I'm not sure this is the whole story. 98% is a very high percentage and if it spreads through close contact in general and everyone is equally susceptible, it should not be so exclusive to that community. Here is another idea: pre exposure aids drugs cause susceptibility.
This is possible, but I think it can be fairly easily explained by relative promiscuity in a population and where the first outbreak occurred.
Certainly there are straight and lesbian orgies, but they are not as common (and this data suggest they are much less common) and gay men were the first community with an outbreak and this particular demographic of highly promiscuous gay men is highly insular and doesn't include many bisexuals.
Prep certainly could beat part of it, but it doesn't have to be with some relatively modest assumptions.
I agree there are very few straight and lesbian orgies, but I don't know how insular the groups are. Nor is it clear how close contact needs to be.. bodily fluid close? Blood?
I get the impression that many people in these groups see HIV as a solved problem and don't take a lot of precautions anymore.
It is certainly crazy that the authorities are not recommending something commonsensical like basic distancing among the impacted populations. Maybe they want it to be a bigger problem, which I wouldn't really doubt at this point.
Excellent article and I loved the humorous sarcastic allusions to the crazy covid theatre we had to suffer these past two years.
While monkeypox isn't a sexually transmitted disease (at least not in the traditional sense) Dr John Campbell on his YouTube channel spoke on a study that did find it in seminal fluid. Also from that study it seems that monkeypox lesions/sores generally first appear at the point of contact/infection/transfer of virus containing bodily fluids (as the lesions had been noted to appear first mainly at the month, genitals and anus/rectum).
That, combined with the information gleaned from two accounts on twitter from men who contracted it (in one account the author noted participating in 3 orgies in a week and sleeping with 15-20 men at each; in the other the author also participated in orgies, seemingly with unprotected sex) leads me to think that primarily what is happening is that the lesions are first appearing in the anus or on the genitals and that orgies where participants are having unprotected sex with strangers leads to infection as at that point the sores/lesions are not as yet noticeable as anything alarming (besides which sex involves a lot of friction and body fluids anyway and quite likely there are also microabrasions that could result in fluid exchange and viral infection).
The irony of course is that this might have a simple solution: condoms. Here the condoms would be the analogy to the masks in your humorous take, but unlike masks they might actually be quite effective in reducing transmission.
But it's very curious that the authorities don't seem to want to tell people how to go about their sex life by socially distancing, wearing condoms and having orgy pods but seemed quite keen on telling everyone how to go about daily life with social distancing, wearing masks and having pods.
Thankfully, as you noted this is a temporary disease unlike AIDS caused by HIV. However what does this portent for other diseases that are sexually transmitted and either permanent or difficult to get rid of? After all we are seeing the c rise of resistant pathogens. With this kind of behaviour we may well see the rapid spread of resistant gonorrhoea for example.
True, though technically HIV can and is also spread outside of sex (needles) and I imagine there was a time in evolutionary history when the ancestors of gonorrhoea and syphilis were not necessarily transmitted only via sex (perhaps we might well be witnessing the evolution of the first sexually transmitted pox).
T'wasn't I that had the info on the women victims so far being trans, but yes that would be interesting. Though I do seem to recall on a social media site recently a couple of (cis) women who got it and were detailing their stories and that wasn't via sex.
Thank you for this. Just to let you know, sections of the article were written twice.
Thanks! Fixed
I was definitely under the impression that the 13 females were actually trans women.
I'm not sure this is the whole story. 98% is a very high percentage and if it spreads through close contact in general and everyone is equally susceptible, it should not be so exclusive to that community. Here is another idea: pre exposure aids drugs cause susceptibility.
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-how-prep-pre
This is possible, but I think it can be fairly easily explained by relative promiscuity in a population and where the first outbreak occurred.
Certainly there are straight and lesbian orgies, but they are not as common (and this data suggest they are much less common) and gay men were the first community with an outbreak and this particular demographic of highly promiscuous gay men is highly insular and doesn't include many bisexuals.
Prep certainly could beat part of it, but it doesn't have to be with some relatively modest assumptions.
I agree there are very few straight and lesbian orgies, but I don't know how insular the groups are. Nor is it clear how close contact needs to be.. bodily fluid close? Blood?
I get the impression that many people in these groups see HIV as a solved problem and don't take a lot of precautions anymore.
It is certainly crazy that the authorities are not recommending something commonsensical like basic distancing among the impacted populations. Maybe they want it to be a bigger problem, which I wouldn't really doubt at this point.
Excellent article and I loved the humorous sarcastic allusions to the crazy covid theatre we had to suffer these past two years.
While monkeypox isn't a sexually transmitted disease (at least not in the traditional sense) Dr John Campbell on his YouTube channel spoke on a study that did find it in seminal fluid. Also from that study it seems that monkeypox lesions/sores generally first appear at the point of contact/infection/transfer of virus containing bodily fluids (as the lesions had been noted to appear first mainly at the month, genitals and anus/rectum).
That, combined with the information gleaned from two accounts on twitter from men who contracted it (in one account the author noted participating in 3 orgies in a week and sleeping with 15-20 men at each; in the other the author also participated in orgies, seemingly with unprotected sex) leads me to think that primarily what is happening is that the lesions are first appearing in the anus or on the genitals and that orgies where participants are having unprotected sex with strangers leads to infection as at that point the sores/lesions are not as yet noticeable as anything alarming (besides which sex involves a lot of friction and body fluids anyway and quite likely there are also microabrasions that could result in fluid exchange and viral infection).
The irony of course is that this might have a simple solution: condoms. Here the condoms would be the analogy to the masks in your humorous take, but unlike masks they might actually be quite effective in reducing transmission.
But it's very curious that the authorities don't seem to want to tell people how to go about their sex life by socially distancing, wearing condoms and having orgy pods but seemed quite keen on telling everyone how to go about daily life with social distancing, wearing masks and having pods.
Thankfully, as you noted this is a temporary disease unlike AIDS caused by HIV. However what does this portent for other diseases that are sexually transmitted and either permanent or difficult to get rid of? After all we are seeing the c rise of resistant pathogens. With this kind of behaviour we may well see the rapid spread of resistant gonorrhoea for example.
I think the big difference between this and gonorrhoea is that it CAN spread outside of sex.
If you have info on the women being trans, I'd be very interested in seeing it, that would be a very interesting bit of info.
True, though technically HIV can and is also spread outside of sex (needles) and I imagine there was a time in evolutionary history when the ancestors of gonorrhoea and syphilis were not necessarily transmitted only via sex (perhaps we might well be witnessing the evolution of the first sexually transmitted pox).
T'wasn't I that had the info on the women victims so far being trans, but yes that would be interesting. Though I do seem to recall on a social media site recently a couple of (cis) women who got it and were detailing their stories and that wasn't via sex.