Political correctness helped turn monkeypox into a global emergencyBy David Kaufman
July 30, 2022
In late May, Conde Nast’s LGBT site them.us went out of its way to distance a nascent viral scourge known as monkeypox from the main demographic who was catching it — gay men.
The piece headlined, “The Monkeypox Virus Is Affecting Queer Men, but Has Nothing to Do With Being Queer,” stated that “while a large fraction of those infected in [the] current global outbreak identify as gay or bisexual men… there is no correlation between the identity and the illness.
“Blaming the gay community or gay behavior,” it concluded, “is not sound public health.”
Last week, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a full-scale global emergency as the disease has spread rapidly in just three months. In late May, 100 people reportedly had the virus; now there are more than 18,000 cases worldwide, with nearly 4,000 in the US alone, according to the CDC. New York state is also now calling monkeypox an “imminent threat.”
It is true that gay men are not “responsible”’ for the monkeypox outbreak. Like HIV or COVID-19, viruses can’t target specific communities. But those early monkeypox cases were nearly all contracted at large-scale “circuit parties” across Europe, which are almost exclusively frequented by gay men. This is not stigma – it’s simply fact.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/30/monkeypox-became-a-global-emergency-due-to-political-correctness/
