Credit where it’s due: Queer Seattleites protected each other from mpox

I’ll be blunt: Seattle’s queer neighborhood deserves extra reward for curbing the native 2022 mpox outbreak.

In August 2022, I used to be planning a visit from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., with my shut buddies (my “gaggle of gays,” as I prefer to name them). As a substitute of being excited, we have been scared. Mpox (previously referred to as monkeypox) was surging within the U.S. More than 400 new cases were being reported every day primarily affecting queer males — queer males like us. Regardless of circumstances beginning to seem within the U.S. since Might of that yr, vaccines — and public well being info — have been scarce. 

We had heard from buddies that Canada was administering mpox vaccines way before the U.S., and shortly snagged some spots for a future appointment. We posted that info all over the place, some on Instagram, some on the homosexual relationship web site Grindr, and others despatched messages to buddies, lovers, ex-lovers and group chats to alert their communities. Our communities replied in flip. Some knowledgeable us that Harborview Medical Heart’s STI clinic had obtained a restricted provide of vaccines. 

We canceled our Canadian appointments, headed to Harborview at 6:30 the following morning, and located an extended line of queer males ready exterior. Every of them had comparable tales: “My buddy woke me up final night time to inform me!” “I examine it on some man’s Grindr profile.” 

The sample was the identical: We had all heard concerning the clinic from our neighborhood, our community of queer people across the metropolis. The media and the federal authorities, nonetheless, took some time to catch up.

I seen queer communication channels mentioning mpox beginning in Might 2022, earlier than federal public well being communications ever reached Seattle, and  two months before the Biden administration declared mpox a public well being emergency. Regardless of media and authorities communications’ failure to spotlight that mpox was affecting primarily homosexual and bisexual males, the Seattle queer neighborhood took motion. Instagram and X (beforehand Twitter) have been flooded with related articles and considerations concerning the upcoming Delight celebration. Group chats circulated testing info and questions relating to potential signs.  

All this speak didn’t fall flat; we reacted and took concrete steps towards defending our neighborhood. Profiles on Grindr and different queer relationship websites, like Scruff and even Sniffies (a Seattle-based app identified for nameless profiles), have been populated with a model of “not hooking up attributable to monkeypox ” or “simply chatting for now till vaccinated.” People changed their behavior whereas all of us waited for a vaccine. 

Now a yr later, the outcomes are in. Whereas official authorities statements have a good time the success of vaccination campaigns, only a few spotlight the swift response from the LGBTQ+ neighborhood to disseminate info and alter high-risk behaviors as a cause for the decline of circumstances. But, research after research, at numerous scales — with scopes as giant as North America and the United Kingdom, or as native as Washington, D.C. — have come to the identical conclusion: Behavioral modification, not vaccination, induced the 2022 wave of mpox circumstances to crash. Even the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention agreed.

To be honest, the identical research additionally discover that vaccines in all probability prevented a rebound of circumstances later within the yr, however even when the fast response of the queer neighborhood is acknowledged, articles often minimize these neighborhood efforts in change for celebrating vaccination campaigns. 

It’s time we give credit score the place credit score is due. Seattle’s queer neighborhood led the cost and guarded their metropolis. In the age of top government officials watering down public health into individual choices, queer Seattleites taught this budding epidemiologist an unforgettable lesson: Public well being is, and all the time might be, community-led.