I may never understand why some PH people who advocate for harm reduction around #HIV for gay men & people who use drugs, and now #monkeypox -- recognizing that people have needs & desires you can't just order them to ignore -- didn't apply the same principles to COVID. 1/
This🧵expresses that frustrations. PH people are hesitant to ask gay men to limit sex partners temporarily until they can get vaccinated, but didn't have similar reluctance about closing schools & asking the general public to give up important events. 2/
I think some of the nasty-seeming comments about #monkeypox & gay men's sexual behavior aren't driven so much by homophobia as by anger at the apparent hypocrisy of it all. 3/
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#Monkeypox vaccine messaging is difficult & conflicting because there's not enough research. Data so far is based on immunogenicity (essentially, antibody production) not real-world effectiveness. Starting with 1 dose is a good strategy to get more people some protection ASAP. 1/
But saying a single dose provides adequate protection is premature. In particular, people with #HIV have a lower response rate & it seems like they should be prioritized for 2nd doses. @dr_demetre says @US_FDA stands by its recommended 2-dose regimen. #AIDS2022 2/
I went into #AIDS2022#monkeypox media briefing with many questions, but most don't yet have answers, including importance of various transmission routes in the real world, asymptomatic transmission, does HIV influence susceptibility, TPOXX efficacy, can isolation be shorter. 3/
.@dr_demetre: There's not one magic bullet. Learned lessons from #HIV that absolutes tend not to work, so focus on harm reduction. #Monkeypox vaccine supply & demand mismatch will probably go through the summer & fall. #AIDS2022
Marina Klein: Montreal was able to graft #monkeypox vaccine effort onto existing COVID vaccine infrastructure, with low threshold, evening hours, broad eligibility for gay/bi/MSM. #AIDS2022
Another article done, so off to final edition of #NoPantsNoProblem. End of an era -- this queer party has accompanied International AIDS Conferences for more than a decade. Proceeds fund global grants for HIV+ women. @gnpplus@Visual_AIDS 1/
Yeah, it's fraught to have a party of people, many of them HIV+, who've traveled from all over the world in the era of COVID & now #monkeypox. A lot of people won't feel safe going -- & that's completely understandable & rational. 2/
Lots of gay/bi/trans men there, but I don't feel at any risk for monkeypox via the air or casual contact. It'd suck to get COVID while covering a conference, but if I'm going to sit in my hotel room & not take advantage of social opportunities, I might as well have stayed home...
.@sciencecohen: There used to be AIDS journalists, that's rare now. With COVID, every reporter became a health reporter. Public more informed about science than ever before. But, adds @picardonhealth, they're more misinformed as well. #AIDS2022
How to balance COVID -- & now monkeypox -- with ongoing issues like #HIV/#AIDS? @apoorva_nyc: When people stop seeing a disease as a threat to themselves, they don’t pay attention anymore. How do we get people to care about something that affects a specific population? #AIDS2022
Important🧵from @thrasherxy. We've all seen the excerpts posted here from historical descriptions of #monkeypox transmission & symptoms, but the current outbreak among gay/bi/trans/MSM looks very different. 1/
It's quite possible low-level MPX spread is happening via traditional transmission routes while *at the same* time an explosive outbreak is occurring, via different routes, in a specific population. 2/
We've seen something similar with sexually-associated outbreaks of hepatitis C among gay/bi/MSM. This suggests it's possible for a pathogen to be both an STI & not an STI simultaneously (Schrödinger's STI?) 3/
.@CAPublicHealth has released new #monkeypox data with some eagerly awaited demographics. Still overwhelmingly gay/bi/MSM. Among 786 cases are 5 trans men, 3 cisgender women, 3 trans women & 2 non-binary. 45% white, 36% Latino, 9% Black & 6% Asian. cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/D…
According to census.gov, #monkeypox distribution for Latino & Black people isn't that far off from statewide population percentages (40% & 7%, respectively. But other sources put the Latino population share much lower, at around 19%.
But statewide numbers can mask local variation. One of the first thing I noticed in SF's demographics is that ~30% of monkeypox cases are among Latinos -- about twice their share of the city's population. sf.gov/sites/default/…