Thank you for writing this. I have appreciated your work for quite some time, and I am still astonished at how your Times career was ended. It scares me for my own self, as it is probably intended to
Just to be clear- we've just gone through three years where we were asked / told to modify our behaviors to stop the spread. No …
Thank you for writing this. I have appreciated your work for quite some time, and I am still astonished at how your Times career was ended. It scares me for my own self, as it is probably intended to
Just to be clear- we've just gone through three years where we were asked / told to modify our behaviors to stop the spread. No weddings, no funerals, no Christmas dinners, no church, no gatherings of any sort. Normal life stopped for all of us because the behavior was hazardous to ourselves and to others.
And yet in this new pandemic, "stop having copious amounts of anonymous gay sex" does not appear on your list of remedies. Is it more outrageous to ask gay men to stop promiscuous sex than to tell him that he can't go to a family wedding or funeral (as we have the last two years)?
None of your recommendations address the actual behavior that is known to spread this disease. Why is that?
DMDM, below you’ll find the CDC’s recommendation. I suppose the recommendations won’t satisfy you because it doesn’t say: gay men stop banging each other so much. After all, that’s what homophobes want to hear.
Take the following steps to prevent getting monkeypox:
• Avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that looks like monkeypox.
o Do not touch the rash or scabs of a person with monkeypox.
o Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox.
o Do not share eating utensils or cups with a person with monkeypox.
• Do not handle or touch the bedding, towels, or clothing of a person with monkeypox.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• In Central and West Africa, avoid contact with animals that can spread monkeypox virus, usually rodents and primates. Also, avoid sick or dead animals, as well as bedding or other materials they have touched.
If you are sick with monkeypox:
• Isolate at home
• If you have an active rash or other symptoms, stay in a separate room or area away from people or pets you live with, when possible.
The problem is that the CDC has not written that monkeypox is currently spreading in the MSM community.
They should state something like "MSM are at higher risk of contracting monkeypox in the U.S. due to community spread in the MSM community". This would be responsible & help MSM to at least be aware of risks in the community.
Sally, the CDC says: "Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox." Why do you feel the MSM community should be singled out? Don’t heterosexuals have sex too!
Wait, what .... ? The MSM? You mean Monkey Pox is rampant in the main stream media? Or did you mean the Bondage Discipline Sado-Masochism - BDSM - crowd and your autocorrect just couldn't take that acronym?
Calling people names isn't generally good argumentation either. Got anything better?
My point in the original comment was that Mr. McNiel dared not call on people to take responsibility for their behaviors or life outcomes, the fact that the CDC DOES makes my question that much more pressing. Why is he afraid to ask gay men to stop banging each other so much? Why does he conceal this part of the CDC guidance from his readers?
If you want to be trusted as a science writer, facts are facts and evidence is evidence. You can't be fighting on one side of the culture war and deserve to be trusted.
OMG, gay sex - fetish or otherwise - is part of the Culture War????
FWIW, I think the import of McNeil's piece was fairly obvious. Any gay guy will understand it. That it does not satisfy the Jerry Fallwells of American is irrelevant.
I don’t get your point. Are gay men supposed to stop having sex? Fauci tried that and was excoriated for it. I’d say ask Larry Kramer about it but he is dead.
Best advice is to learn from the mistakes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Oh, for fucks sake. I can as many others can "conceive [funny word in this context"] of monogamous relationships.
The really "appalling" thing is that you seem to see the world only through your eyes, your "morality".Really, you have the mentality of Jerry Falwell. Shame on you.
The world does not mirror your views. In fact yours are a tiny fraction of human interests.
You seem to have a clear morality in mind, where some things are celebrated and others rejected.What makes yours right and those that disagree with you deserving of shame?
I understand you agree with "the world", but you surely understand this: by your own standard of "popular makes right" the activities you hold up as right would have been wrong (being as at that time only a tiny fraction of humans would have agreed with you).
Do you have another standard you'd like to suggest instead?
I think I cannot help you. I did not suggest a governing morality. You are making the selection of what is right. I do not care what is right. I am explaining that other folks have different views. We might face a new pandemic. I am not willing to cast into hellfire folks who do not share your morality.
Ah, the Bible. There's your problem, can't think for yourself. Allows you the smug certainty that others can be condemned. Read Shakespeare. Much more fun.
Actually, it has been about 200,000 years and look around you. There is lots of progress, your next illness will be treated by that progress, you will drive that progress to you next dinner out, to the grocery store. Speaking of grocery stores, no need to go out and kill your next meal or plant the crops. Progress. Amazing!
I've also read Shakespeare. I have a liberal arts education. I've read lots of things, travelled through 17 countries, tried many religions, and much, much more.
But I know it's easier to belittle and dismiss people who bring up ideas that threaten you. Ideas like, "your pleasure is not more important than public health." Basic ethics.
If you think a single reference to the Bible is an inability to "think for yourself", you don't even know what that means. Just a cheap, ignorant potshot landing in nothing. I like to call it "Christophobia".
I was referring to progress of human character, not technology or infrastructure or civilization or anything in your silly mockery. Of course civilization has progressed - you mock your own lack of understanding, not mine.
Also, you do realize that in the 1800s "most of the world" agreed that slavery was perfectly fine?
An adult that is not capable of putting the good of those around him ahead of his own appetites is a poor excuse for an adult.
This may be news to you, but in living memory most people abstained from sex before marriage. Crazy as it may seem, some people do that yet today. Not because they hate sex, but because they have a high view of sex and a high view of humanity. We can, and should, subjugate our desires to higher purposes.
Your view is outdated by nearly a century. My parents began living together in the summer of 1946. They didn't get married until mid-December, a few days after my mother's divorce papers arrived in the mail.
In the days before dating sites, in the days before the automobile, in the days before the bicycle, it was much harder than it is now to have sex before or outside of marriage.
But I think you greatly overrate avoidance of nonmarital sex. Sex is an immensely powerful urge, and often, even outside of marriage, a great joy.
People also have many ways of expressing it, some which work for some, and don't for others. A lot of bad marriages have happened between partners who didn't get to sample enough sex prior to marriage to figure out what they liked, and what they didn't like. Ann Landers used to say that out of 20 marriages there was one great one, 9 good ones, five that were not good, and five that were sheer hell. She also came to recognize that sex without marriage is OK.
You can't exactly do a controlled study on whether marriages do better in this relatively promiscuous era than in the old days. But I can tell you that my parents had a great marriage--54 years. Both sets of uncles and aunts also had great marriages of roughly the same length.
Ann Landers--exposed as she was to the trials and tribulations of people generally--said that sexual compatibility makes for a happier marriage, and for that matter, others in her metier, such as Emily Yoffe when she was Dear Prudence, have said the same thing.
But plenty of ingredients besides sexual compatibility make good marriages, as Ann Landers or Emily Yoffe would be the first to tell you. Marriages also do better in countries where there is greater equality and a better social safety net--like the Scandinavian countries--where people have fewer urgent worries.
And marriages tend to do better when the partners have similar interests and approaches to life. I could go on and on but you should be getting the idea.
I would hope to aspire to that behavior myself, but am way too old and too human to conform to such lofty goals.
As to reality, not behavioral fascism, we are trying to deal with a medical infection risk, a possible pandemic, we need approaches that account for a variety of views on things like sex.
Fauci had that notion decades ago - "just don't have sex". It did not work. What worked is figuring out how to deal with reality (you know, the same failing he had with Covid???) of folks actually engaging in sexual behaviors.
The drive to copulate is powerful. One of the most powerful our species has. Acting like they are not "adults" or that they don't give a shit about others is just silly. And childish. You know, folks who are poor excuses for adults.
This actually represents a welcome return to a more evidence-based approach to human behaviour in public health.
The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work. See: abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates; how shaming can hinder disclosure of HIV (or STD) status; the misguided war on drugs; and on and on.
We ought to focus on wondering why we went full throttle for it on Covid, despite all evidence against it, rather than asking why we won't try that same doomed strategy again with monkeypox.
Several years ago, I would have totally agreed with you, (and I still largely like what you're saying). Then COVID came, and we witnessed massive, widespread behavior modification before our very eyes--parents diligently masking toddlers, families canceling Christmas, and millions rolling up their sleeves for experimental injections. Either out of fear or the desire to stay within cultural norms, there's no question that Americans changed their behavior during COVID.
If the gay community sounded the alert and made anonymous sex parties socially unacceptable and a cause for shame by their own, even just temporarily as suggested, I think we'd see decreased transmission.
"The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work."
Utter horseshit. I, and millions of others, have quit smoking. That is just one of countless examples that could be used. You have no idea what you're talking about.
If people can't even be /asked/ to refrain from risky behaviors, if they cannot restrain their appetites to contain communicable diseases that they are uniquely susceptible because of their particular chosen behaviors, then they are not candidates for adulthood, nor citizens in a self-governing republic.
Abstinence-only education and telling people to stop self-destructive behaviors does people the respect of treating people as /agents/ rather than helpless people to whom things happen.
So he did repeatedly say for large sex parties to stop, or whatever else they would be called. I’m not sure how you missed that or aren’t able to infer that that is a warning against casual sex with strangers.
For the last year ++ we've had proggies screaming about how anyone not vaccinated should be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
Why aren't proggies screaming about how any male that has butt sex be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
The way I read it, he wants the government to step in and MAKE those parties stop. He wants to government to provide vaccinations, so people can go back to having those parties without any concerns. He wants the government to provide quarantine areas.
He did not, as far I could tell, recommend any PERSONAL responsibility.
I agree with you, Celia. Someone has to pay for the treatments and housing and it's not going to just be the special group affected by it. It's all of us. All of us were told how selfish we were for wanting life to go back to normal the last two years, but heaven FORBID a smaller group refrain from anonymous sex whenever the urge strikes.
Without re-reading the article I think he did lament the fact that the hosts of the parties are going ahead with them rather than postpone until the vax is widely available.
But those who attend have to be aware of their risk so if they want to play the odds there's not not much anyone else can do.
He addressed that several times. Do you suggest that the government lock up every gay man in the nation so they won’t have copious sex? Or what? Providing vaccines to all gay men seemed, to me, more effective. Also providing a thirty day isolation period for anyone who tests positive to it, even though it would be expensive, seems to be a good thing.
If they can lockdown literally everyone whether spreading it or not, I see no reason why they can't put gay men who can't control their genitals into lockdown. In fact, let's put all gay men into lockdown until the danger is over! For their safety!
I think people are reacting to the fact that kids weren't allowed to go to school, everyone on a plane had to wear a mask and no one could go to a funeral or wedding but no one is expecting this verified at risk group to change their behavior even temporarily.
It isn't allowed. It was frowned upon 40 years ago when AIDS came on the scene, even though the Woke had far less power. Now, with the Woke in control of every institution, no one will dare to even whisper it.
Some Gays take the risks and suffer the consequences. Once I understood how Monkeypox is transmitted, I knew my family and friends, including gay friends were safe. None of us engage in the risky activities. If you enjoy extreme sports, then go for it.
My outrage is the author putting all the responsibility on taxpayers/government. (And the insanity that the government can still be competent under Dem leadership.) My other outrage is that someone I love gets this disease innocently/non-sexually and has to suffer because there are gay men who will not interrupt their indulgences for themselves or anyone else's health.
I can't stop laughing at this comment. Do you not have sex? None of your friends have sex? Do you believe that no one in your chain of friends might have sex outside a "monogamous" relationship? Never kissed someone who might have kissed someone who might have had sex with ... ?
If you think this is just a result of gay sex, or anal sex, or fetish sex, or whatever you might believe is at the core, you are possibly in for a rude awakening.
Rude Awakening? - are you really trying to frighten me? You want to scare all of us who are not part of the small subsets of gay men: the BDSM/leather/fetish/rough subset and the party-n-play/chemsex subset. I do not have friends who play these "extreme sports." To conflate these folks with my circle is to compare the purple-haired, screaming, violent trans folk with my circle. Sorry, culture matters and some cultures are far more dangerous than others. If monkeypox spreads to a larger circle, I will deal with it just as I did with AIDS in the 80s. Except then I was single and now I have been married for 25 years. And I later learned that the fears for heterosexuals were totally overblown by the nascent woke crowd back then. So it appears the risk will be de minimis.
Most of my friends are in monogamous relationships, and those that are single are very careful. This is what my culture encourages. Culture matters unless you are woke. If you are woke, then enjoy your sex parties.
BTW, at 74 I am having the best sex of a very long sex life.
But the risk here is that sexual transmission may not be the only risk. Some might say that we - males - got lucky with HIV. Sounds like you did. It has stayed pretty much limited to a small segment of the populace. But women are at risk of spread from infected males. That is the African experience and among sex workers in the US.
That may not hold for this new pox. Time will tell. You can continue to believe that this pox is just skin bumps and not a risk to you and your fellow believers. But you may be disappointed.
I'd prefer to deal with the realities of a variety of humans, not just those I might think of as "woke" or unawake or whatever. I don't think IV drug users are "woke" but they sure are at risk.
I'd prefer we look at the world the way it is (consevative thought) not the way I think it should be (Prog thought).
We simply have different priorities for particular health risks. No big deal. My complaint is that personal responsibility is thrown out the window by the woke crowd, and tax payers have to pay thru increased health risk, and to fund the increased harm done by irresponsible people.
Mr. McNiel,
Thank you for writing this. I have appreciated your work for quite some time, and I am still astonished at how your Times career was ended. It scares me for my own self, as it is probably intended to
Just to be clear- we've just gone through three years where we were asked / told to modify our behaviors to stop the spread. No weddings, no funerals, no Christmas dinners, no church, no gatherings of any sort. Normal life stopped for all of us because the behavior was hazardous to ourselves and to others.
And yet in this new pandemic, "stop having copious amounts of anonymous gay sex" does not appear on your list of remedies. Is it more outrageous to ask gay men to stop promiscuous sex than to tell him that he can't go to a family wedding or funeral (as we have the last two years)?
None of your recommendations address the actual behavior that is known to spread this disease. Why is that?
DMDM, below you’ll find the CDC’s recommendation. I suppose the recommendations won’t satisfy you because it doesn’t say: gay men stop banging each other so much. After all, that’s what homophobes want to hear.
Take the following steps to prevent getting monkeypox:
• Avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that looks like monkeypox.
o Do not touch the rash or scabs of a person with monkeypox.
o Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox.
o Do not share eating utensils or cups with a person with monkeypox.
• Do not handle or touch the bedding, towels, or clothing of a person with monkeypox.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• In Central and West Africa, avoid contact with animals that can spread monkeypox virus, usually rodents and primates. Also, avoid sick or dead animals, as well as bedding or other materials they have touched.
If you are sick with monkeypox:
• Isolate at home
• If you have an active rash or other symptoms, stay in a separate room or area away from people or pets you live with, when possible.
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/prevention.html#:~:text=Prevention%20Steps&text=Avoid%20close%2C%20skin%2Dto%2D,with%20a%20person%20with%20monkeypox
The problem is that the CDC has not written that monkeypox is currently spreading in the MSM community.
They should state something like "MSM are at higher risk of contracting monkeypox in the U.S. due to community spread in the MSM community". This would be responsible & help MSM to at least be aware of risks in the community.
Sally, the CDC says: "Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox." Why do you feel the MSM community should be singled out? Don’t heterosexuals have sex too!
Wait, what .... ? The MSM? You mean Monkey Pox is rampant in the main stream media? Or did you mean the Bondage Discipline Sado-Masochism - BDSM - crowd and your autocorrect just couldn't take that acronym?
MSM=men who have sex with men (medical jargon)
Ahhh! Thanks.
LOL! "homophobes"
Calling people names isn't generally good argumentation either. Got anything better?
My point in the original comment was that Mr. McNiel dared not call on people to take responsibility for their behaviors or life outcomes, the fact that the CDC DOES makes my question that much more pressing. Why is he afraid to ask gay men to stop banging each other so much? Why does he conceal this part of the CDC guidance from his readers?
If you want to be trusted as a science writer, facts are facts and evidence is evidence. You can't be fighting on one side of the culture war and deserve to be trusted.
OMG, gay sex - fetish or otherwise - is part of the Culture War????
FWIW, I think the import of McNeil's piece was fairly obvious. Any gay guy will understand it. That it does not satisfy the Jerry Fallwells of American is irrelevant.
I only gave you one upvote because that is all Substack permits. I'd give you 100 if I could. 😂
I don’t get your point. Are gay men supposed to stop having sex? Fauci tried that and was excoriated for it. I’d say ask Larry Kramer about it but he is dead.
Best advice is to learn from the mistakes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Umm.. yes?
Are they not capable of that level of self-control?
If not, why not?
Are you capable of not having sex with women? For an indeterminate time?
It is simply contrary to human nature to not have sex. The urge is far too strong to ever believe it a successful approach.
One of the thing that McNeil's article did not address is the efficacy of condoms.
Why did he not do that?
Why? Because he is a Fauci acolyte. Has the same }my way or the highway" attitude.
Yes and yes, and it's honestly appalling that you can't conceive of people who can abstain or AT LEAST stay committed to a single partner.
People who are capable of sexual self-control and commitment view people who are not as little more than animals.
Oh, for fucks sake. I can as many others can "conceive [funny word in this context"] of monogamous relationships.
The really "appalling" thing is that you seem to see the world only through your eyes, your "morality".Really, you have the mentality of Jerry Falwell. Shame on you.
The world does not mirror your views. In fact yours are a tiny fraction of human interests.
You seem to have a clear morality in mind, where some things are celebrated and others rejected.What makes yours right and those that disagree with you deserving of shame?
I understand you agree with "the world", but you surely understand this: by your own standard of "popular makes right" the activities you hold up as right would have been wrong (being as at that time only a tiny fraction of humans would have agreed with you).
Do you have another standard you'd like to suggest instead?
I think I cannot help you. I did not suggest a governing morality. You are making the selection of what is right. I do not care what is right. I am explaining that other folks have different views. We might face a new pandemic. I am not willing to cast into hellfire folks who do not share your morality.
Oh- and if you don't care what is right, give me your wallet. And your car keys.
Stealth edit!! What happened to "shame on you" and "Falwell"?
If your words were right, have the courage to keep them in and defend them.
If your words were wrong, have the courage to apologize. That would be right.
But you are the one pronouncing shame, not me! You are the one pronouncing judgment. You are applying a morality to what you have decided I believe.
You are casting me into hellfire.
So what exactly is your morality that I don't share? And why is it better?
"for fucks sake"
Lol! Yes, that's the point.
Funny, I feel no shame. Projection?
"The world" is precisely what I reject. Have you actually read the Bible?
Ten thousand years, and no real progress. You are slaves to your instincts.
I'm proud that I'm not like you.
Ah, the Bible. There's your problem, can't think for yourself. Allows you the smug certainty that others can be condemned. Read Shakespeare. Much more fun.
Actually, it has been about 200,000 years and look around you. There is lots of progress, your next illness will be treated by that progress, you will drive that progress to you next dinner out, to the grocery store. Speaking of grocery stores, no need to go out and kill your next meal or plant the crops. Progress. Amazing!
I've also read Shakespeare. I have a liberal arts education. I've read lots of things, travelled through 17 countries, tried many religions, and much, much more.
But I know it's easier to belittle and dismiss people who bring up ideas that threaten you. Ideas like, "your pleasure is not more important than public health." Basic ethics.
If you think a single reference to the Bible is an inability to "think for yourself", you don't even know what that means. Just a cheap, ignorant potshot landing in nothing. I like to call it "Christophobia".
I was referring to progress of human character, not technology or infrastructure or civilization or anything in your silly mockery. Of course civilization has progressed - you mock your own lack of understanding, not mine.
Also, you do realize that in the 1800s "most of the world" agreed that slavery was perfectly fine?
An adult that is not capable of putting the good of those around him ahead of his own appetites is a poor excuse for an adult.
This may be news to you, but in living memory most people abstained from sex before marriage. Crazy as it may seem, some people do that yet today. Not because they hate sex, but because they have a high view of sex and a high view of humanity. We can, and should, subjugate our desires to higher purposes.
If we can't, we're just animals.
Your view is outdated by nearly a century. My parents began living together in the summer of 1946. They didn't get married until mid-December, a few days after my mother's divorce papers arrived in the mail.
To call something outdated is not argument. The word says nothing about the value, utility or truth of an idea, only its place in time.
In the days before dating sites, in the days before the automobile, in the days before the bicycle, it was much harder than it is now to have sex before or outside of marriage.
But I think you greatly overrate avoidance of nonmarital sex. Sex is an immensely powerful urge, and often, even outside of marriage, a great joy.
People also have many ways of expressing it, some which work for some, and don't for others. A lot of bad marriages have happened between partners who didn't get to sample enough sex prior to marriage to figure out what they liked, and what they didn't like. Ann Landers used to say that out of 20 marriages there was one great one, 9 good ones, five that were not good, and five that were sheer hell. She also came to recognize that sex without marriage is OK.
Note the word "most", which means a) most people were able to do it and b) some people didn't.
By the logic of your third paragraph, our most promiscuous eras should yield our happiest, most durable marriages. Care to defend with evidence?
You can't exactly do a controlled study on whether marriages do better in this relatively promiscuous era than in the old days. But I can tell you that my parents had a great marriage--54 years. Both sets of uncles and aunts also had great marriages of roughly the same length.
Ann Landers--exposed as she was to the trials and tribulations of people generally--said that sexual compatibility makes for a happier marriage, and for that matter, others in her metier, such as Emily Yoffe when she was Dear Prudence, have said the same thing.
But plenty of ingredients besides sexual compatibility make good marriages, as Ann Landers or Emily Yoffe would be the first to tell you. Marriages also do better in countries where there is greater equality and a better social safety net--like the Scandinavian countries--where people have fewer urgent worries.
And marriages tend to do better when the partners have similar interests and approaches to life. I could go on and on but you should be getting the idea.
I would hope to aspire to that behavior myself, but am way too old and too human to conform to such lofty goals.
As to reality, not behavioral fascism, we are trying to deal with a medical infection risk, a possible pandemic, we need approaches that account for a variety of views on things like sex.
Fauci had that notion decades ago - "just don't have sex". It did not work. What worked is figuring out how to deal with reality (you know, the same failing he had with Covid???) of folks actually engaging in sexual behaviors.
The drive to copulate is powerful. One of the most powerful our species has. Acting like they are not "adults" or that they don't give a shit about others is just silly. And childish. You know, folks who are poor excuses for adults.
This actually represents a welcome return to a more evidence-based approach to human behaviour in public health.
The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work. See: abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates; how shaming can hinder disclosure of HIV (or STD) status; the misguided war on drugs; and on and on.
We ought to focus on wondering why we went full throttle for it on Covid, despite all evidence against it, rather than asking why we won't try that same doomed strategy again with monkeypox.
Several years ago, I would have totally agreed with you, (and I still largely like what you're saying). Then COVID came, and we witnessed massive, widespread behavior modification before our very eyes--parents diligently masking toddlers, families canceling Christmas, and millions rolling up their sleeves for experimental injections. Either out of fear or the desire to stay within cultural norms, there's no question that Americans changed their behavior during COVID.
If the gay community sounded the alert and made anonymous sex parties socially unacceptable and a cause for shame by their own, even just temporarily as suggested, I think we'd see decreased transmission.
"The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work."
Utter horseshit. I, and millions of others, have quit smoking. That is just one of countless examples that could be used. You have no idea what you're talking about.
If people can't even be /asked/ to refrain from risky behaviors, if they cannot restrain their appetites to contain communicable diseases that they are uniquely susceptible because of their particular chosen behaviors, then they are not candidates for adulthood, nor citizens in a self-governing republic.
Abstinence-only education and telling people to stop self-destructive behaviors does people the respect of treating people as /agents/ rather than helpless people to whom things happen.
So he did repeatedly say for large sex parties to stop, or whatever else they would be called. I’m not sure how you missed that or aren’t able to infer that that is a warning against casual sex with strangers.
He didn't say "stop"; he said postpone until the fall when there are better supplies of vaccines available.
For the last year ++ we've had proggies screaming about how anyone not vaccinated should be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
Why aren't proggies screaming about how any male that has butt sex be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
The way I read it, he wants the government to step in and MAKE those parties stop. He wants to government to provide vaccinations, so people can go back to having those parties without any concerns. He wants the government to provide quarantine areas.
He did not, as far I could tell, recommend any PERSONAL responsibility.
I agree with you, Celia. Someone has to pay for the treatments and housing and it's not going to just be the special group affected by it. It's all of us. All of us were told how selfish we were for wanting life to go back to normal the last two years, but heaven FORBID a smaller group refrain from anonymous sex whenever the urge strikes.
Without re-reading the article I think he did lament the fact that the hosts of the parties are going ahead with them rather than postpone until the vax is widely available.
But those who attend have to be aware of their risk so if they want to play the odds there's not not much anyone else can do.
He addressed that several times. Do you suggest that the government lock up every gay man in the nation so they won’t have copious sex? Or what? Providing vaccines to all gay men seemed, to me, more effective. Also providing a thirty day isolation period for anyone who tests positive to it, even though it would be expensive, seems to be a good thing.
Exactly. He did address this.
If they can lockdown literally everyone whether spreading it or not, I see no reason why they can't put gay men who can't control their genitals into lockdown. In fact, let's put all gay men into lockdown until the danger is over! For their safety!
I think people are reacting to the fact that kids weren't allowed to go to school, everyone on a plane had to wear a mask and no one could go to a funeral or wedding but no one is expecting this verified at risk group to change their behavior even temporarily.
Best comment of the lot...
It isn't allowed. It was frowned upon 40 years ago when AIDS came on the scene, even though the Woke had far less power. Now, with the Woke in control of every institution, no one will dare to even whisper it.
Some Gays take the risks and suffer the consequences. Once I understood how Monkeypox is transmitted, I knew my family and friends, including gay friends were safe. None of us engage in the risky activities. If you enjoy extreme sports, then go for it.
My outrage is the author putting all the responsibility on taxpayers/government. (And the insanity that the government can still be competent under Dem leadership.) My other outrage is that someone I love gets this disease innocently/non-sexually and has to suffer because there are gay men who will not interrupt their indulgences for themselves or anyone else's health.
"none of us engage in the risky activities."
I can't stop laughing at this comment. Do you not have sex? None of your friends have sex? Do you believe that no one in your chain of friends might have sex outside a "monogamous" relationship? Never kissed someone who might have kissed someone who might have had sex with ... ?
If you think this is just a result of gay sex, or anal sex, or fetish sex, or whatever you might believe is at the core, you are possibly in for a rude awakening.
Rude Awakening? - are you really trying to frighten me? You want to scare all of us who are not part of the small subsets of gay men: the BDSM/leather/fetish/rough subset and the party-n-play/chemsex subset. I do not have friends who play these "extreme sports." To conflate these folks with my circle is to compare the purple-haired, screaming, violent trans folk with my circle. Sorry, culture matters and some cultures are far more dangerous than others. If monkeypox spreads to a larger circle, I will deal with it just as I did with AIDS in the 80s. Except then I was single and now I have been married for 25 years. And I later learned that the fears for heterosexuals were totally overblown by the nascent woke crowd back then. So it appears the risk will be de minimis.
Most of my friends are in monogamous relationships, and those that are single are very careful. This is what my culture encourages. Culture matters unless you are woke. If you are woke, then enjoy your sex parties.
BTW, at 74 I am having the best sex of a very long sex life.
Happy you are having great sex. Good on ya.
But the risk here is that sexual transmission may not be the only risk. Some might say that we - males - got lucky with HIV. Sounds like you did. It has stayed pretty much limited to a small segment of the populace. But women are at risk of spread from infected males. That is the African experience and among sex workers in the US.
That may not hold for this new pox. Time will tell. You can continue to believe that this pox is just skin bumps and not a risk to you and your fellow believers. But you may be disappointed.
I'd prefer to deal with the realities of a variety of humans, not just those I might think of as "woke" or unawake or whatever. I don't think IV drug users are "woke" but they sure are at risk.
I'd prefer we look at the world the way it is (consevative thought) not the way I think it should be (Prog thought).
We simply have different priorities for particular health risks. No big deal. My complaint is that personal responsibility is thrown out the window by the woke crowd, and tax payers have to pay thru increased health risk, and to fund the increased harm done by irresponsible people.
Nope
Seems simple doesn't it?