In the city where the LGTBI community was once hard hit by HIV, monkey pox is now on the rise. People beg for vaccines that don’t exist.
The mayor of San Francisco has declared a state of emergency over monkey pox. It will take effect on Monday, August 1. The city plans to call in more staff to control the outbreak, as well as free up larger budgets. Closures, such as for the coronavirus, are not on the agenda. Mayor London Breed also made a high-profile appeal to “get vaccines to San Francisco quickly.” “We are being disproportionately affected,” it sounds. “This is a public health crisis.”
All of this plays into the unrest and frustration among the LGBT community, especially gay men. Many would like a vaccine against monkeypox, but it is hard to get one. According to Breed, the city needs 35,000 vaccines to protect vulnerable groups, but has not yet received 9,000. People queue for a long time to get the scarce injections.
Virus everywhere in wastewater
At the moment, ‘only’ 281 cases have been detected in San Francisco, but the virus is already found everywhere in the wastewater. That points to a wider spread of undiagnosed cases. In the US there are currently 4,600 cases and the curve is steeply up. New York has also just called monkey pox an ‘imminent threat’, which means it can more quickly turn to the federal government for emergency aid.
The situation brings back painful memories for many Americans of the 1980s, when HIV was floating around and the authorities let the situation settle. Homosexuals then stormed television studios and chained themselves to stock exchange buildings to demand more medical care.