Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monkeypox and Where the U.S. Stands
wrote that things got so bad with MPV that the United Nations’ AIDS agency called out some of the coverage about the virus as “racist and homophobic,” and added that some of the reporting is “exacerbating stigma and undermining the response to the growing outbreak.”At the time, we reached out to Dr.
Demetre Daskalakis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, who explained, “Unfortunately, the virus hit the social network of gay men first, but it will not stay confined to gay men if it spreads.
Anyone can get it, and anyone can get monkeypox through skin contact with sores, touching objects, and by respiratory. The virus does not discriminate and doesn’t care how or whose body it enters.”Since that time, the number of MPV cases has swelled among queer men.
And while the virus is still not considered a queer disease, there is no doubt who is being affected the most by monkeypox — gay, bisexual, and queer men.
