How monkeypox spreads
Even if you've never read And The Band Played On (read the book or see the movie), you know that many, many people died needlessly because of the mistakes made by politicians, public health officials and journalists during the first decade of the AIDS crisis.
It was pejoratively called the "gay plague." In the first years of the crisis, when newsrooms weren't ignoring the emergency (except for the San Francisco Chronicle), they made other mistakes. They marginalized those who had the virus, and they didn't educate the public or hold government officials accountable for their failures.
Because the then-fatal virus was spreading predominantly among "men who have sex with men," the public response was hampered by prejudice and moral judgment. Seeing that phrase emerge now, in relation to the spread of the monkeypox virus, has many people questioning whether we are making the same mistakes.
An audience member objected to the phrase, suggesting that there must be better language available to describe a particular monkeypox risk group.
We wondered about that phrase too, because the description seems particularly specific. After all, the virus itself doesn't target a particular gender. What we found is a complex web of advice from experts
