‘We’re on our own.’ Urgent pleas for monkeypox vaccines from gay men feeling neglected by the government

Many however will leave empty-handed as local hospitals and clinics have had to rely on an inconsistent and insufficient supply of vaccines, a dilemma that has infuriated patients and advocates.

San Francisco General opens the clinic doors at 8 a.m. and the line inches forward slowly. The hospital will distribute the available doses until the supply runs out.

For Cody Aarons, 31, it was his third attempt. He stood calmly with more than 100 people already in front of him.

“I was in New York for the past month for work, and I tried with their online portal system and was unsuccessful in getting a vaccine,” said the health care worker who thought he might have a better chance in San Francisco.

But 45 minutes after starting the day’s distribution, a hospital staff member passed by with an announcement. “Folks we have reached our limit for today,” he shouted. “However, we will try to find you more shots.”

Although with no guarantee of getting the monkeypox vaccine that day, Aarons — and just about everyone in line — stayed put.

“People want their vaccine,” said Rafael Mandelman, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “I know one person who was in that line four different days before he finally got his vaccination.”

Mandelman, who got up at 4:30 a.m. and waited for hours before getting his vaccine shot days earlier, is frustrated with the rollout.

“After having come through a pandemic where we were able to discover a new vaccine, [and] distribute tens of millions of doses within a matter of months, the fact that with an existing known vaccine we cannot get more than these paltry little dribbles out is very frustrating to people,” he said.

Desperate and fearful

For health care workers, the outbreak is a frustrating new chapter after the punishing Covid-19 pandemic.

“At the peak of Covid vaccinations, we averaged 1,400 to 1,500 (doses) a day. So we are completely used to the mass vaccination process,” nurse manager Merjo Roca said.

But Roca and her staff are limited in what they can do given the vaccine shortage.

San Francisco health officials initially requested 35,000 doses, but say they’ve only gotten 12,000 from the federal stockpile. The state of California informed city leaders that San Francisco will receive 10,700 more in the next allotment, yet there’s no clear indication when those doses will arrive or how many will reach San Francisco General Hospital for distribution.

“I think one of our biggest challenges is really just the inconsistency of the supply,” Roca said. “Our vaccine clinic prides itself on being able to help and vaccinate people when they come through our doors. So, it’s super hard for all of our staff not to be able to do that and have to turn people away and not even have information to say when we will get the doses next.”

With many of those in line fearful about monkeypox’s rapid rise in cases, the clinic staff feel an added burden by not being able to deliver for everyone.

“It’s very hard to listen to someone explaining why they want the vaccine and why they need the vaccine and we just don’t have it,” Roca added.

“It was like someone taking a hole-puncher all over my body”

The government argues it acted urgently and with the data. And there are clear differences between the response now and the response to HIV/AIDS. But some advocates say the perceived lack of governmental urgency in addressing a public health crisis that impacts queer communities today mirrors what gay men were experiencing decades ago.

Exchanges between then-President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary and reporters in 1982 and 1983 indicate that the nation’s top officials and mainstream society viewed the disease as a joke and not an issue of great concern.

That stemmed from the perception of AIDS as a “gay plague” — a condition thought to be tied to the lifestyles and behaviors of gay men — even though cases had also been reported in women, infants, those with hemophilia and people who injected drugs.

Now, more than 40 years later, the gay community is once again grappling with feeling ostracized and neglected by their own government.

“We have a responsibility to not further stigmatize or politicize this issue for a community that has long faced many issues, has long been marginalized in our community,” said Tyler TerMeer, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “Dating all the way back to the earliest days of the HIV epidemic in our country, we saw our community abandoned by federal government in their response,” he said.

The foundation opened its doors in 1982 “in a moment of crisis in our community, when the federal government abandoned us … there are parallels between that moment and this one,” according to TerMeer.

“President Biden has called on us to explore every option on the table to combat the monkeypox outbreak and protect communities at risk,” said White House National Monkeypox Response Coordinator Robert Fenton. “We are applying lessons learned from the battles we’ve fought — from COVID response to wildfires to measles, and will tackle this outbreak with the urgency this moment demands.”

Monkeypox is a poxvirus, related to smallpox and cowpox and it generally causes pimple- or blister-like lesions and flu-like symptoms such as fever, according to the CDC.

The lesions typically concentrate on the arms and legs, but in the latest outbreak, they’re showing up more frequently on the genital and perianal area, which has raised some concerns that monkeypox lesions may be confused with STDs.

“I had between 600 to 800 lesions all over my body … It was like someone taking a hole-puncher all over my body. There were points where I couldn’t walk, couldn’t touch things,” said Kevin Kwong, who recently recovered from monkeypox after being diagnosed in early July.

He chronicled his ordeal on social media to bring awareness to the outbreak and now wants to “focus on destigmatizing the gay community.”

According to the World Health Organization, there have been 25,054 cases confirmed by a laboratory as of August 3, and 122 probable cases.

But while the outbreak has disproportionately impacted some gay communities, there is growing concern over the spread of infection.

“This is a reminder that everyone, regardless of age or sexual orientation, can get monkeypox if they come into contact with the virus,” the City of Long Beach cautioned, echoing CDC guidance that while the risk of infection in children is low, they are “more likely to be exposed to monkeypox if they live in or have recently traveled to a community with higher rates of infection.”

“We need everyone to be rallying behind this issue and quickly,” TerMeer said “There is an imminent window of time by which we can get ahead of the fast spread of monkeypox across our country and that window continues to close.”