Monkeypox a new worry for gay and bi men

[+ keroscenefire]

The WHO now is saying monkeypox likely spread at a few random events: Gay Pride in the Canary Islands, a fetish festival in Belgium and at a gay sauna in Madrid. They actually closed the sauna in Madrid.

It appears to just be bad luck that gay men happened to be in close-contact with contagious lesions at these events. Fortunately, it's very obvious you have monkeypox when you have it and it appears to only be contagious when you have symptoms. 

I'm a bit nervous because I am in Europe and have been to a few bathhouses. It's been now five-days since my last visit though and it sounds like in most cases you develop a fever and swollen lymph nodes by then. I haven't either and haven't actually been to any of the countries where the events occurred so hoping everything is fine. Fly back to the states on Wednesday. Have to test for COVID tomorrow. 

[Luv2play]

It seemes every day we are getting a few more confirmed cases in Canada, all in the large eastern cities of Montreal and now one in Toronto. The worrisome thing is that the incubation period can be up to three weeks and I know the transmission route is through touching infected areas but they may be hard to see. Also surfaces like blankets and sheets can host the virus for an extended time.

Back in history, General Amherst advocated infecting blankets with smallpox germs and giving the blankets to the Indians. As a result his name has now been stripped from sites that bore it such as Amherst Street in Montreal.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Luv2play
Correction

[Quincy_7]

12 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

It seemes every day we are getting a few more confirmed cases in Canada, all in the large eastern cities of Montreal and now one in Toronto. The worrisome thing is that the incubation period can be up to three weeks and I know the transmission route is through touching infected areas but they may be hard to see. Also surfaces like blankets and sheets can host the virus for an extended time.

Back in history, General Cornwallis advocated infecting blankets with smallpox germs and giving the blankets to the Indians. As a result his name has now been stripped from sites that bore it in the Canadian Maritime provinces.

His name should have been stripped long before then for his less than mediocre generalship during the Revolutionary War.

[Luv2play]

I corrected my post. It was Amherst, not Cornwallis, who is tied to the infected blankets issue.

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

...Back in history, General Amherst advocated infecting blankets with smallpox germs and giving the blankets to the Indians....

Did he really go all the way to India? Or did you mean indigenous peoples? 😉

[young11]

6 hours ago, Quincy_7 said:

We obviously know very little about how transmission works right now but the fact that transmission seems to be predominant amongst gay men should raise a few eyebrows since there are way more straight people than gay people. If it turns out that this is something condoms can mitigate then that would strengthen the argument that PrEP is not some sort of free pass to bareback. 

my guess is that someone infected went to sauna in Madrid and infected so many at one time and those infected probably had random sex here and there because you know people who frequent sauna probably have many random sex as well, so initially there was a spread among gays but i doubt anything has to do with sexuality. It just spreads through close contact so people who have sex regularly with many people are the ones who catch it. 

[+ keroscenefire]

6 hours ago, young11 said:

my guess is that someone infected went to sauna in Madrid and infected so many at one time and those infected probably had random sex here and there because you know people who frequent sauna probably have many random sex as well, so initially there was a spread among gays but i doubt anything has to do with sexuality. It just spreads through close contact so people who have sex regularly with many people are the ones who catch it. 

I think you're right. I think most of the cases probably did come from like one-offs and then a few from connections to it. There most have been something in Canada too...probably another bathhouse or something.

But yeah, it's not the actual sex but just being in close-contact or in the cases of the bathhouses using the same sheets/mattresses. It really is the lesions themselves where the virus spreads but yeah it was probably hard to see them and it spread more quickly than anyone realized.

[Luv2play]

As I understand it, the postules or lesions are pus filled so when they rupture, the infected fluid spreads on surfaces and lives for some time capable of infecting someone who touches the surface. So no actual contact with another person is necessary to spread the disease.

Also I've read that the virus can be transmitted by water droplets so someone coughing or sneezing could pass the disease. This is why vaccinations were developed to eliminate smallpox and it widely was around the developed world. It still persists in places like Africa though. 

[+ keroscenefire]

38 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

As I understand it, the postules or lesions are pus filled so when they rupture, the infected fluid spreads on surfaces and lives for some time capable of infecting someone who touches the surface. So no actual contact with another person is necessary to spread the disease.

Also I've read that the virus can be transmitted by water droplets so someone coughing or sneezing could pass the disease. This is why vaccinations were developed to eliminate smallpox and it widely was around the developed world. It still persists in places like Africa though. 

Fortunately, sneezing/coughing is not an actual symptom of monkeypox and it appears that it does not spread well through the air. But if you were to make out with someone or really be in close proximity to their mouths, you could probably get it that way. 

[Bucky]

International gay sex raves, saunas, bathhouses back in the news...  spreading monkeypox. 

Yet again, the world will judge our hedonism and our rep undoubtedly takes another hit, fair or not.  

[Guest]

A lot of people are making a lot of assumptions about monkeypox transmission without a lot of science to back these assumptions up. It has certainly been taught that smallpox could be transmitted airborne from someone with active lesions, but only with active lesions, not from coughing or sneezing (or breathing/talking). If monkeypox is transmitted the same way, someone with active lesions could transmit airborne. I'm pretty sure there's also no hard science regarding whether any currently developed vaccines or medications will be effective. 

For now, my advice would be to avoid intimate contact with someone whose skin you can't examine with sufficiently good lighting (such as in a poorly-lit sauna or dark room). No reason for panic at this time. So far, outbreaks have been limited. We'll know a lot more in the coming weeks. 

[mike carey]

18 hours ago, Luv2play said:

This is why vaccinations were developed to eliminate smallpox and it widely was around the developed world. It still persists in places like Africa though.

My understanding is that the last case of smallpox in the wild was in 1977, and that the WHO determined that it had been eradicated by 1980. The virus still exists in labs. (Polio, on the other hand, exists only in a couple of places on the planet, but has been eliminated in the developed world.)

[+ JEC]

On 5/19/2022 at 11:39 PM, Rudynate said:

There is a virulent strain with a 10% death rate and a mild strain with a 1% death rate.

This strain is the 1% less serious strain, there are effective treatments if properly diagnosed.  

Edited May 25, 2022 by JEC

[Luv2play]

3 hours ago, mike carey said:

My understanding is that the last case of smallpox in the wild was in 1977, and that the WHO determined that it had been eradicated by 1980. The virus still exists in labs. (Polio, on the other hand, exists only in a couple of places on the planet, but has been eliminated in the developed world.)

I agree. I misspoke.

[+ Lucky]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

I agree. I misspoke.

It's okay. Wasn't it your birthday?

[Rudynate]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

I agree. I misspoke.

That is effectively true, but an occasional case of small pox turns up now and then.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Rudynate said:

That is effectively true, but an occasional case of small pox turns up now and then.

No, none reported since the 70s. You may be thinking of polio, where cases are still reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Muslim extremist have promoted anti-vax lies. 

[Rudynate]

22 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

No, none reported since the 70s. You may be thinking of polio, where cases are still reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Muslim extremist have promoted anti-vax lies. 

No, I wasn't thinking of polio.  I thought I had remembered reading that isolated cases of smallpox still occur, but that is obviously not correct.  As you say, the last reported case of naturally-acquired smallpox was in the 70s.  Great public health achievement.   Why can't we pull it together to do it again?

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Rudynate said:

No, I wasn't thinking of polio.  I thought I had remembered reading that isolated cases of smallpox still occur, but that is obviously not correct.  As you say, the last reported case of naturally-acquired smallpox was in the 70s.  Great public health achievement.   Why can't we pull it together to do it again?

Potentially quite doable for polio, but it doesn't take a large number of anti-vaxxers to thwart any such plans. Also doable for measles, but, again, anti-vaxxer sentiment has become so much more prevalent than in the 1970s, that I don't see that happening, either. It won't be possible for the SARS-CoV2 virus, since it started evading vaccines about a year ago due to mutations in the virus (even those fully vaccinated can now potentially transmit, if only for a few days). Even if it weren't for the huge number of anti-vaxxers, the virus's ability to evade vaccines means we'll have to accept the fact that this virus will always be with us. 

[young11]

So I am on Barcelona... Should I go to thermas or what 😂 

[+ Pensant]

11 hours ago, young11 said:

So I am on Barcelona... Should I go to thermas or what 😂 

I wouldn’t.

[+ Lucky]

14 hours ago, young11 said:

So I am on Barcelona... Should I go to thermas or what 😂 

Half the fun of being in Barcelona is going to Thermas. I would go.

[+ keroscenefire]

The closed spa was in Madrid not Barcelona for what it's worth. But yeah Spain has quite a few cases of Monkeypox right now with only the UK having more. I do think this outbreak should have a limited life-span as the symptoms are quite obvious and asymptomatic spread is unlikely. Unfortunately it can have a very long incubation period so we're probably still in the zone where people could have early symptoms and be contagious. The other thing that is concerning is that it can be spread by contaminated bedding, which makes the bathhouse thing even more risky. 

I avoided bathhouses in Europe once I heard about this outbreak and probably still would for at least a coupe more weeks.

[Luv2play]

There are now 25 confirmed cases in Montreal and the surrounding area and the health authorities are beginning to distribute vaccines to those at risk, ie contacts.

Yesterday I read a case in Toronto was linked to travel to Montreal. All are men whom have sex with men. So we have a mini epidemic (my words). For me that means no travel to Montreal in the immediate future or until we see where this goes.  

The first cases reported last week were linked to a man from Boston who had traveled to Montreal. So travel is obviously spreading this disease along certain lines, which are not yet clear. If it is the saunas then maybe we will see them closed, like in the 1980's when AIDs first appeared.

[+ Lucky]

45 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

There are now 25 confirmed cases in Montreal and the surrounding area and the health authorities are beginning to distribute vaccines to those at risk, ie contacts.

Yesterday I read a case in Toronto was linked to travel to Montreal. All are men whom have sex with men. So we have a mini epidemic (my words). For me that means no travel to Montreal in the immediate future or until we see where this goes.  

The first cases reported last week were linked to a man from Boston who had traveled to Montreal. So travel is obviously spreading this disease along certain lines, which are not yet clear. If it is the saunas then maybe we will see them closed, like in the 1980's when AIDs first appeared.

You would avoid a huge city just because a few people there caught monkeypox? Why not just avoid sexual encounters with strangers?