A few months ago, an international group of gay men engaged in a group sexual encounter at a pride event in the Canary Islands. One or more of the participants had monkeypox. A number of the men who participated in the activity went back to continental Europe, participated in more Pride Month sex-related events and began spreading monkeypox.
The spread of monkeypox had mostly been confined to the gay community, mostly spread through random sexual encounters and group sex. Now, several children have it. They have gay parents in open sexual arrangements who participated in sexual activities with one or more other people, not their partner.
"Both of those children are traced back to individuals who come from the men-who-have-sex-with-men community, the gay men's community," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said last week.
A friend sent me a link the other day to a Twitter thread of a gay porn star who contracted monkeypox after participating over several days in large and small group events that the dictionary would, as did the porn star, define as orgies, including one held for a friend's birthday.
A gay rights activist, in the left-leaning Guardian, described how he contracted monkeypox during New York City Pride festivities. "I had sex with several guys over the weekend. Then a week later, on July 1, I started feeling very fatigued. I had a high fever with chills and muscle aches, and my lymph nodes were so swollen they were protruding two inches out of my throat," he said.
He got monkeypox and gonorrhea. The activist is in the health care field and admitted he knew monkeypox was spreading in the gay community at the time. These are the sorts of things I'd prefer not to write about but need to in order to make a particular point.
The world health community is declaring monkeypox an emergency. It has now spread globally to tens of thousands of people. It is contracted through contact, not just bodily fluid.
The same public health community that shut down churches, beaches, businesses and schools and demanded we stop seeing our grandparents is made up of the same public health officials who cannot bring themselves to prohibit group sexual activities. There will be no "two weeks of no orgies" to stop the spread of monkeypox despite two years of shutdowns to stop COVID-19. Remember, in February of 2021, European police busted down doors to stop sex parties because of COVID-19. But they will not do the same for monkeypox.
The very same public health officials and media talking heads who condemned small business owners for maskless protests are the same officials and talking heads who thought we all needed to be in the street marching maskless after George Floyd's death. Reporters who said these small business owners should be denied COVID-19 treatment never took that position about the riots.
The same people who called riots "mostly peaceful" have largely ignored a would-be assassin showing up at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house. Now, they cannot be open and honest about stopping monkeypox because they're afraid of stigmatizing the gay community.
A public health community and media hijacked by woke progressive ideology cannot speak truth into the world in order to help us. These situations will get worse. Others will abandon the media and public health community for conspiracists on social media who make more sense and offer more plausible paths forward.
We are witnessing a breakdown in society because the press and public health communities have together picked a side and lost empathy for the other side. Instead of boldly speaking truth to all for everyone's betterment, they're picking winners and losers and playing to one side for that side's betterment. The woke capture of our institutions is causing a collapse of trust.
It's going to cause more problems. COVID-19 and monkeypox and Jan. 6 nonsense are the beginning of this, not the end. And yes, the Jan. 6 nonsense: The Democrats who want us to watch their show trial are also funding election conspiracists in Republican primaries.
It is uncomfortable to write or think about, but it is true.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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