Over the past month, the number of people identified with monkeypox in New York City has jumped more than 30 fold, from 10 to 336, a figure that surely underestimates the incidence rate, considering that many cases have gone undiagnosed.
During this period, Mayor Eric Adams was busy celebrating Pride, holding a party at Gracie mansion and reminding the world just how deeply New York embraces the L.G.B.T.Q.
community, while so many other parts of the country seem bent on a regression to the pre-Stonewall era. “Here in New York,” the mayor declared, “we’re happy to say ‘we are gay.’” But “we” are not getting monkeypox, a disease primarily (and currently) afflicting men who have sex with men.
The lack of public information about the illness, along with the difficulties around access to the vaccine, have shown how the professed love and support coming from the left can feel rhetorical.