Monkeypox: California, Illinois, New York Declare State and Public Health Emergencies
California, Illinois, and New York have 47% of the 6,000 confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S.
What a shock that the three states that led the country in draconian COVID measures have declared states of emergency over monkeypox.
The United States has 6,000 monkeypox cases.
California, Illinois, and New York have 47% of those confirmed monkeypox cases. Then again, those states have the three largest cities in the country.
But anytime a virus comes out, we’ll probably get these public health emergencies. Remember, declaring these emergencies gives the politicians a lot more power than they deserve or need.
Monkeypox is rare, affecting one group of people by a long shot, and so far no deaths in America.
There is a vaccine for monkeypox along with anti-viral medicines.
New York
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency two days ago:
“I am declaring a State Disaster Emergency to strengthen our ongoing efforts to confront the monkeypox outbreak,” Hochul tweeted. https://bit.ly/3oFYEMB
She added that more than one in four monkeypox cases in the United States are in New York, also having a disproportionate impact on at-risk groups.
As of July 29, New York state had a total of 1,383 confirmed orthopoxvirus/monkeypox cases, according to New York Department of Health’s website.
Weirdly, Reuters doesn’t mention that the “at-risk groups” include, by a large margin, men who engage in sexual activity with other men. Gee, I wonder why.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared his own emergency today with…1,300 confirmed cases in the city of millions of people. But the emergency allows Adams “to suspend local laws and enact rules.”
Illinois
Gov. JB Pritzker declared a public health emergency since the state has…520 confirmed cases, 330 of which are in Chicago:
Person-to-person transmission is possible through “close physical contact with monkeypox sores, items that have been contaminated with fluids or sores (clothing, bedding, etc.), or through respiratory droplets following prolonged face-to-face contact,” according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.
“The main source of spread is that direct skin-to-skin contact with rash or sores, and that can and has kind of very frequently among our cases included sexual or intimate contact,” said Dr. Janna Kerins medical director for environmental health at CDPH. Monkeypox can also be transmitted other ways, including sharing drinks, kissing as well as sharing bedding or other intimate items.
“MPV is a rare, but potentially serious disease that requires the full mobilization of all available public health resources to prevent the spread,” Pritzker said. “That’s why I am declaring a state of emergency to ensure smooth coordination between state agencies and all levels of government, thereby increasing our ability to prevent and treat the disease quickly. We have seen this virus disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community in its initial spread. Here in Illinois we will ensure our LGBTQ+ community has the resources they need to stay safe while ensuring members are not stigmatized as they access critical health care.”
California
San Francisco declared its own emergency a few days ago. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined the chorus on Monday:
“California is working urgently across all levels of government to slow the spread of monkeypox, leveraging our robust testing, contact tracing and community partnerships strengthened during the pandemic to ensure that those most at risk are our focus for vaccines, treatment and outreach,” said Newsom in a press release.
“We’ll continue to work with the federal government to secure more vaccines, raise awareness about reducing risk, and stand with the LGBTQ community, fighting stigmatization.”
The proclamation allows Emergency Medical Services personnel to administer monkeypox vaccines that are approved by the FDA. This is similar to the statutory authorization recently enacted for pharmacists to administer vaccines.
The state said its strategies built during the COVID-19 pandemic helped lay the groundwork for its monkeypox response.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
That’s funny, all blue states /sarc
A Pox on all their houses
It’ll be interesting to see how it goes in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Miami.
With all of the information already out, what excuse is there for ANYONE who gets infected? Being a moron who doesn’t care about getting or transmitting an infection is NOT an excuse. There are no innocent victims with Munkie Pux.
Actually there are 2 known kids with monkeypox and hey, the authorities haven’t said HOW they got it
Just that they are doing OK
Our government, must be great to be one of the special groups
You can rape kids and give them monkeypox and it’s all OK
Except for the kids, but it’s all OK
Cause the government told us so
Yes they did. The parents were homosexual men. The math is obvious even if the authorities are silent.
Maybe there is another vector aside from anal sex?
Touching the lesions, possibly clothing.
The real driver is not the physical contact — it’s the number of contacts with strangers who have contact with many others in short order.
The driver for this disease right now is the orgies.
Can you imagine the smell in those orgy rooms?
Even if there is, it hasn’t revealed itself and they are already declaring a national emergency. If I were in the gay community, I would be alarmed at how a large segment of that community is completely irresponsible and how the narrative is allowed to be driven by they leftists. Over time, it seems that all of the minorities lost control of their identities by selling out to the leftists. Jews, blacks, hispanics and now gays.
Jews (as you know) are pulling away from their traditional “defense” organizations. Blacks are kind of waking up but so long as “the Reverends” are allowed to lead by selling out and bashing any successful black who isn’t whining about racism, nothing will change. Hispanics apparently have turned the corner. Gays? All we see are perverts parading in public who continue to embrace their dangerous behaviors and no one taking responsibility for anything. That isn’t all gays nor maybe even most (the ones I know aren’t like that) but the gay community is even more self-destructive than the homeless community. It’s time to grow up kids.
You make some pretty good points, but I have to dispute you about the “large segment.” I honestly don’t think that’s accurate. We’ll know fairly quickly, and I hope the numbers show that I’m correct about that.
Or even aside from any kind of sex. As any parent, or anyone who remembers being a child knows, it is completely normal for children to get into bed with their parents, whether in the middle of the night or in the morning. Or for a parent to get into bed with a child until they fall asleep. Or for a child to take a nap in a parent’s empty bed, on the same bedding the parent used. And of course there are many other occasions for prolonged and intimate contact between family members, of the kind that could spread this virus.
it’s not just sex, and it’s certainly not just anal sex; from the information available it is even possible that for some weird reason anal sex isn’t a vector at all. That would be very surprising, but it hasn’t yet been ruled out.
Yes, creating dry floral arrangements.
Making out…
It’s not stupidity but selfishness. Refrain from MM stranger sex for a month and this will disappear but that is too much to ask of certain “at risk” groups.
In NYC, Chicago and LA the chances of getting robbed, mugged or beat up is 100 times greater than getting monkey pox.
At least.
In NY, Chicaga and LA, the chances of getting robbed, mugged or beat up by a monkey-pox carrier is 100 greater than anywhere else in the world.
“The state said its strategies built during the COVID-19 pandemic helped lay the groundwork for its monkeypox response.”
We already knew that.
Monkeypox us one of the easiest diseases to avoid. But our idiot pols’ dishonesty won’t allow them to tell gays to stop engaging in nastiness for a little bit until it gets under control.
They know
They don’t care
Gee, they didn’t show the same concern about stigmatizing those of us who didn’t get the clot shot.
Apparently if you exercise your choice not to get the shot then you deserve whatever horrible fate befalls you, but if you get monkeypox by exercising your choice to have sex between men, well you poor thing, we’re not going to say a peep about how you could have avoided that.
I have to grant you that you’ve made a good point, as uncomfortable as it makes me to say so. But my comfort is beside the point here. I’ll say one thing in the other direction: I think the gay angle is being pretty widely mentioned.
“We’ll continue to work with the federal government to secure more vaccines, raise awareness about reducing risk, and stand with the LGBTQ community fighting stigmatization</b/,” Newsom said.
If these people really want to fight stigmatization, stop framing the problem as resting with the non-gay majority. Let’s start hearing some mature adult leadership from the gay community itself. We all know what the problem is and it isn’t bigotry. Condescending liberal oafs like Newsom are a BIG part of that problem.
Yes and no. There isn’t a gay ‘community’ anymore than there is a BIPOC community. There are public facing, self appointed advocates who always on the grift and claim to represent this ‘community’. There are plenty of gay men and women in committed, monogamous, long-term relationships and marriages. Unfortunately, just as with the straight ‘community’ there exists a libertine cohort who choose to engage in short term, uncommitted sexual encounters. This behavior carries risks.
IMO, what should happen is for all of us to embrace and apply the lessons from the early AIDS era. Don’t seek to judge but instead inform and educate. Those receiving the message shouldn’t go into apoplectic fits about homophobia but adjust their behavior in both selection of sexual partners and frequency of intimate contact.
Unfortunately, I fear that we are going to miss the mark on all sides of this issue as folks dig in their heels and spout slogans at each other about homosexuality instead of the true issue; a disease spread by intimate or sexual contact that is currently overwhelmingly but not exclusively confined to populations of men who engage in high risk sexual encounters.
Many problems with what you said. No “gay” community? Go to San Francisco or West Hollywood or any Gay Pride parade. Those are de facto communities that are affiliated with national and international gay organizations.
“Don’t seek to judge but instead inform and educate.”
Wut? You missed the that part of my comment. How much information do these idiots need? They aren’t being educated? Really? Despite non-stop education, they are being needlessly sheltered from the social stigmatization that should ensue to all who engage in dangerous behaviors and refuse time and again to take responsibility. Instead, their folly is being twisted to once again attack the rest of us for being bigots. They never seem to learn. And by “they”, I mean those sickos whose only singular reason for being seems to be that they are gay. You don’t see a problem with that?
Phil
There is no single unified national gay community anymore than there is a single national community compromised of BIPOC (black and indigenous people of color) that exists as an entity. Sure there are locations where the population of these folks are concentrated. That’s not a ‘community’ in the same sense unless you claim those locations host 100% of the homosexual population of the US which I don’t believe you are claiming.
As to libertine behavior being risky I fully covered that aspect. I even emphasized the importance of limiting intimate or sexual contact to the bounds of a monogamous, committed relationship. To clarify for you then, all promiscuous sexual or intimate contact carries a heightened risk of infection from any disease so transmitted; Aids, monkey pox, standard STD hell even Rona.
I don’t really care who does what to whom among consenting adults and don’t see why it should matter to me at all. Nor do I understand why people on many sides insist that it should matter whether for accommodation or for ridicule.
The folks contracting monkey pox are not contracting it because they are gay, rather it is a consequence of risky sexual promiscuous behavior. If you decide to ‘step out’ on your wife/partner tonight and engage in promiscuous sexual behavior there exists the possibility that you will contract one or more of the diseases so transmitted.
Strait or gay doesn’t stop transmission if your chosen partner has already contracted a disease spread by sexual or intimate contact and is currently infectious.
You are now refining your argument to “There is no single unified national gay community…
What are you talking about? The gay community is VERY organized.. locally, regionally, statewide, nationally and internationally. You need to be very organized to have a national month declared for you. They even use the word “community” throughout all communications, documentation, …
Your reasoning by comparing it to the straight people (who don’t define their overriding identity as being straight) is either disingenuous or very naive. It is certainly based on a faulty definition of “community”.
I am clarifying the point that you continue to misconstrue in the context of my statement and used the so called BIPOC community as another example of a ‘community’ that in terms of behavior, thought and beliefs are far from monolithic. But hey let’s take your analysis to it’s conclusion. Namely that:
The gay Community exists as a monolithic block without internal dispute or deviation in thought, belief or behavior because some self appointed grifters successfully leveraged naive guilt and fear into political power.
Please explain Log Cabin Republicans. Then explain the differences in person behavior and attitudes towards acceptance of personal responsibility within the universe of the monolithic community you describe.
Back to reality. Individual behavior is the determining factor. Simply being gay will not result in infection. If being gay was the issue then all gay people would have been simultaneously stricken with monkey pox.
This is the sort of thing I was warning against in my original post. That people on one side would yell ‘don’t be gay’ and gays would yell ‘don’t stigmatize us’ instead of everyone focusing on the problem of transmission which seems to be occurring largely via promiscuous sexual and intimate contact.
Looks like a repeat of the early Aids era to me. One side has God cursing the gays with a gay disease while the gays refuse to modify behavior so while both sides call anathema on each other the disease spreads. Stupid and unproductive IMO.
@commochief: Looks like the Log Cabin Republicans agree with me:
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2022/08/02/exclusive-log-cabin-republicans-prez-leftists-reject-personal-responsibility-in-monkeypox-prevention-for-gay-men/
I don’t follow your complicated reasoning and can’t grasp whatever point you are trying to make. Maybe that link helps you understand what the problem is. It’s not complicate. It’s your reasoning that is complicated.
Phil,
The essence of the statement from the Log Cabin Republicans is:
1. Monkey pox is spread via sexual and intimate contact
2. No one, straight or gay, should engage in promiscuous, libertine behavior
3. Gays should be willing to hear and heed the warnings with an open heart and mind
4. The message should be delivered based on addressing the underlying issue; promiscuous and libertine behavior, not based on issues about homosexuality
Those are the same points I have been making all day. Transmission isn’t about gay or straight but about increased risk of exposure and transmission from intimate or sexual contact with an infected person.
@Commo:
“2. No one, straight or gay, should engage in promiscuous, libertine behavior
3. Gays should be willing to hear and heed the warnings with an open heart and mind.”
And straight or gay, who is holding largely attended orgies where promiscuous, libertine behavior is the whole point? Who is overwhelmingly dominating in ALL STDs?
You can apply the rules equally but only one of the two groups is out of control. There is no defending such widespread behavior that is becoming a chronic problem for the community. It’s not that they are ALL doing it or are the ONLY ONES doing it. It’s that those orgies are a very big social activity among a large segment of them. It exploded during Pride Month! Duh! Pardon me for not feeling sorry for these fools. Don’t complain about your barn burning down repeatedly when you just won’t stop playing with matches in the hay loft!
Who engages in orgies? Promiscuous people. I hate to break it to you but there are plenty of heterosexual people that are into some very kinky sorts of things. Wife swapping, swinging conventions and three ways come to mind.
College frats tend to pass around the same promiscuous coeds among each other., at least back in the early 1990s. Today there are apps for casual heterosexual encounters. Just sex. There’s even a phrase for it ‘Netflix and chill’.
Of course men are, on average, more driven by sexual desire. It stands to reason that, on average, a group of men sexually attracted to other men would achieve sexual fulfillment at a higher rate because of that.
Societal views of and attitudes towards sex among heterosexuals is far more libertine than even fifteen years ago. I am 52, retain an athletic build and am above average in looks, not a model but a nice looking guy. Financially very much more than average. I am surprised by how often women far younger ‘hit on’ me. Women in their early thirties are quite bold about it much less those at forty.
It’s very much a new game than what I grew up with. The stigmas you probably grew up with no longer exist. It’s nice while it lasts I suppose but I have far more action now than in my 20s and my 20s were pretty active. The point here is that promiscuity has to a large extent become a part of the mainstream in modern life.
Being ‘not gay’ will not protect you from any disease transmitted via sexual or intimate contact any more than being gay seals your fate. It’s the choice to engage in high risk sexual or intimate contact not the equipment of your partner that’s the danger.
There IS a ‘gay community’, and it is group-think on steroids. Unfortunately, it’s prog group think, and it’s doing a lot of damage to our culture.
Then, there are the Log Cabin Republicans, but they are a tiny minority within a tiny minority.
https://logcabin.org/
A community is a single element when one is describing it as a whole and attributing characteristics to it as you and Phil are choosing to do. What that implies is a single entity with a uniform set of monolithic actions and behavior which preclude individual variability in patterns of behavior, conduct and action.
A far more accurate way to describe this would be: ‘a significant but unknown portion of male homosexuals attend orgies or engage in other high risk sexual activity which exposes them to potential transmission of monkey pox at far higher rates than those who refrain from such high risk behavior’.
That’s a factual statement that emphasizes that the higher rates of transmission are absolutely linked to high risk behavior of individual people.
That’s my point. Being gay doesn’t infect one with monkey pox or anything else. It is the high risk behavior that’s the problem. FYI, straight people go to orgies and wife swap and add a third partner and all sorts of kinky things.
Focus on the behavior not sexual preference. A celibate person, no matter their orientation, faces practically zero risk of contracting monkey pox.
I will make what I think is a safe guess that you’re not gay, and thus have no experience regarding “the gay community.” This isn’t a criticism, but (if I’m correct) just a fact. If that’s wrong, please feel free to contradict me. Honest, I won’t melt.
There was once a strong “gay community” back in the day. It was mainly a function not just of stigma but of legal issues. To be gay and then act on it was to take a series of real risks from a number of directions, so after WW2 gays started to band together and eventually become more visible.
But even in its heyday, it was often a matter of herding cats. A whole lot of gay people were part of the “gay community” only because they had to be. With the decline of the worst oppression (I don’t like the victimology, but it’s accurate prior to the 1980s in general, and the 1970s in the big cities with notable gay populations), the “gay community” has changed a whole lot.
What appears to be today’s “gay community” is a shadow of its former self, as those of us whose lives never revolved around it have gradually become disengaged. The result is that those who still are engaged have tended to become more unified but far less representative of the whole.
The media, such as it is, works more and more on p.r. handouts and speed dial lists to fill quote holes in stories that are already written. (That practice was somewhat common in the media all the way along, but now it’s damn close to universal.) Note that in stories about this or that gay-related issue, you pretty much never see a “man on the street” interview. You see this or that spokesperson quoted.
Now, will the gay person who thinks ill of drag queen story hours, teaching sexual orientation and gender identity in K-3, yadda yadda yadda, going to stand up and go the other way from the speed-dial “leaders?” Not likely. For starters, those narratives are pre-cooked, so there’s really no way to affect them until after they’ve been puked out. And how many individuals want the considerable hassles involved in going contrary after the fact?
Bottom line: There’s just as much of a “silent majority” among “the gay community” as there is elsewhere.
So, will transgender reading days at the public schools be curtailed due to this emergency? I thought not.
It’s (probably) not spread by reading.
That didn’t stop the government from shutting down events that are politically disfavored during the COVID 19 responses. (This or that is a “super spreader” event but BLM riots are not)
We are not talking about Mrs Doubtfire reading to children. We are talking about adult men dressing up in provocative, sexualized costumes — the kind women don’t typically wear, certainly not when invited to read to children — performing sexualized dances and using explicit language.
Parents want to protect their children from sexual predators. In my opinion it is inappropriate to allow them to be exposed to adult entertainment and strange men.
None of those things spread the pox. And that is the only topic we are discussing. Don’t drag your other issues into this discussion; there are plenty of other ones where they are relevant and appropriate, and even correct.
This gay-for-almost-50-years man agrees about those drag queen events. Part of me wants to find one and attend to see just how bad they are, but a larger part doesn’t want to have a single thing to do with it. But yes, on steroids to the power of 10 about the kiddos.
My solution would be to show disease progression pictures of infected penises to the gay community. Scary stuff, as they blow up to almost twice their normal size with pustules of Monkeypox. Even a day or two later, I am struggling to unsee the photos.
That would work. I used to have the public health nurses come in and give a two presentation to my BN at every annually required ‘safety day’ before I retired from the Army. Photos of frankly horrible stuff and statistics and Q&A resulted in a sort of scared straight outcome. Young Soldiers want to go out sow their oats but the actual statistics on the prevalence of STDs in the communities around bases is horrifying. Bottom line is be very careful in selection and then keep it wrapped.
Bottom line is be very careful in selection and then keep it wrapped.
That one works for everybody.
It’s primarily a disease of the socially liberal trans/homosexual male community where they engage in digestive penetration, as AIDS before, and Covid-19/20/21/22, too, where the pathogen is transmitted through the rectum in blood and fecal exchange.
We can beat this thing! Please do, rather than having sex with other men. I call on all men who have sex with other men to abstain from bestial, twisted orgies for two weeks in order to flatten the curve. Yes, you can beat it!
Yes, and for the time being it would be a good idea to beat it alone. LOL
Hats off to Illinois at least for touching on the real issue.
What’s weird to me is that there’s so much avoidance of saying “men who engage in sex with other men” that they dance around it. They could just as easily, and perhaps more effectively say, “People who have sexual encounters with multiple sexual partners, particularly over a short time period” (i.e. orgies) because it appears that orgies are the main source of the spread it seems. Yet, we can’t do that. That might require people to only have sex with one partner for, like, more than a month.
From what I’ve read, some big gay festival in Spain was the springboard, and I have little doubt that there were orgies there. But I doubt (and this is only a guess, because I can’t know) that “orgies are the main source of the spread.” Not when you actually read about monkeypox and how it’s transmitted. Which is to say that orgies would certain speed it along the way, but I haven’t seen anything credible that suggests orgies are somehow necessary or even a significant factor in further spread.
The foregoing is not any kind of p.r. game, but only my best attempt at facts and logic under conditions of uncertainty. By the way, as someone who saw it all back in the day and did half of it (while puking at the other half), orgies are phenomenally UNsexual to me, regardless of anyone’s tumescence.
Call me names, but by experience, I’m could be the p.r. guy for the one-on-one. Let’s face it. Whatever your “orientation,” the more is not the merrier IMO. Even your average Thursday night three-way winds up being your average Thursday night 2+1. LOL
“Remember, declaring these emergencies gives the politicians a lot more power than they deserve or need.”
But do they, really? Check their state constitutions. You may discover that they give politicians no more power over PEOPLE than they had without them.
“But the emergency allows Adams “to suspend local laws and enact rules.”
And still, check the state constitution, and you may find that it does not.
For example, the Arizona State Constitution empowers the governor to declare a state of emergency, which gives him extrardinary powers over other departments of government only, to ensure their continuation. It doesn’t give him one lick of power over average citizens. None.
If legislators didn’t pass it, it isn’t a law and it doesn’t apply to you.
Perhaps they should be stigmatized. We used to recognize shame as an effective and necessary means of molding behavior.
Trust me, there is plenty of stigma, and that includes within “the gay community” such as it is. The way to go is to make it clear that monkeypox is serious and should be taken seriously. “State of emergency” is over the top, but in the current environment what else can they do if they want to be heard over the rest of the shouting?
Keep in mind: This outbreak is what, a month or two old? Unlike with AIDS, which really was not identified or even minimally understood for a few years, this time they know what the virus is, and can treat it. I expect the outbreak to wind up being self-limiting, or at least I hope so.
One need not be gay to get that infection, notwithstanding that the vector appears to be some big gay festival held in Spain, with lots of orgies. I’m gay but am long since off of the meet market. If I still was in that market, I’d be plenty careful.. Being plenty careful back in the day is what kept me HIV-negative, and being careful didn’t get in the way.
I can have some sympathy for those early cases, but to use a term from my financial career, that sympathy is a rapidly depreciating asset, at least for those who are still rockin’ and rollin’ right now. In the case of any kids who get it, if I ran the show those cases would be VERY closely examined to learn EXACTLY how those kids got it.
I have no sympathy whatsoever to anyone who passed that along to kids. If they did it through sexual contact, well, let’s just say that I’d have no trouble volunteering for the one-man firing squad. People who diddle kids are at the bottom of my personal list, along with violent criminals, drug dealers, and narcotics addicts.
State of Emergency – Yet another term the left has made useless. Like racism, woman, full employment, and recession,
Only 16000 cases worldwide. No deaths. 98% caused by gay sex. Those with a small pox vaccine (anyone born before 1980 in the US) is already immune.
Emergency? Please stop.
100% caused by one of the 12 orthopoxviruses. But you can feel free to lie to yourself and others. LOL