Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe

apnews.com

134 pointsdonsupreme134 comments

For those without context, there's a nice explainer on Monkeypox linked in the first paragraph: https://apnews.com/article/monkeypox-what-to-know-d62250e909...

Explains what Monkeypox is, what the seriousness is, and how long it takes to recover. Most people recover in around a month without needed hospitalisation.

“Monkeypox can be fatal for up to one in 10 people and is thought to be more severe in children.”

That is WAY more fatal than COVID

That is likely an error. The actual fatality of this monkeypox variant is close to 1%, or one in 100.

Also, all numbers you see for an emerging disease are likely case fatality rates; initial CFRs for COVID-19 were in the 10% range before tests were widespread.

Monkeypox is not an emerging disease. It's been infecting thousands of people a year for decades.

The central african variant of monkeypox has a fatality rate of 10% in children under 16. The cases now are the western african variant with a fatality rate of 1% for children.

Rates are also different with better health care.

The article incorrectly reported that statistic? I’m just making sure I understand.

Yes. They are weasel wording it by saying "the illness has been fatal in up to 6% of infections". "the illness" here refers to a different variant of monkeypox than is currently being transmitted (or they are averaging the 1% fatal and 10% fatal variants). So it's the same illness only in the sense that both are monkeypox. They know all this, and are deliberately wording it this way so they can say it is more fatal than it is.

Not that monkeypox is awesome, mind you, but the fact remains the current circulating variant is not the one that has been fatal in up to 6% of cases.

(and also, that 6% is mostly children under 16. Again, not awesome, but the children dying in central africa to monkeypox, and children in the US/Europe/etc, have ... slightly different common health profiles )

Thanks for clarifying, that is helpful.

Have you got a source for that?

From the article of this post - "In recent years, the illness has been fatal in up to 6% of infections." I assume this would mainly refer to cases in Africa however where survival rates may be different to due health care access.

This is weasel wording on their part.

Health care access is a factor for sure.

But there are also two main variants - one western africa, one central africa. The central african variant has high fatality rate in children/teenagers (1 in 10) The western african variant does not (1 in 100). All current cases are the latter, not the former.

(Not tons of data on health care factors involved in the two variants, but seems unlikely that the fatality difference is due mainly to health care).

We also have effective vaccines that are fully FDA approved. They can even be freeze dried :)

Production is always a factor, but if we needed to produce it fast, i'm sure it could be done.

Put another way - this seems ... unlikely to go the same way as COVID if it becomes a thing. We don't need to go do tons of research and studies and figure out how to fights it and etc. We just need to produce an already-approved effective vaccine.

Luckily it doesn't spread by breathing...

Light cases are usually under reported. This bias increases the fatality rate. Initial COVID fatality rates initially seemed a lot higher due to under reporting too. It even varied a lot from country by country due to different mechanisms for reporting. So personally I'd take this 1 out of 10 with a grain of salt.

The initial reports were that Covid-19 had a case fatality rate of 15%.

Since than we have massively expanded testing to unprecedented levels, so the mortality estimates are now dramatically lower, both for cases and infections.

The two are not really comparable.

This is actually not at all what's happening here.

Monkeypox has two variants. One has a 10% fatality rate, which is not initial - it's been measured over decades. The other is less than 1%. What's spreading right now is derived from the less fatal variant.

So you're right that its not going to be 10% fatal, but it could have been, and it's not a new disease where we don't have good mortality rates, it's been here for decades.

From what I gathered, the fatality rate came from papers like [1]. These are case fatality rates (CFR) derived from the number of people presenting at clinics with symptoms severe enough.

It cannot be compare to fatality rates of Covid where everyone who gets a positive antigen test, regardless of the severity of symptoms, or even existence of symptoms is part of the denominator.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8870502/

Not quite. Clusters of monkeypox have been studied, where the number of exposed people was known and they were traced, therefore clinical presentation was not a significant confounding factor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC120683/

Of course the sample size is limited, but they seemed consistent with other mortality data.

Also, unlike in COVID, asymptomatic infection has never been demonstrated.

I am not sure we can deduce that from the paper.

They are only testing clearly symptomatic patients. This cannot demonstrate asymptomatic infection if it exists.

Tracing also cannot demonstrate asymptomatic infection. It may be able to demonstrate asymptomatic transmission, though.

Today we define a Covid-19 case extremely liberally, which results in very low fatality rates. This is not comparable to the methods used for monkeypox in the early 2000s.

Recent Israeli Ministry of Health presentation claims that many infections are asymptomatic as demonstrated by serological studies.

https://youtu.be/U7LgEHujoTU?t=710 (sorry for the Hebrew link)

If this is true, the 3% of 10% mortality rates are massively inflated.

That's absolutely false! SARS has a 10% mortality rate, and the rate of COVID-19 was argued to be in the range of 0.25% to 3% - it's never been suspected to be higher than SARS'!

The very early reports from China put the case fatality rate at 15%. The pattern is for the (reported) CFR to go down very quickly.

> The trend in mortality reporting for COVID-19 has been typical for emerging infectious diseases. The case fatality rate (CFR) was reported to be 15% (six of 41 patients) in the initial period,1 but this estimate was calculated from a small cohort of hospitalised patients. Subsequently, with more data emerging, the CFR decreased to between 4·3% and 11·0%,2, 3 and later to 3·4%.4 The rate reported outside China in February was even lower (0·4%; two of 464).5

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

What is really curious is this:

    The name monkeypox originates from the initial discovery of the virus in monkeys in a Danish laboratory in 1958. The first human case was identified in a child in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970

Are there known interactions with locals and monkeys? Are they consumed?

edit: so there is consumption

    monkey meat is common in bush meat stalls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central Africa in general, with red-tailed and crowned guenons, baboons and agile mangabeys being the most common

It's like when COVID strains were called things like "the UK variant" - it conveys no meaning about true origin.

Monkeys can get monkeypox, which means they're not the reservoir animal.

So presuming human-monkey is how the jump happened is starting off down the wrong path.

> Monkeys can get monkeypox, which means they're not the reservoir animal.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but is this part actually true? I would think an animal could serve as a reservoir as long as the disease isn't deadly. But I don't know and I'm happy to be corrected if wrong.

The short version is no: if you get symptoms and recover, then the immune system has cleared it, so you can't be a carrier.

The obvious counter-example is herpes - where you periodically get symptoms and become infectious, but otherwise are not.

In the case of monkeypox though, as far as is currently known they are not major carriers of the disease - the name is just the animal it was first isolated in, since numerous other animals can be infected. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeypox#Reservoir

Thanks for the explanation, I hadn't considered the immune system clearing it.

> The short version is no: if you get symptoms and recover, then the immune system has cleared it, so you can't be a carrier.

That's not necessarily true. Many viruses are only pushed into dormancy by the immune system, and can come back and give you symptoms years later, at which point they can spread to other people. For example: Chickenpox, herpes, hiv.

Humans don’t get it from monkeys - we get it from other mammals such as rodents. Monkeys are just the first species in which the disease was noticed and identified.

These kind of posts is exactly why the WHO naming scheme for viruses discourages naming viruses after animals, places, people or landmarks. Best case it can cause a misunderstanding, worst case lead to people to actively arrive at wrong conclusion.

Our of curiosity, what is a name that wouldn’t rapidly become lost in a morass of similar names?

How about Orthopox Virus Disease 2022 - ORVID-22 for short. We really risk alienating the corvids though - Carl Bergstrom wouldn't like it

Yep. The main case cluster in Portugal has been traced back to a sauna in Lisbon, and already people are reverting to harmful 80s/hiv era jokes like ‘the homosexuals are f**ing monkeys’.

There was an imported case in Singapore a few years ago.

" The patient reported that prior to his arrival in Singapore, he had attended a wedding in Nigeria, where he may have consumed bush meat, which could be a source of transmission of monkeypox virus."

https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/confirmed-imp...

This is just nonsense.

Bush meat is a racist term concocted by European researchers.

"Bush meat" is simply meat obtained by trapping or hunting, as opposed to farming.

When Europeans or Americans hunt boar, ducks, wild pigs, dear etc is it called "bush meat"?

And if he may have consumed bush meat, was the bush meat raw or cooked?

Did he handle the raw meat himself?

Was there an outbreak among the guests at the wedding?

Are weddings the only place bush meat is available in Nigeria?

The kind of idiotic speculation Europeans engage in when it comes to Africa is totally of the chain.

They make all kinds of outlandish claims knowing that they don't have to justify them because in Africa anything goes.

The guy caught monkey pox period. No need to add any outlandish speculations to it.

It must be really tiring for people who feel the need to spend their entire life policing the written and spoken words of others for signs of 'rayyy-cism' where none was intended.

I bet you also get outraged if someone refers to a 'blackboard' instead of a 'chalkboard'.

The bush meat angle is total nonsense.

Did he claim to catch the animal live or handle the raw meat before it was cooked?

It is only in that case where the "bush" meat angle makes sense.

Nigerian national in Singapore with monkeypox.

In this instance it's African and Asian speculation.

Your bias is showing.

There is no bias here.

Any infection from meat would come from uncooked meat, or handling the infected meat before it was cooked as cooking would kill any germs in it.

Is there some reason to believe that the meat he ate was uncooked?

He said he "may" have eaten some "bush" meat, he didn't say he handled the uncooked meat or animal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat

> When Europeans or Americans hunt boar, ducks, wild pigs, dear etc is it called "bush meat"?

It'd be called "game meat" or "wild meat". "The bush" is a synonymous term for the wild, and has neutral connotations.

> Bush meat is a racist term concocted by European researchers.

This paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7122066/ would suggest that it was just a neutral translation of what people in Cameroon were calling it. Likely just "meat from the wild", which the English would have neutrally called "meat from the bush".

But why is the term "bush" used as though the means of obtaining it is different from what white people call game?

Why isn't the appropriate translation used?

The simple fact is it is a culturally loaded term suggesting that it is different and "unclean" in some way.

It is no different from the term "wet market" used in China to describe live animals or freshly killed meat.

Are the wholesale markets for fresh fish and fresh meat in Europe called wet markets?

Bogus headline. It's not known to be spreadable by sex specifically, but rather merely through propinquity. Thus obviously a rave is by itself inherently highly likely to be spreading event.

From what I read, from all the people that have been affected by monkeypox, a significant amount is gay or bisexual men. From what I understand monkeypox can transmit through holes in the skin. As such, perhaps the disease can spread easily through unprotected anal sex.

In transmits through close contact, so it's more likely that the rave is the reason and not that's a gay rave

A rave without significant mucosal contact (e.g. people going around french kissing with each other) is unlikely to be a superspreader location for monkeypox.

Have you ever been to a rave?

You tell me: what do you reckon is the average number of people that each participant at a rave exchanges mucous with?

See Fargoan's post, with the event website. This ain't just kids with glowsticks.

Yeah that's my point. A normal rave is unlikely to be a superspreader event. A bathhouse orgy on the other hand is different.

Have you got a theory for why the straight people at the rave came away without Monkeypox but the gay and bisexual men did?

https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/5/23/monkeypox-outbreak-l...

This is fake news. The only place I see the real story is from The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/5/23/monkeypox-outbreak-l...

Without knowing anything about how gay men have sex (I assume anal), is it somehow more likely for gay men to get these sorts of things? Would a condom help, or nah? Surely if a man and a women had anal sex it would be the same? Is it that anal sex isn't as likely between men and women and therefore the risk is lower?

I believe this comes from close contact via air droplets for pro-longed period. Not sure what the sex angle is here since its the air droplets becoming airborne but requiring close proximity.

my concern is then, is there a chance for this to become mutated and transmit? Say in a night club, stadium and concerts?

A complete graph on N vertices has (N^2 - N)/2 edges. A complete bipartite graph on N vertices has <= N^2/4 edges. There are just more sexual interactions possible among non-heterosexuals, and men who have sex with men have more (relatively) dedicated social gatherings than women who have sex with women. The number of people who congregate in a particular event is generally unaffected by population and instead determined by the size of the venue.

Anal sex is a risk factor for certain diseases, particularly HIV, but monkeypox does not require genital contact (or significant fluid transfer) for spread, so it's not clear if condoms would make much of a difference in this case.

This is one of the more ridiculous comments in this post.

I would would think it’s likely just easily sexually transmitted, and any community with a hookup culture would be vulnerable?

I've always just assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that gay men just have more sex with more partners, because men in general tend to be the "easy" half of the species when it comes to sex. So when it's a man on both sides of the intercourse, there's far fewer barriers to contact.

Maybe the kind of sex affects the odds of STD transmission too, but I'd expect the number of dicerolls to be the primary factor and to be substantially higher among gay men in general.

TL;DR: Men are easy, some of them are gay too.

One of the subjects on an experimental HIV resistant drug managed to still get HIV while having sex with on average 20 men per month (iirc, it's been a while since I read the case study). While promiscuity isn't inherent to gay men, it is more likely among them, and generally to a greater extent than promiscuous women.

With that much risky behavior (with no protection), it is indeed a long series of dice rolls.

Gambler's ruin.

Anal sex has a much higher risk of transmitting infections due to the different mechanics around lubrication and bleeding.

This is, for me, one of the biggest issues with gay culture. The sheer amount of sexual partners the average gay/bisexual man has, in comparison to straight ones, is, in my eyes a huge risk factor.

Sadly, it is very hard to have serious discussions about such topics nowadays, as one tends to get hit with the homophobia label.

>The sheer amount of sexual partners the average gay/bisexual man has, in comparison to straight ones, is, in my eyes a huge risk factor.

Ride a jet ski wind up in the water.

If the tradeoff wasn't worth it they wouldn't do it.

Risk factor for sexually transmitted infections you mean? We know how to avoid spreading them: get tested regularly, and use barriers when necessary. The number of partners is less important than those two. If you don’t do the first two, even one partner can be a problem.

Sure, but if you don't do the first two, your risk increases linearly with the number of partners.

The relevance really comes down do what question you are trying to answer.

If you want to know what factors have the biggest impact on reducing transmission, you will get one answer.

If you want to know what populations are at higher risk and what are they doing different, you will get another answer.

It’s less socially acceptable to shit on gay people directly nowadays, so some people use topics like the one you are mentioning as “proxy wars”, so to speak, where they can indirectly express their distaste.

Not saying you are doing this, but by bringing it up, some people might think that’s what you are doing. I feel like I have seen it often enough that it is a fairly reasonable concern.

Is there a specific reason you are focusing on this issue, out of all of the thousands of issues you could choose to care about?

> Is there a specific reason you are focusing on this issue, out of all of the thousands of issues you could choose to care about?

I am not focusing on it. I am just bringing it up on a thread where it seemed appropriate to. One person can care about more than just one issue at a time.

There’s differences for diseases that are transmitted via blood or at least require heavy breakage of the skin barrier where sexual activity with less natural lubrication has higher transmission risks (HIV is a notable example).

But the main difference for most in general is just that gay men have vastly more partners in a short period of time. You don’t really have a straight (or lesbian) equivalent of gay bathhouses.

Monkeypox is not sexually transmitted any more that covid or ebola is sexually transmitted. Not to be harsh, but you could have found this out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeypox#Transmission) in addition how gay men have sex by just reading Wikipedia. Gay men also engage in oral sex and other forms of non-penetrative sex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_sexual_practices), for the record. Dan Savage is an extremely entertaining source for further information. At any rate, a condom would be largely ineffective with a fitted N95 and other personal safety gear given the mode of transmission and proximity of partners. Vigorously making out seems completely adequate here, no need to get all wound up about anal sex.

your link says:

> The virus enters the body primarily through broken skin (even if not visible), or the mucous membranes (eyes, nose, or mouth). Human-to-human transmission is thought to occur primarily through close contact with an infected subject. There are indications that transmission is occurring during sexual intercourse

as far as I know COVID is not transmitted primarily through broken skin, so it does seem more likely to be transmitted through sex.

If you are having sex with someone, you are generally exchanging multiple fluids, breathing the same air, and having non-genital skin to skin contact. Because something can be transmitted sexually does not mean it's considered an STI. Based on what you have read, would preventing fluid exchange in intercourse prevent transmission?

You are technically correct about covid. However - and this was my point - if you have sex with someone with active, transmissible covid without substantial and properly fit PPE you are probably going to catch covid. It doesn't matter what type of sexual behavior you engage in, or what safer sex precautions that you take. That does not make covid an STI.

For human-to-human, Monkeypox can transmit (according to current knowledge) by prolonged skin contact (or broken skin), by inhalation, or by eyes/nose/mouth. Put another way - like most viruses, it has to get into your body somehow, and most transmission vectors you can imagine work.

So like, you could get it from infected bedding if you had a cut, or it rubbed into your eye, or ....

Whether anything helps depends on whether it cuts down on most avenues above.

The sex part is mostly irrelevant, except that it is a very direct avenue to get it into your body vs "being coughed on" or "having cuts".

Chalk this one up to the media - someone identified that the current origination seems to have been a rave or two (or whatever), and that it can transmit sexually, and so now all the stories are about how it transmits by gay sex and blah blah blah. It's clickbait.

In that sense, lots of viruses transmit well by sex, monkeypox is not special or unique, nor is this likely to be the main transmission method as cases increase, even if it was the original transmission method. It has never been the main transmission mechanism of previous outbreaks.

I mean, heck, the fact that the media is focusing on the sex transmission helps guarantees it will transmit effectively the other ways - people think they are safe if they aren't having sex, but they are not!

The one part that isn't well-evaluated is the whole "how far do droplets travel" part. Right now the view of the CDC is that it requires prolonged face-to-face contact to get it that way because droplets can't travel very far (they are pretty heavy). The view of COVID started the same way.

It often ends up rarely that simple ;)

Condom would help and yes, gays are more promiscuous, they tend to do more anal sex than straight people and they tend to use more drugs which cause them to be less responsible. The statistics regarding HIV are overwhelming, most of it is contracted by gay anal sex (the second cause is infected syringes among drug users). HIV almost doesn't exist among straight people.

Anything going directly into the colon is bypassing a number of the body's protective mechanisms:

"Prostaglandin E2 in human semen given via anus during anal intercourse may cause an immune dysregulation in the male semen recipients; this immunosuppressive effect of prostaglandin E2 may be one of the underlying factors that stimulate AIDS-associated virus infection or that trigger the latent AIDS-associated virus. This hypothesis is supported by the following experimental results. Anal infusion of prostaglandin E2 or D2 into male rats reduced in vitro responses of T lymphocytes to phytohemagglutinin. However, the T-cell response of female rats was not reduced significantly by the anal infusion of seminal prostaglandins."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3458226/

"This method of alcohol consumption can be dangerous and even deadly because it leads to faster intoxication than drinking since the alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream and bypasses the body's ability to reject the toxin by vomiting."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_enema

Any sexual contact is going to result in a high chance for transmission.

Both gay men and lesbian women prefer oral sex. This is well studied but not widely known because it goes against popular ideas of what counts as sex.

This is a good question to ask. It's very frustrating that health authorities have not released more information, but they most likely do not know exactly how the virus spread, either.

Anal sex occurs at these types of events but is not a dominating activity. People may engage in a wide variety of sexual activities. Some may not have sex at all. My guess is that sex was not a contributing factor, but rather close skin-to-skin contact among a large group of people wearing little more than underwear.

It's also possible the virus could have been spread through "breeding," a practice where one person will be penetrated by multiple people one-after-the-other much like a Tesla supercharger.

But get any group of half-naked people together in close quarters for hours and I am sure any type of virus like monkeypox will spread. As a gay person I would very much like to at least know the most probably theories.

It's very frustrating to see comments further down postulating that a lack of protection is the cause of the virus. Last time I checked, even sex with condoms involves skin contact.

Health authorities don't seem to have learned anything from COVID. The sooner information becomes available, even if the only information is "It could be this but we need to be sure," the better.

In the meantime, the LGBT community will have to deal with this kind of misinformation as well as not knowing how to protect themselves.

> one person will be penetrated by multiple people one-after-the-other much like a Tesla supercharger.

That's a rather unusual analogy. I don't recall ever penetrating a supercharger with anything, whether one-after-the-other or not! Is there some part of the joke that I'm missing?

>Is it that anal sex isn't as likely between men and women and therefore the risk is lower?

yes and it is common for gays to have sex with way more partners, way more frequently, without protection, often using drugs. so it's a wonderful way to spread disease. look up the epidemiology of STDs in relation to MSM partner counts, it's eye-opening.

amazes me that people don't actually know the basic facts of this. i suppose this is what happens after two decades of politely not mentioning it -- what goes unsaid eventually goes unthought.

So many questions and yet I don’t know if I want the answers

Anxiously awaiting wombat gonorrhea...

Koala chlamydia is real

First one, then the other...

Okay, so incubation period?

Per the Merck Manual and other sources, as long as 10 days. Prodromal, "denoting the period between the appearance of initial symptoms and the full development of a rash or fever" I recently came across a claim it's up to 20 days.

In a couple of reports I read yesterday of ex-Nigeria West African clade cases, which appears to be the same source and variant family for this Western outbreak, three cases started with pustules in the groin area before they gained a lot more coverage. From memory at least two of those cases were associated with handling rodents which are thought to be the animal reservoir for the disease.

Yeah, so I looked up these "raves" and that's 100% fake news. This is not a rave https://darklands.be/horse-fair/

Bug chasers? Traditionally descriptive of people who seek out HIV-positive partners. There is no reason for such thrill-seekers to limit themselves to only one dangerous disease.

"most of the known cases in Europe have been among men who have sex with men"

Here we go again.

Is that not an objective statement? I'm aware of the controversy, but that doesn't mean we should ignore facts.

I think you read more than he said. I'm not sure what Animats meant, but I don't think he said whatever you're responding to.

Could it be in reference to the AIDS epidemic, with quotes such as this classifying the early days of that?

I don't think he said anything that merits more than a "what do you mean?" in response.

So I ask this person too, "what do you mean?"

The problem with that messaging is it’s hard to take back. Even in 2022, I have straight friends who regularly have unprotected sex with random women and don’t think HIV applies to them because they’re not gay.

I'm a gay man, and I'm on PrEP because I know I'm at higher risk of HIV. If I were straight and (1) neither I nor my partners used IV drugs, (2) neither I nor my partners had any visible STDs and I got checked for STDs regularly and (3) I were circumcized, to be honest I'd be fine having unprotected sex with random women because my chance of acquiring HIV would be exceedingly, exceedingly low. My chance of acquiring other STDs, especially Chlamydia, would be much higher, but if I were getting checked regularly it seems like a reasonable risk for a treatable disease.

> ...and (3) I were circumcized,...

Does circumcision actually have a non-neglible impact on the risk? From what I remember, it is insignificant, at best.

Circumcision provides a very large protective effect. Circumcized males are 2 to 8 times less likely to contract HIV: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127372/

You can Google for other studies - the protective effect of circumcision is significant and large.

I am on prep too but still there’s a difference between consciously accepting a certain level of risk vs just assuming the risk is nonexistent because of poorly communicated information

It's a coincidence not a causality. Some could have happened on a "straight" rave.

Can you clarify?

HIV was originally associated with gay men. Some people argue that society only started seeing it as a public health issue (as opposed to a disease that those evil people get) when it became clear that it was spreading from gay men to everyone else.

But we know that this doesn't just effect gay men and it's an older disease...it is just prominent in gay men. HIV is still to this day far more prevalent in the gay community than any other. You can speak about relevant facts on the ground without being a "bigot," it just means people need to be careful. There is no stigma here.

I'm pretty sure that HIV is more prevalent amongst heterosexual people than gay men. Unless you are saying that most Africans are gay, that most SE Asians are gay, and that most Papuans are gay (hint - they're not).

In most 1st world nations your assertion _may_ be true, but in Australia at least HIV is most prevalent in the needle sharing community.

My post was downvoted. Here's where the numbers are: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet

It says:

New HIV infections have been reduced by 52% since the peak in 1997.

    In 2020, around 1.5 million [1.0 million–2.0 million] people were newly infected with HIV, compared to 3.0 million [2.1 million–4.2 million] people in 1997.
    Women and girls accounted for 50% of all new infections in 2020.

The assertion that 86% of new infections are in the gay community is false

I'm gay, and I downvoted you. Obviously transmission rates are very different around the world, but I'll just speak for the US: in the US the majority of new HIV infections are still men who have sex with men, with 66% of all cases and 81% of all men (and gay men make up 5-10% of men): https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/stat...

Heck, the reason I'm on PrEP, and the reason virtually every other sexually active, non-long-term-monogamous gay man I know is also on PrEP, is because I know my risk of HIV infection is an order of magnitude more than straight men.

Gay and bisexual men account for 66% of new HIV infections in the US, according to the CDC.

It's obviously different globally, where homophobia and prostitution mean different groups are vulnerable to HIV.

There are more heterosexuals than homosexuals. I am saying per capita it is very very disproportionate and that is backed up by the facts of the matter. There's no arguing against it. That doesn't mean being gay is wrong or anything of the sort, just that people in that community have to be more careful. The news reporting on that or on the monkeypox thing doesn't mean it's perpetuating some sort of bigotry, it is informing that community to be on the lookout and to be safe. Arguing against informing our gay counterparts/friends of a virus to be PC or whatever is detrimental to the health of people we care about.

Statistically speaking HIV isn't spreading through everyone else. It's still almost entirely a gay men and intravenous drug user disease. The idea that it's spread to everyone else is part of the mythology that was spread with the intent of getting the attention of the general public to help with funding/research/etc.

A quick search found that 86% of new HIV cases are among men who have sex with men. I couldn't find what % of the population is gay men, but all of LGBT makes up only 3-4% of the population.

There is practically zero risk of HIV to straight people who do not use iv drugs.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of new HIV cases are in Africa, amongst heterosexual clients of sex workers. Maybe your 86% figure might apply in countries like the US where health care is a privilege and not a right.

Your last sentence reminds me that COVID was going to be over by Christmas 2020...

How about the UK?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-hiv-diagnoses-in-gay-...

>A new report by Public Health England shows that for the first time the number of new HIV diagnoses in gay and bisexual men outnumber new diagnoses in heterosexual adults by only 100 cases.

So there's as many new HIV diagnoses among gay men as straight people, except gay men are only around 2% of the population. Notice you have to include all heterosexual people, not just the men, and it doesn't get up to just the cases among gay/bi men. The difference is staggering.

I'm sorry, but the real world data doesn't match the mythology around HIV. You are right about prostitutes though, I should've included that as a risk factor.

Does it surprise you that a sexually transmitted disease doesn't spread easily between people of different sexual orientations?

> gay men are only around 2% of the population

This is a dramatic underestimate by at least a factor of two. Only about 2% of boomers identify as gay, but it's five times that (or more!) if you ask younger generations. Unsurprisingly, younger folks have more sexual partners.

The general trend of the younger generations is towards fewer sex partners, not more. Millennials had fewer sex partners than their parents. Gen Z had fewer still. There's not great numbers on gen Alpha, but it's unlikely to have leaped past millennials.

All of LGBT combined is only about 3-4% of the population. I will grant you that it's entirely possible 90% of LGBT is gay/bi men. I don't know.

I can't find out the article, it was about the evolutionary advantage of having homosexual individuals in highly social species (penguins, wolves, cats), and the number was 4 to 5%. At that you can add dismorphia, heterosexuals with homosexual comportements and bisexuals, i wouldn't be surprised with a 10% figure.

Are those numbers from the same people that tricked you into believing that HIV was not primarily a disease among men who have sex with men?

I did not participate in the thread, i have no knowledge of HIV, so probably not.

I am however interested in social comportements in cats clowder/colonies (I'm from the countryside and i saw interesting comportements), and i am pretty sure i was researching information on homosexuality in cats due to homosexual comportements in two non-castrated cats from the clowder (we called it a gang). I found interesting articles about hormonal triggers during pregnancy (a bit disproven by homosexuality amongst penguins imho, but I'm not a researcher), and multiple studying homosexuality amongst social animals in multiple settings. I'm sure about the 4 to 5%, the rest is bad extrapolation and shouldn't be taken into account (i thought that was clear). Sorry if I ruffled your feathers.

Have a nice day!

I’m assuming this is a reference to the fact that AIDS was, initially, called “GRID” and well, stigmatizing disease or downplaying it as something that won’t happen to someone due to lifestyle differences does little but divide people and ignore the problem. Intercourse happens between people, and the emphasis that a certain type occurs more frequently with a specific demographic shouldn’t change anything.

> The cause of the disorder is unknown. Researchers call it A.I.D., for acquired immunodeficiency disease, or GRID, for gay-related immunodeficiency. It has been reported in 20 states and seven countries. [0]

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/science/new-homosexual-di...

Before “GRID” it was called “gay pneumonia.”

It took about two years to figure out it was being spread sexually.

Doesn’t change the fact that promiscuous sexual activity among gay men is how monkey pox currently spreads. Of course that could change once there are more cases.

Makes you wonder why there are no lockdowns for the types of gay venues and events that have been identified as ground zero for the disease.

because lockdowns discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation are likely going to be challenged legally in almost all democratic countries, and rightfully so by the way. Reminds me of calls to 'intern' gay men in the 80s here in Germany during the AIDS panic by some politicians.

Draconian, but might have saved quite a few lifes. Don’t remember anyone panicking though. People quickly realised that attracting HIV is highly unlikely outside of high-risk groups, ie sexually active gays and needle sharing drug addicts. Apparently, nobody in the gay scene was panicking either. Why else did HIV continue to spread to a point where a large proportion of gay men carry the virus nowadays?

Are you arguing that closing sex-on-premises businesses unfairly target homosexuals?

> promiscuous sexual activity among gay men is how monkey pox currently spreads

This is the objectively false messaging the parent comments are noting. There is nothing about this virus that makes gay men a uniquely potent vector for transmission. It's not how this virus is spreading, it's how it has spread in one case. It's a well-researched virus and the means that it propagates is well understood—nothing about the science requires gay people to be discriminated against.

If you wanted lockdowns, perhaps we should start with the sorts of places where people sit near each other for hours, eat and drink, and shake hands. We can start with churches.

https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/5/23/monkeypox-outbreak-l...

HIV is also thought to have originated via zoonotic transmission from non-human primates. Or it could be a reference to the claim that such diseases are used to create unfair stigma for the communities via which they are promulgated.

Exactly. Cant even enforce a lockdown this time for this. More lockdown == more sex with whoever is in sight.

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