“Stigma and blame undermine trust and capacity to respond effectively during outbreaks like this one,” UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Matthew Kavanagh said in the agency’s Sunday statement.

“Experience shows that stigmatizing rhetoric can quickly disable evidence-based response by stoking cycles of fear, driving people away from health services, impeding efforts to identify cases, and encouraging ineffective, punitive measures,” Kavanagh added. “We appreciate the LGBTI community for having led the way on raising awareness – and we reiterate that this disease can affect anyone.”

Unlike HIV, which was spread largely by:

Blood transfusions with infected blood, a problem that was solved relatively quickly
Heroin junkies sharing needles without cleaning them
Gay men sodomizing each other on a mass scale
Monkeypox, like COVID, appears to be spread mostly by socializing.

But gays do that more than just about anybody. Thus, the big superspreader event of last summer’s COVID Delta wave was Bear Week in Provincetown.

Shutting down schools for semesters and forcing children to wear masks is Following the Science, but asking gays to turn it down a notch until we figure out why they are spreading monkeypox would be The Worst Thing Ever.

Some people’s fun, such as children’s, is just less important that other people’s fun, like gays.