The lesson unlearned from past epidemics | Opinion | dailytitan.com – The Daily Titan

Monkeypox, a rare viral infection, has become a public health concern due to its smallpox-like tendencies. The disease has started to spread and is mostly affecting gay or bisexual men and transgender people. Due to these pervasive numbers, it has led to an increase in discrimination toward the LGBTQ  community. 

Diseases are not warrants to treat people unfairly, and monkeypox should not be exempt from that rule.  

Although the disease has existed since 1958 and originated from monkeys in a research lab, it is now being used to create a stigma towards gay or bisexual men and transgender people.

There is a common misconception that monkeypox is just another STD, but that is incorrect. While the virus can be spread through sexual contact, the CDC states that any skin-to-skin contact, touching of contaminated fabrics, contact with respiratory secretions, or non-sexual intimate contact can lead to infection. 

Anthony DiStefano, professor of public health at Cal State Fullerton, mentions that historically, groups of people are often associated with certain diseases, causing people to discriminate against these communities. 

“The first group of the population or place that a new infection occurs, we often immediately blame that people or that place,” DiStefano said. “It’s part of human history that we do this. And it often comes from a lack of understanding in the early days of an epidemic or pandemic. It’s a lack of understanding of the actual causal mechanisms.” 

In the last two years, there was a rise in hate crimes towards Asian Americans and Asian immigrants which stemmed from people’s beliefs that they were to blame for COVID-19.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded a 77% increase in Asian American hate crimes from 2019 to 2020.

According to Health Affairs, more than 57% of Asian Americans  reported that they felt unsafe when going out in public because of their ethnicity.

The dangers of stigmatizing diseases have real-world effects. Rather than taking the time to further educate themselves on COVID-19, the disease was used as a chance to justify discrimination towards a minority group. 

Monkeypox is not the first time the LGBTQ community has been used as a scapegoat for a disease.

In the 1980s, there was a catalyst in cases for HIV and AIDS. Due to some of the first cases being reported were among gay men, the viral infection was labeled a “gay disease.” 

“So they take diseases,” Craig Loftin, lecturer at CSUF, said,  “and they sort of put them in their pre-existing prejudices and use that as a rationality for something they already dislike.”

Even though HIV or AIDS can affect anyone, the LGBTQ community took a large hit, both within the media and in healthcare. The disease itself was ignored for many years and it was not until the late 1980s that it was declared an epidemic.

“I think, also, for a lot of gay men, this is stirring up old traumas,” Loftin said. “To have lived through that period in the 80s was deeply traumatic for pretty much every gay man at one level or another.”

By 1990, AIDS had wiped out 100,777 people in America. A majority of these deaths were gay or bisexual men. 

The AIDS epidemic being widely ignored and brushed to the side as a “gay disease” is what led to the deaths of many people. If the disease had been taken seriously in its earlier stages, more lives could have been saved.

This idea that only gay men could contract AIDS and HIV also put heterosexual people in a dangerous place. Since they were under the impression it could not affect them, it left them vulnerable to the disease. In 2019, heterosexual people made up 23% of new HIV infections in the U.S.

The World Health Organization is working towards creating less of a stigmatization around the disease, such as changing the variant names to Clade I, Clade IIa and Clade IIb. 

Educating the public about how different illnesses, not just monkeypox, are transmitted prevents people from jumping to the conclusion that specific groups of people are responsible for certain diseases.

Everyone should continue educating themselves more on the disease and how it actually can affect them. By looking at the ailment through a non-stigmatized lens, we can help in the fight against monkeypox and reduce the cases as well.

To find your local vaccination site and its qualifications, visit https://www.ochealthinfo.com/monkeypox/vaccine.

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