I became a cultural writer in the age of AIDS,. And because my beat, the arts, intersected with the gay community, which was disproportionately affected by the disease in the United States, I was assigned by the newspaper I worked for then to help cover a subject few would touch with a 10-foot pole.
It’s hard to remember now more than 40 years ago as well as to overestimate the feeling of dread AIDS engendered. A wave of it came flooding back with Covid. And another wave of a different variety has come flooding back with monkeypox, wihich the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency even as the Biden Administration weighs appointing a monkeypox coordinator.
To be sure, there are distinct differences between AIDS and monkeypox. The former proved lethal rapidly. And it was met with callous indifference by the Reagan Administration as the gay plague, whereas the Biden Administration is trying to do something about monkeypox — emphasis on the word “trying.” ((t would be an ironic shame if President Joe Biden, having won the election on Covid, Covid, Covid, dropped the ball on monkeypox,)
But monkeypox has brought an immediate feeling of déjà vu -- the origins in Africa, where the diseases jumped from animals to humans; the lesions; the disproportionate affect on the LGBTQ community; and most important, the sense of helplessness because the government has been slow to act and because the fear is society will dismiss this as another gay plague. I think we need to acknowledge this is happening in the gay community without judging that community. And I think that community in turn should practice safe sex at all times for its own sake.
But neither should we say, if only men wouldn’t have sex with other men, jjust like if only those pesky women wouldn’t have sex, they wouldn’t get pregnant unnecessarily and need abortions. You know what? In the immortal words of actor Hugh Grant, “that train has sailed.” So let’s get back to the problem at hand: What are we going to do about monkeypox?
The window is already closing, according to Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist with the Yale School of Public Health, who told the “PBS NewsHour’s” Amna Nawaz that a slow response by the federal government, coupled with tight controls on testing and the TPOXX drug used to treat monkeypox have put us behind the eight ball. Then there’s the vaccine, Jynneos, for which 780.000 doses will be available July 29, bringing the total number of doses available to 1.1 million. (You need two shots a month apart. The other vaccine, ACAM2000, is pretty much a nonstarter due to side effects.) Another 5.5 million doses of Jynneos can be ready by 2023— by which time several thousand cases may have multiplied exponentially and what appears to be another gay plague may become a problem for society at large.
In the same PBS interview, Gonsalves spoke about a “fractured health care system.” It’s one that costs a lot but delivers little, because it operates like a bank. And just like banks do best with people who already have money, the American health-care system works best for people who aren’t sick and can afford to pay.
You may be interested to know that once AIDS became a chronic disease with the 1995 development of a drug therapy, I was told I no longer had to cover World AIDS Day/Day Without Art (Dec. 1). (Does anyone remember it?) So I wrote a column that said just because AIDS was now a chronic illness — albeit one that required a complex, expensive cocktail of drugs — that didn’t mean it wasn’t still a scourge in places like Africa, where it has always been a heterosexual disease.
I called my column “And the Band Moved On,” after Randy Shilts’ great book about the early history of AIDS, “And the Band Played On” (1987). You have to wonder what he would’ve made of this moment. He died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at age 42.
He might’ve said that when it comes to monkeypox, the band hasn’t even tuned up.