In article <t2emu3$3ion9$75@news.freedyn.de>
<governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
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> Start putting queers in jail for failing to control themselves and spreading a disease to children.
>

Dr. Ward Carpenter, co-director of health services at the Los
Angeles LGBT Center, said the monkeypox outbreak across the U.S.
is worse than imagined.

�We�re just as busy, just as stressed out and living in just as
much chaos as at the beginning of Covid,� he said.

The Los Angeles LGBT Center has had to shift so much of its
staff to respond to the outbreak that it no longer has the
capacity for urgent and walk-in care for its patients, Carpenter
said. The center is providing monkeypox vaccinations, testing
and treatment on top of its normal services, which include
primary care, HIV care, sexual health, women�s health and mental
health.

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�We�ve got people who have nothing to do with this sort of work
who have stopped doing their normal jobs and have started
working on this response,� Carpenter said.

U.S. health officials designated monkeypox as a national health
emergency on Thursday as cases surge and clinics struggle. STD
clinics in major cities across the country are serving as the
first line of defense in trying to contain the virus in the
U.S., offering care and guidance to gay and bisexual men who
currently face the greatest threat from the disease.

Clinics struggle
A surge of patients who need vaccines, testing and treatment for
the disease as infections rise are putting pressure on a system
already strapped for resources after years of underfunding,
physicians say.

Monkeypox is spreading primarily through skin-to-skin contact
during sex. Since the United Kingdom first alerted the world to
the presence of the virus in May, sexual health clinics across
the world have been the eyes and ears of national public health
systems, identifying unusual symptoms that diverge from the
usual description of the disease in medical literature.

Physicians at clinics in Los Angeles and Chicago, major centers
of the current outbreak in the U.S., say they are struggling to
keep up with the demand for vaccines, testing and treatment from
the communities they serve and are in need of financial support
to respond to the outbreak.

The U.S. has reported more than 7,000 cases of monkeypox across
48 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outbreak has
spread swiftly since health authorities in Boston confirmed the
first U.S. case in May.

Monkeypox is rarely fatal, and no deaths have been reported in
the U.S. But some patients suffer pain so excruciating from the
rash, which often develops on the genitals or anus, that they
require hospitalization.

�Pain for weeks�
�Unless you potentially experienced pain in these sensitive
areas, it�s hard to maybe conceptualize what this is, but this
is not something that�s cleared up with some antibiotics in a
matter of days. People are living with this pain for weeks� said
Dr. Anu Hazra, a physician and infectious disease expert at
Howard Brown Health in Chicago.

Though gay and bisexual men are currently at the highest risk,
public health officials have repeatedly emphasized that anyone
can catch monkeypox through physical contact with someone
infected with the virus or via contaminated materials such as
towels and bedsheets.

�Monkeypox doesn�t care if you�re gay. It doesn�t care what kind
of sex you have,� Hazra said. �Monkeypox only cares if you were
in close contact with another person that has monkeypox.�

Carpenter said the U.S. has the opportunity to contain the
outbreak while it is still mostly limited within a close-knit
community of gay and bisexual men, but as infections rise, the
risk grows that the virus will start spreading more broadly.

�We�ve now had two in a row, outbreaks that were not managed in
a way that allowed them to be contained,� Carpenter said. �This
is going to take a coordinated and committed and comprehensive
public health strategy that goes from top to bottom and treats
it just as seriously as Covid was,� he said.

Surge of patients
The Los Angeles LGBT Center knew in early May that monkeypox was
going to become a major health issue for the communities it
serves after cases reported in Europe indicated transmission was
occurring in sexual networks of gay and bisexual men, according
to Carpenter.

Staff at the center had never dealt with monkeypox before, so
they started educating themselves about the virus. But patients
had symptoms that weren�t described in the medical literature,
such as single lesions in the genital and anal areas. They
didn�t know their first patient had monkeypox until the results
came back because the symptoms didn�t fit the textbook
description.

�We knew from very early on that this was not going to be
behaving like the book,� Carpenter said. �We�re learning not
only from the books, but as we go and seeing clients, we�re
actually learning what this new outbreak is looking like and how
it differs.�

More and more patients started coming in for screenings in late
June as Pride month wrapped up, Carpenter said. The center is
testing up to 15 people a day, and patients who have sexually
transmitted infections now need a full skin exam to see if they
might have monkeypox as well.

Hazra said the number of people coming in for monkeypox
screenings at Howard Brown Health in Chicago has increased
exponentially since May.

Calls for federal support
Some U.S. lawmakers and local communities have criticized the
pace of the federal government�s response, but Health Secretary
Xavier Becerra said last week the Biden administration has done
everything it can to ramp up the availability of vaccines,
testing and treatment to fight the outbreak.

More than 100 members of Congress told President Joe Biden in a
letter late last month that the administration needs to do more
to support sexual health clinics on the front lines. They called
on Biden, Becerra and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to devote
at least $30 million in funding for clinics that are battling
the outbreak through the CDC�s division of STD prevention.

�If we do not provide sufficient funding for our nation�s STI
clinics now, it will become significantly more challenging to
eradicate monkeypox in the months ahead,� wrote Reps. Jerrold
Nadler, D-NY, and David Cicilline, D-RI in the letter.

Hazra at Howard Brown in Chicago said Covid showed that public
health in general is chronically underfunded. Sexual health is
even more ignored, he said. Federal funding for STD prevention
has declined 41% since 2003 when adjusted for inflation,
according to the National Coalition of STD Directors, a national
association of state health officials that work in sexual health.

Though monkeypox is not classified as an STD, sexual health
clinics are the primary point of care for many people who have
the virus, which causes a rash that can be confused with
sexually transmitted infections. A survey of 80 clinics in late
July found 40% had unanticipated costs for supplies and
personnel due to the monkeypox outbreak, while 65% stopped
taking walk-in patients and shifted to appointment only due to
capacity issues, according to the coalition.

�There�s absolutely not enough funding,� Carpenter said. �Local
health centers like ours play a really important role in
responses like this, but we don�t have the capacity to turn on a
dime, shift and double our capacity to be able to handle whoever
needs it.�

Vaccines still limited
Carpenter said the demand for monkeypox vaccines is enormous and
is still outstripping supply. Staff spent all day, every day
vaccinating people last week, he said. They have administered
1,500 doses of the vaccine so far.

The center recently told patients to book appointments for the
shots after receiving more supply. Half the appointments were
filled in two hours and all the slots were booked by the end of
the day, Carpenter said. Los Angeles has received about 24,000
doses from the federal government, according to the county
health department.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky acknowledged last month
demand that supply of the two-dose monkeypox vaccine, Jynneos,
is limited, which has led to lines outside clinics and protests
in some cities. The Health and Human Services Department has
ramped up shipments to state and local health departments, with
more than 600,000 doses delivered since May.

HHS made 786,000 doses available to state and local health
departments last Friday. The city of Chicago received an
additional 15,000 doses of the vaccine last weekend in addition
to 7,000 delivered in July. But Hazra said that�s still not
enough to meet the demand of at-risk men who have sex with men
estimated at between 40,000 to 50,000 people in the city.

�We are currently scheduled out three weeks in advance in terms
of a vaccine appointments,� Hazra said. Howard Brown Health has
administered 2,800 doses to date.