Just last summer, and an outbreak of mpox — formerly known as monkeypox — was in full swing. The virus required close, sustained contact to spread, which is why it was fanning out overwhelmingly through sex.
This outbreak could become an epidemic, perhaps even a pandemic. Luckily, we were wrong.
When the first cases were reported among gay and bi men in the West, health authorities and the media couldn’t bring themselves to say the word “gay.”. The Associated Press didn’t mention that this outbreak was being seen almost exclusively in gay men.
Public health officials and the media were hesitant to give the same advice they had given freely at the beginning of the Covid pandemic: Limit your number of sex partners and express your sexuality in socially distanced ways.
Gay men with mpox were turned away from urgent care clinics and emergency rooms. Phlebotomists refused to draw their blood. Like its predecessors Covid-19 and H.I.V./AIDS, mpox had all the makings of a public health disaster.
Gay sex has been unfairly blamed for everything from natural disasters to the fall of Rome. But in their efforts to avoid stigmatizing the community, health authorities and the media failed to effectively warn gay and bi men. Ignorant of the threat as the virus spread, gay and bi men couldn’t take steps to protect themselves and their partners.
Gay and bi men sprang into action. Young men with lesions covering their faces took to social and mainstream media, telling the public that they were dealing with the worst pain most telling, “I’d rather have Covid.” And the gay community listened echoing the experienced by gay men who urged others to avoid bathhouses and start using condoms at the start of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s.
Gay and bi men had already written the playbook on activism and advocacy throughout the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, resulting in more than $7 billion in federal funding for H.I.V. research, prevention, treatment and social services.
Half of gay men surveyed reduced their number of sex partners, one-time sexual encounters and use of dating apps during the outbreak. And gay and bi men got vaccinated in droves.
The CDC acknowledged the realities of gay sexuality and its breadth of expression, using the actual language gay men used. Anus became the more user-friendly “butthole,” and “public sex environments,” became “back rooms” and “sex parties”
In Jan. 2023, the federal government declared an end to the mpox emergency, as average case counts fell from a peak of over 450 per day in early August to less than five during the last week of January. While the outbreak in the United States lasted just under nine months, it caused plenty of damage, resulting in more than 30,000 cases and 42 deaths.
There’s another important lesson about the gay community that health officials and journalists need to remember going forward: When it comes to emerging health threats — even ones that can spread sexually — gay men can handle the truth. You can give it to them straight.