Monkeypox a new worry for gay and bi men

[young11]

Yeah spain has a high number of infected but some news sources say it's only in Madrid so far but without travel restrictions I am sure people can carry the virus from Madrid to barcelona. The worry is exactly the sauna environment that makes it substantially more risky but thermas is really fun and I don't wanna visit the city without going there. Ah.... 

[+ JEC]

29 minutes ago, young11 said:

Yeah spain has a high number of infected but some news sources say it's only in Madrid so far but without travel restrictions I am sure people can carry the virus from Madrid to barcelona. The worry is exactly the sauna environment that makes it substantially more risky but thermas is really fun and I don't wanna visit the city without going there. Ah.... 

The monkeypox strain has a 1% mortality rate.   Probably less a risk than being stabbed, shot or hit by a bus.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, JEC said:

The monkeypox strain has a 1% mortality rate.   Probably less a risk than being stabbed, shot or hit by a bus.

Edited May 26, 2022 by Unicorn

[Luv2play]

3 hours ago, Lucky said:

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

Well, Montreal is a huge metropolis but the gay parts rather intimate. It has the concentrated gay village where most of the action is, including the half dozen or so gay saunas.

Even though hookups via Grindr and other apps have changed the landscape of cruising, I know from personal experience that escorts frequent the saunas in their off hours seeking sex with younger guys. 

Given the acceleration of cases, now 25 confirmed and 30 odd under investigation, all in a week, I think caution is the order of the day.

[menaughty]

10 hours ago, JEC said:

The monkeypox strain has a 1% mortality rate.   Probably less a risk than being stabbed, shot or hit by a bus.

But it's not just that. What about those lesions one gets. Those look irritating and you need a lot of patience to endure it. And idk how long the lesions stay. 

[Wolfer]

Are there news sites that report on the cases around the world. I've got a trip planned to Barcelona the end of July and was hoping to only see the inside of Thermas. 

[Luv2play]

Here in Canada the CBC is regularly reporting on the virus and its spread. This morning they said the first case had been reported in Finland yesterday. Also that the majority of cases were in Europe. 

It appears to me that they are going to have to ramp up production of the smallpox vaccine as only several hundred doses are available here and already more than two dozen confirmed cases and a similar number of suspected cases.

[Quincy_7]

So we now know that the virus spreads through contact with bodily fluids. Semen hasn't been mentioned as a vector of transmission so far but I suspect more knowledge will come to light soon.

[Luv2play]

I was surprised to read of the bodily fluids aspect of transmission. I knew of the water droplets but bodily fluids encompasses semen as you indicated.  So this would make this an STD if correct.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Luv2play

[Guest]

Again, I'm not sure monkeypox has really been studied that much, but if it's spread the way smallpox was, aerosol transmission from someone with lesions was thought to be a common mode of spread. They may be closing places like Thermas down if spread continues, but, until then, I think it's unwise to be going places without sufficient light for one to be able to tell if someone else has lesions--even if you're not intimate with him. 

[BSR]

3 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Again, I'm not sure monkeypox has really been studied that much, but if it's spread the way smallpox was, aerosol transmission from someone with lesions was thought to be a common mode of spread. They may be closing places like Thermas down if spread continues, but, until then, I think it's unwise to be going places without sufficient light for one to be able to tell if someone else has lesions--even if you're not intimate with him. 

You could bring a really powerful flashlight with you to Thermas, but that might kill the mood.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, BSR said:

You could bring a really powerful flashlight with you to Thermas, but that might kill the mood.

....

Well, we certainly get them at all ends of the spectrum on this forum. You've got those willing to expose themselves to a virus which causes disfigurement and has a 1% mortality, and others who are panicking over what has become an extraordinarily benign virus. Not a lot of rational thought, from my perspective. 🤫

Edited May 28, 2022 by Unicorn

[+ sniper]

On 5/25/2022 at 12:37 PM, 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?

I remember back in the 90s there was a bit of an ethical debate over whether to destroy the remaining smallpox laboratory samples, as it would mark the first deliberate extinction of a life form.

[Rudynate]

12 minutes ago, sniper said:

I remember back in the 90s there was a bit of an ethical debate over whether to destroy the remaining smallpox laboratory samples, as it would mark the first deliberate extinction of a life form.

There is some difference of opinion in the scientific community as to whether viruses are a life form at all because they don't  have all of the characteristics that the conventional definition of a life form specifies.  It is true that a virus particles, before it infects a cell, is incapable of metabolism and reproduction.  But once it infects a living cell, it takes over the cell and it's gangbusters.  I consider them to be living organisms - intracellular parasites.   Someone else will read this and disagree with me, and that's fine, because it is not a settled issue. 

I believe that prions  definitely are not living organisms because they lack a genome coded in nucleic acids.

There are also biologic entities called viroids, and I'm not sure what I think about those, They have a genome coded in nucleic acids but they lack the protein coat most viruses have.  I lean in the direction of calling them living organisms.

[+ WilliamM]

9 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Well, we certainly get them at all ends of the spectrum on this forum. You've got those willing to expose themselves to a virus which causes disfigurement and has a 1% mortality, and others who are panicking over what has become an extraordinarily benign virus. Not a lot of rational thought, from my perspective. 🤫

Quite rational, my friend.

[+ JEC]

18 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Again, I'm not sure monkeypox has really been studied that much, but if it's spread the way smallpox was, aerosol transmission from someone with lesions was thought to be a common mode of spread. They may be closing places like Thermas down if spread continues, but, until then, I think it's unwise to be going places without sufficient light for one to be able to tell if someone else has lesions--even if you're not intimate with him. 

Given the current spread among MSM, and the up to 21 day incubation period, I wonder if it can be spread thru sexual contact long before the lesions form?

[+ WilliamM]

14 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Well, we certainly get them at all ends of the spectrum on this forum. You've got those willing to expose themselves to a virus which causes disfigurement and has a 1% mortality, and others who are panicking over what has become an extraordinarily benign virus. Not a lot of rational thought, from my perspective. 🤫

For God sake, many people have religious reasons for not being vaccinated.   And blacks have historic reasons

[Guest]

20 hours ago, JEC said:

Given the current spread among MSM, and the up to 21 day incubation period, I wonder if it can be spread thru sexual contact long before the lesions form?

Current teaching is that it's not believed to be the case, once again with the caution that monkeypox hasn't been extensively studied. The fact that transmission seems tied to poorly-lit places supports the current teaching. 

[BSR]

10 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Current teaching is that it's not believed to be the case, once again with the caution that monkeypox hasn't been extensively studied. The fact that transmission seems tied to poorly-lit places supports the current teaching. 

[+ keroscenefire]

The other reason that bathhouses are kind of tricky is because monkeypox can be spread by contaminated bedding. So possibly if someone with monkeypox was on a bathhouse bed, the virus could be spread by the next person using that bed even if they didn't have direct contact. I wonder how long those fomites would be infectious. 

Good news is that it does not appear to spread easily through the air. Apparently some people with the rash actually took lengthy flights from Nigeria to Europe and didn't infect a single person on the flight. 

[kenomora]

FYI, the virus can be found in the perianal area of infected individuals although there may be no visible lesions there. Many confirmed cases only had a few pustules on their bodies, so there is basically no good way to tell upon a casual interaction. Be careful out there. The disease may not be life threatening, but those lesions are most definitely not fun to have, take a while to heal, and you'll have to be isolated from the rest of the world for a while until all scabs fall off and your public health department determines that you're cleared.

[+ keroscenefire]

I had a quick virtual consultation with my doctor because of my Europe trip and my visit to bathhouses there. Fortunately it's been now a full 2-weeks since visiting a bathhouse and she thinks its unlikely I'd be without symptoms for that long. She said 90 percent of people experience at least a fever within 7-14 days. She did say to monitor symptoms for one more week and then I should 100 percent be in the clear. 

[+ nycman]

45 minutes ago, keroscenefire said:

She said 90 percent of people experience at least a fever within 7-14 days. She did say to monitor symptoms for one more week and then I should 100 percent be in the clear. 

Did she mention….that there’s a "100% chance" you’re a whore?

grin 

[+ keroscenefire]

36 minutes ago, nycman said:

Did she mention….that there’s a "100% chance" you’re a whore?

grin 

Haha. She knows that already. I'm on Truvada and we have our three-month "talk" about how I am engaging in safe-sex. She's not judgmental. I actually do mostly use condoms and did at the bathhouse. That might help a bit though of course Monkeypox could spread from contact with areas the condom doesn't cover. 

[+ keroscenefire]

This was not an encouraging article. Sounds like in many of the monkeypox cases in Canada, people are not seeing necessarily many lesions and many are just around the anus or genitals. Some are getting the lesions before the fever and other symptoms. Fortunately, it seems like some people are getting a pretty mild case but unfortunately even in the mild cases the lesions themselves are very contagious. 

Clearly this is why it's spreading so easily. Many men are not thinking they have anything at all.