it back to Africa, they've done a complete about turn on the language in the press. It's now a mystery what happened.

Ficheall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137706#Comment_119137706

You are better informed than everyone else, including the experts, it seems...

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137771#Comment_119137771

What are the other experts saying, from what I've read nearly all the cases can be traced back to the partying in Europe including the ones in Canada and America, There has been a case or two imported directly from Nigeria but that's the exception.

There's absolutely no need to be spooking people without a connection to these events. The neck of the Irish Times to mention pregnant women and babies been at risk while completely white washing what happened is unbelievable.

https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2022/05/30/second-case-of-monkeypox-confirmed-in-ireland/

Ficheall

You reckon the ~550 cases identified so far all went to the two parties?

"We know where it came from and we know how it spread. It's under control as long the people at risk behave sensibly for a few weeks it'll have disappeared."

We know where some of it came from and how some of it spread. People won't behave sensibly if they're led to believe they're not at risk. As well as the sex party scapegoats, there has been family spread, so community spread is pretty much guaranteed. They're monitoring people who sat near confirmed cases on planes, and it can spread via surfaces. They say people are only infectious while they have scabs, but say they can't say for sure there's no asymptomatic spread. The incubation period is a week or two - contact tracing will be a very big ask.

Fortunately, it's rarely fatal, but I have extremely little faith that it will be contained.

drunkmonkey

Asymptomatic spread, there's no evidence at all for that unless it's mutated and there's no evidence that's happened from the cases that have been sequenced.

Your correct it can spread via a surface etc but that's not what happened in this case.

There's literally been one case reported in a woman and it's impossible to know if that was a man identifying as a woman. Tracker here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CEBhao3rMe-qtCbAgJTn5ZKQMRFWeAeaiXFpBY3gbHE/htmlview#

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137651#Comment_119137651

False, false, false.

Nobody has argued that only LGB-T people should be targeted.

What we're saying is that this particular demographic must be told about their significantly heightened risk compared to the general population. In the same way that 85% of HIV is spread through the LGB-T community compared to the general population. There is an elevated risk, whether you want to admit this or not.

Should the general population be kept informed? Yes.

But should a more targeted campaign to inform the LGB-T community of the higher risk to them, coupled with the evidence presented earlier in this thread that this community - of which I am a member - has more sexual partners than straight men. The risk is amplified even MORE because of this.

There is no shame about this either.

It just so happens that this is where the major outbreaks have occurred, initially from gay sex festivals and gay sex saunas, and now to close contacts of those who contracted Monkeypox disease.

The outbreaks could have occurred anywhere but we cannot whitewash the fact that the source of this disease in society at present can be confidently traced to the above mass events.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119139613#Comment_119139613

Sex sex sex. You're more obsessed with it than most other gay men I know.

None of what I said is false.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119139613#Comment_119139613

I really don't understand the reaction of people to what you are saying.

Prostate cancer warnings are targetted at men because they are at greater risk, breast and cervical cancer warnings are targetted at women because they are at greater risk, even though in all three cases, there are equivalent or similar cancers at much much lower rates in the other sex. A campaign on monkeypox that targets the LGB-T community not only will save more lives, but it will reduce the risk of unnecessary panic.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140169#Comment_119140169

Exactly.

It's a bit bizarre, too, because gay men are told not to be ashamed of being HIV positive (which is the right attitude, because nobody should be ashamed of housing a virus beyond their own control) - helping to destigmatize it.

Yet in the case of Monkeypox viral disease, you find posters here who are trying to wish the problem away; that somehow it's dissociated from the LGB-T community when all the evidence under the sun demonstrates that there is an intimate connection between the two.

You cannot effectively deal with viral transmission if the source of that transmission goes unaddressed or ignored. In fact, it worsens the problem.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140134#Comment_119140134

You're trying, and failing, to somehow portray Monkeypox viral disease as something in the general population, as if the risk of the general population catching the virus is at least equal to the risk of catching the virus within LGB-T circles.

That is demonstrably false.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140201#Comment_119140201

You're spectacularly missing the point. Noone wishes any problem away. Objections are all about your shame based biases.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140226#Comment_119140226

Do you agree with the premise that you're far, far, far more likely to catch Monkeypox viral disease in the LGB-T community (or MSM, to use your phrase); that this is where the primary locus of spread happens to be?

If you don't agree, then you're disagreeing with everyone - all major health organizations, including the WHO:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now confirmed nearly 100 cases of monkeypox in over a dozen countries, with the largest number in the UK. While most cases so far are among gay and bisexual men, health officials emphasise that anyone can contract the virus through close personal contact.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119137706#Comment_119137706

You are talking about "spreading the blame", stigma, and its not a homophobic response? I am not getting at you just making a point btw... If you don't mean that with those statements, it just shows how the narrative can turn when the subject is a community that can be labelled.

Hence the public health response is to be more general.

People in general need to be informed and made aware, same as if there is a spike in mumps or chicken pox.

Of course teenagers and children would be more at risk for those infections, just as with this it is the MSM and LGBT community.

Doesn't mean that the community at large should not be made aware so that anybody at risk can protect themselves.

Its not a crisis just a normal public health response to inform everyone that there is a notifiable infection at large.

Anybody who doesn't want to hear about it can switch off or over to another site or just not listen or read about it.

Doesn't mean people should not be informed about it.

In fact there is more on Monkeypox on this thread than I have heard anywhere else.

This is not Covid, not a pandemic, it is a much less infectious and milder illness, but nonetheless if people can take precautions and avoid it they need to know about it, obviously.

@fun loving criminal vaccination of at risk contacts is being proposed.

However if people believe the narrative being pushed by some that this is primarily a " gay disease" those contacts may not come forward.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140248#Comment_119140248

No, "people in general" is not a satisfactory response.

The rest of the post is undiluted babble.

There are 125,000 gay men in Ireland, give or take.

You are statistically FAR more likely to catch the virus in those 125,000 men than you are in the other 97.5% of Irish society.

The difference is so gigantic that you have to be seriously closed to the evidence to suggest that a "general public response" is what's needed.

Everyone knows about HIV and LGB-T community. The general population know about it, too, but they are much less likely to catch it. All health organizations emphasize the elevated risk of catching HIV from unprotected sex in the LGB-T community. The risk is lower now, of course, than it was. But the same principle applies to Monkeypox viral disease.

Again, the WHO: "Cases so far have “mainly but not exclusively been identified amongst men who have sex with men,” according to WHO".

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140169#Comment_119140169

Because he is not talking about cancer specifically sex related. Its a notifiable nfectious disease and not an STI.

This is the same public health response as for all notifiable infectious diseases.

What the papers say is.. what the papers say.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140169#Comment_119140169

Yeah but when posters who vehemently opposed any kind of lockdown measures against a virus that has killed millions of people are calling for Pride to be cancelled because two cases have been identified in this country of a less contagious disease we have vaccines and treatments for you have to wonder if they’re being disingenuous.

Especially when they’re obsessed with repeatedly using terms like “gay sex festivals” and “gay sex saunas”, as if they think all homosexual people do is go to massive orgies riding everyone they see.

The authorities have already made statements that a large portion of those who’ve so far tested positive are men who’ve had sex with men, while pointing out all the clinical facts about how it is known to spread, which is not in any way isolated to homosexuality. There’s no public health reason right now to create further stigmas as happened in the 80s.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140312#Comment_119140312

First of all, I'm not calling for - nor have I ever called for - Pride to be cancelled.

In fact, I specifically mentioned that this would be a disproportionate response to a virus with a relatively low lethality, low spread risk, and comparatively low hospitalization rate.

Second, we cannot ignore the fact that the loci of initial transmission have been sourced to gay sex parties and saunas (specifically, Madrid and Belgium but not exclusive to those).

We can use propaganda language like "meet ups" and "events", but that's to cloak and hide how this virus has been spreading.

These events are primarily about securing the ride. Everyone in the LGB-T community knows about this. They're not attending saunas and sex festivals for the weather and steaming cups of Barry's tea.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140290#Comment_119140290

You are babbling on.. not me.

It is not an STI. It can be spread by contact and before the spots appear. It is mainly a disease of MSM but while you may not have any contact with anybody ouside the LGBT community is not the case for everyone infected.

You are splitting hairs, and do you want some sort of award here for being the main speaker for LGBT?

Why are you announcing on every post that you are " a gay man" yourself,?

How do you know that others here are not also?

Surely that does not qualify you to write the rules on Public Health responses anymore than I would not have a clue about the inner workings of Computer programming.

I can have an opinion on it but it would not be educated except by my own limited experience . I would not presume to tell a qualified IT person that they ' are babbling' in that situation.

Maybe you should reflect on your tone and moderste it a bit?

And to offer supplementary context on these events, which are being deliberately misrepresented by other members of the LGB-T community on this thread, Darklands was one of the events which acted as a super-spreader event.

Dr John Campbell talked about the gay event in one of his latest videos.

Look at how the Darklands event is advertised, and tell me that I'm wrong to refer to it for what it is; a gay sex festival.

And here is what Darklands, which gathers over 5,000 gay men, say on their website:

I think we all know what the "world's biggest playroom", complete with "slings, benches, and equipment" is used for. They even refer to the event for those who are "horny as hell".

Now, so perhaps we can stop with the dismissal of how I am referring to these events; as it's exactly these events, including the Darklands event, that has contributed to the spread of Monkeypox disease.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140232#Comment_119140232

Seriously?

Did you read to the end of the sentence part of which you highlighted?

I think you are taking the proverbial, at this stage, for some reason only you can know..

I’m certainly not paranoid about it (don’t think I even got Covid at any stage) but all it would take is to have intimate contact with one person who has been unlucky enough to catch it. I’m heterosexual female, vaccinated against Hep B, A, Rabies and lots of stuff for travel, if Monkey Pox vaccine becomes readily available to me I’ll likely take it.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140312#Comment_119140312

Yeah, fair enough if that is the case, but I am not coming to this with knowledge of past positions held by individual posters, and just looking at the arguments on their merits.

It is also possible that poster's views have changed.

There is always a risk of stigmas with targetted campaigns, but that has to be balanced of the increased risk of illness and death without targetted campaigns. If people die in a rush to be politically correct, who is to blame?

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140305#Comment_119140305

And if monkey pox got into schools, then I would expect a different targetted campaign, aimed at the behaviour of children.

Appropriate public health response for appropriate public health situations, as not all are the same.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140567#Comment_119140567

I don't disagree not that I think that would be a widespread issue .

My point was to the other poster , and is that it doesn't work that way .

If you aim an information campaign specifically at one group to the exclusion of others you run the risk of others who may be at risk , but not the main targets not getting the information they need .

The other poster who claims to be gay , is advocating for this ONLY to be targeted at LGBT community , which is anathema for any LGBT i groups policy that I am aware of , funnily enough .

Whiff of something off here ....