Will specter of monkeypox affect Pride events?

Virus spread, Roe decision weighs on minds of celebrants

For LGBTQ people in New York City, the last Friday in June is usually a joyful day. The streets come alive with the telltale signs of a celebratory weekend: music, dancing, kissing, the occasional trail of glitter confetti.

But this year, on the cusp of the city’s biggest Pride events, the atmosphere had a different charge. The news Friday morning of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade immediately shifted the tenor of the weekend’s events. In many circles, group chats that had days before been focused on party planning switched to coordinating protest plans. Further complicating people’s attitudes heading into the weekend are questions and concerns surrounding monkeypox, a virus that is disproportionately affecting gay men.

On Thursday, New York City health officials expanded access to a monkeypox vaccine, offering it to men who have had multiple or anonymous male sexual partners in the last 14 days. As of Friday, 39 people in New York City had tested positive for orthopoxvirus, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which added that all 39 cases were believed to be monkeypox.

According to the World Health Organization, monkeypox is transmitted from person to person via close contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets and contaminated materials. The virus typically begins with flulike symptoms, such as a fever and swollen lymph nodes, and progresses to a painful rash.

Although anyone can contract the virus, it is spreading primarily through communities of men who have sex with men, officials have said.

As photos of long lines of people waiting to be vaccinated at a sexual health clinic in Manhattan circulated on social media, and as news spread of monkeypox cases throughout the world, some New Yorkers began to reconsider their plans for Pride weekend.

Joseph Osmundson, a clinical assistant professor of biology at New York University and a queer health care advocate, said that growing concerns about monkeypox had affected the Pride plans of almost everyone he knew.

“Everything from, if you go to circuit party, are you going to be in the middle of the dance floor or are you going to be more off to the side, to the types of sex you’re having,” Osmundson, 39, said.

He said he thought people were generally making risk-aware decisions while still making space for “companionship, pleasure, community and getting out the house.”

Finley King, 24, a film production assistant, said that both monkeypox concerns and the Roe news were affecting his plans for this weekend, but that he would feel relatively comfortable attending a protest and standing on the sidelines, or going to an outdoor party.

“In terms of being worried, I’m at, like, a 4 out of 10 on the panic scale,” he said, adding that he hadn’t seen many of his friends discussing the disease. “I would say mostly people around my age, it’s either they know about monkeypox and they don’t care, or they don’t even know about it at all.”

Outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village Friday, Rusty Fox, 59, said that what little apprehension he was feeling about monkeypox was probably just residual anxiety from the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m a little paranoid, just because we’re following right behind COVID,” he said. “So that paranoia is kind of trickling over.”

Michael Donnelly, a data scientist, expressed frustration that this year’s Pride festivities were being colored by yet another virus.

“It really stinks that we have to deal with yet another infectious disease that’s spreading within our community and have to deal with an additional risk that we didn’t anticipate,” he said. But to Donnelly, 37, the enormous demand for the monkeypox vaccine Thursday pointed to a silver lining.

“I’m proud that we have a community that’s communicating about our health, about science, and is willing to get vaccines to keep ourselves safe and also our communities safe,” he said.

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidance for lowering the chance of contracting monkeypox, noting that festivals, concerts and other events where attendees were likely to be fully clothed were safer than spaces, including raves, saunas and sex clubs, where minimal clothing was worn.