Over 1000 cases of monkey pox in England

[Notcontent]

That is quite worrying, isn’t it? No one has died but 10% have been hospitalised. I personally don’t relish being covered in horrible scabs.

Are you a gay man?

What?

I heard that figure on the local BBC News - thought I'd misheard. Can it be true - a few weeks ago it was a handful?

Just in time for Pride too!

I think the risk is minimal and the advice for close contacts and vaccination of specific groups seems sensible. I'm not worried.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61994873.amp

The risk isn’t minimal. It can cause corneal scarring and blindness.

No, I am a woman! But this is not a sexually transmitted disease. The point is that this level of transmission is unprecedented and it has not just disappeared, as was initially predicted.

I don't go around licking strangers, so I am pretty safe

Plus not being a guy man helps too

@elizabethdraper there are children diagnosed. Don’t be ignorant.

The risk of catching it. Obviously.

Parsleys
It hasn't been categorised as a sexually transmitted disease until now. However the majority of cases are in the gay male community, with the majority being in London.

It is predominantly affecting gay men. It can be caught by anyone, but this is the current main outbreak. It's not something that concerns me currently due to the mechanism of it- I am unlikely to have physical contact with anyone long enough to be at risk.

HIV affected mainly gay men too. Is there ever been a disease that affects mostly gay women?

She's not being ignorant. She's thinking about where the main risk is at the moment.

There are way over 1000 cases of other infectious diseases at any given time.

I think they are the lowest risk group for STDs (apart from the non sexually active of course). Probably a combination of the kind of activities they do and lower levels of promiscuity than anything that involves men.
And yes, I know that monkey pox isn't strictly speaking an STD.

Pretty low down on my list of worries tbh. Can think of at least three better things to worry about:
Environmental crisis
Nuclear Armageddon (led by Russia)
Antibiotic resistance
Does that help?

I don't think so. There seems to be much less of a hookup culture among gay women than men in general, and also the chance of passing on a disease like HIV through sex between two women is much lower than with sex involving a man, because (not to put too fine a point on it) there's no ejaculation of semen from one person into the other. Of course with monkeypox the latter is irrelevant so the first point will be more important there.

Struggling to find hoots to give, if I'm honest. I'm tired of being on high alert for infections that may or may not make me ill. There are hundreds of other ways to die or become permanently disabled.

Wow that disappeared quickly! Good

I agree. What a disgusting person!

That must have been bad, the homophobia that has been allowed in this thread is depressing.