As the Biden administration scrambles to get a handle on the rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak, its latest focus is getting vaccines to high-risk events, such as pride parades.
But there has been relatively little messaging on preventing the virus from spreading in the first place — and that’s a mistake, public health experts say.
As it was with the HIV-AIDS crisis in the 1980s, men who have sex with men have borne the brunt of the early stages of the current outbreak. But while public health officials in the past have traditionally preached safer sex rather than abstinence, that message is less resonant in this crisis, where the disease spreads through close skin-to-skin contact, rather than through sexual contact.
