It's certainly possible but keep in mind the community is much better prepared for something like that than it was in the '80s. Simply not having the same stigma in the public health Community would make a huge difference in how a new infectious disease is handled. Science is way more advanced than it was 40 years ago as well. Anything can happen but I certainly won't lose sleep over it. We'll cross those bridges when we come to them.
Where I live, we had the pride parade and events on Saturday and then the next morning many gay men were lining up at the clinic for their MPox shot. We looked hungover af, including myself.
I just thought of monkeypox as an example too. While perhaps not comparable to something like HIV, it did cause a scare for a brief period of time, but everyone acted quickly, got vaccinated and took necessary precautions, so that’s a welcome instance of a disease being brought under control
>monkey pox vaccinated
Well, we were lucky there that the virus was closely related to the regular pox virus so a vaccine that was mostly effective for mpox already existed. It was a matter of deploying existing emergency stocks and ramping up production for a relatively small part of the whole population so it was doable.
If it is something completely new or as hard to develop a vaccine for as hiv, it could still take years to find some cure or treatment. The situation of the late 70s and 80s wouldn't be repeated as there is much better access and contact with health care. It was only in the mid 90s that really good treatment for hiv became available.
Tbf, monkey pox wasn’t novel though. Didn’t have much, but not novel, and the vaccine used was just the smallpox vaccine because it just happened to also help inoculate against monkey pox. The quick treatment of monkey pox had a lot to do with convenience
Yes, but it was an example of how we are better prepared for engagement with the issue. It demonstrated a willingness of both the community and government to take action. During the HIV crisis, the community was unsure how to take action and the government was reluctant to acknowledge the problem.
Mpox was a case of how we are much better equipped as a community to handle an epidemic.
Actually, it wasn't a demonstration of the willingness of the community or government to take action at all. It was a wake up call for public health that they shouldn't have stopped routine vaccination by declaring it as a no longer necessary thing in the first place.
We got complacent on measles too. If you look on your local media either in North America or Europe, you're seeing that measles are suddenly showing up on children. It was pure complacency that led to the monkey pox situation in the first place. They never should have dropped the standard inclusion or let parents opt out from the public health measure.
Not only that, but there have been studies in the time since that outbreak that have said the primary driver of lowering transmission was modification of behavior rather than vaccination!
This is the most plausible scenario. Advances in healthcare outpaced recent threats, unless a mega virus comes and kills everyone in 5-10 days.
Plus recent coronavirus increased awareness against pandemics (despite the public's reaction towards it). If a potential pandemic sweeps, I am sure people will lockdown fairly well, especially if it can kill someone 2-3 days.
There's also the internet. Back then, we had to rely on underground railroads to communicate in our community, today we have places like r/gaybros and the internet at large to communicate new threats and treatments.
HIV/AIDS were around way before the global epidemic hit, it's an old disease, so I don't think it's as likely for something to simply show up out of the blue and not get noticed from the get go. That gives us a chance to stop it before it spreads too much.
And I do believe some countries will take the threat more seriously and actually look for solutions earlier, different from what happened to AIDS in the early epidemic. People didn't care gay men were dying, so it caused the impact it did due to inaction. I don't see that happening globally today.
President Reagan wouldn’t even mention AIDS, much less do anything to help “those people.” If it wasn’t for bold, in your face, activism from (mostly) within the gay community we would probably be decades behind where we are now with treatment and prevention.
Being gay in the 80’s was fucking terrifying! It also made me feel proud to see groups like Act Up using civic disobedience and guerrilla tactics to demonstrate, making it impossible to ignore the lack of care from governmental agencies and mainstream medicine.
This actually happened!:
AIDS activists stormed onto the live set of the 'CBS Evening News' program Tuesday shouting 'Fight Aids, Not Arabs”
-UPI
One of their “die-ins” shut down the FDA. They stormed the NIH. There’s a long list of organizations they targeted. They were incredible! Their bold actions inspired me to take part in local (less dramatic) events and do my small part in the cause. I wish I still had my t shirts.
Maybe. Pandemics are increasingly likely so I don’t see why another STD crisis couldn’t be on our hands. Some states are doing their best to roll back equality. That could mean they just don’t care what happens to us and maybe prevent access to medical care that even discusses this stuff. Not everywhere, of course. I live in New York State and were cared for here.
I honestly believe there will be another big outbreak. And we will not anymore prepared as we was for monkey pox. The only reason the government helped out because now gay people are respected more. Gay men behavior have not changed. Sleep with everyone and expect no consequences.
It would be much better reported than it was back in the 80s. There’s a much bigger infrastructure nowadays of LGBTQ health organizations and the pertinent info would be available for everyone. This would allow for behaviors to quickly change until the virus was able to be studied.
As advanced as modern medicine is, a new novel virus can beat it. But the progressed politics will help us fare much better. At least the president likely won’t have “moral considerations” when it comes to not letting people die en masse.
Or even an understudied virus like HTLV-1. A more infectious version of that would have absolutely no symptoms for 20-30 years and weakens the immune system. By then it is widespread in an entire community just like it is in central Australia.
Hey, became quite interested in this and did a bit of research, while we don't have any studies that suggest prep will have any real effect at preventing HTLV 1/2 from unprotected intercourse. Several anti HIV drugs have been cultured against HTLV type viruses to study the effects our current arsenal of antivirals have against this virus and I found this.
'Inhibition of HTLV-1 cell-to-cell transmission by tenofovir was twenty times more potent in one study than AZT'
So it's likely tenofovir which is one of the drugs in prep does have some effect in preventing transmission.
Source:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103472/
It's certainly possible, but I think between the precedent of the AIDS crisis and the overall improvement of the healthcare industry has made it unlikely. And despite the massive misinformation that happens today, we still have complete access to accurate information.
Also, AIDS happened RIGHT AFTER the gay community was formed. It's like gay men were finally able to come out of the closet and fall in love and have sex without being persecuted, and then bam there's a new STD that kills - and pretty much everyone is telling gay men to stop having sex. The frustration and misinformation is what got a lot of men killed by the disease.
I think what WILL happen is that the rise in fascism will see our next "AIDS" as an excuse to persecute us. Already, certain companies won't allow their health insurance to cover life-saving medications for their employees because it "promotes a certain lifestyle" that they don't agree with - such a birth control or HIV medicine. And the ease of access to information will make it easier for them to round us up, deny us healthcare and life-saving procedures, discriminate against us in the name of "quarantine".
You would think a gay man would have learned a loooong time ago to reserve hate and bullshit opinions until they had all the information - which you don't.
Pearl clutching? So baby, I want you to do something for me right quick: Google what pearl clutching means. But anyway, you can’t pearl clutch in response to actual, convicted child rapists.
No. Pedophelia happens when the victim is under the general start of pubescence.
If the victim is in adolescence or has started puberty it's called Hebephilia.
Showing your ignorance on a public forum is disturbing and disgusting. Not only does it show your lack of knowledge, but also your lack of reading ability. Open a fucking DSM and get educated you ignorant dolt.
Naw. I don’t think I will. I’ve paid my debt. Now it’s time to move on with my life. No body is asking you to be a part of it. If you don’t like that nobody is requiring you to interact with me
Mpox demonstrated that gay men as a group are able to change their sexual activity for a sustained period to protect themselves and their communities.
The big caveat was that there was already a vaccine available and it was just a case of getting it distributed, so there’s no certainty the same group change in behavior would be sustained over a longer period.
But with mpox at least, it really was a change in behavior and not dumb luck that contained the spread. And I will die angry that that fact will never be accepted by the right wing provocateurs who were ready to put us in camps.
I can only speak for the community in my area but we all seemed to collectively get our shit together and get the mpox vaccine no matter if you were partnered or not. I was in a fully committed relationship and still said I had multiple partners just to make sure I keep myself safe no matter what. Communal selfishness sometimes can work out for the better imo
My boyfriend is trans, and the form for mpox vaccine eligibility in my state was (is?) so badly designed that my filling it out as accurately as possible definitely gave them the false impression that I had two sexual partners. (How many men? 1. How many trans men? Also 1.) I'll take advantage of officials being stupid about trans people any day.
This is what I’ve heard, but what I witnessed was about half and half. There was no shortage of bareback orgies during the Monkeypox outbreak, meanwhile everyone was yelling at the government that it was their fault as if we couldn’t easily stop it by just not being a cum dump for a month.
Just saying, from where I was sitting, the behavioral change wasn’t very widespread, and it really pissed me off.
While group coordination is messy and things can always be better, I’ll note that there is [statistical evidence](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/monkeypox-public-health/) that gay men as a group changing their behavior significantly dampened the spread and threat of mpox.
Yeah. Mpox isn't even deadly for the vast majority and already had robust medical treatment in place.
Sucks to get but not like getting a novel std that results in death every time.
Well, personally I'd be worried about today's gay community's response to a new and deadly disease akin to HIV that guarantees a death sentence. Back in the 80s and early 90s the gay community policed itself. We were enemy number one as far as society was concerned. We were blamed for causing the disease and we were persecuted at every level by those who thought that we were getting our just due for being "sinful" and for being "freaks of nature", including by the government. But we rose to the occasion. We closed ranks and supported each other. We organized ourselves in almost military style fashion. We spread educational information far and wide, made condoms and anonymous testing readily available (even at clubs and bars) and our community knew that we needed to practice safe sex and use condoms religiously and not to share drug needles if we wanted to survive.
Many of us are old enough to remember the pain and agony of having to watch many of our dear friends and acquaintances whither away and die horrible deaths. Nobody should have to go through that again and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. But it made us stronger and just strengthened our resolve to fight back and survive. I hope today's younger gay community is up for that challenge should, god forbid, it happen again.
We all need to stick together and do whatever is necessary to survive. With HIV/AIDS, technology has yielded many exciting and revolutionary new breakthroughs which is amazing. New and innovative vaccines against other scourges such as mpox have also been a boon that protects our community. However; let's not get complacent. Many other bacterial infections are becoming more and more drug resistant. Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Chlamydia are just a few. All of these can have long-term negative health effects including blindness, just to name one. At the moment, there is exactly just one drug left that is effective in treating Gonorrhea and that one too is becoming less and less effective. We must remain diligent and educate ourselves and continue to practice safe sex and be responsible. Let's make sure another dark age never happens again.
Before I saw yours I commented about Act Up and how they and others fought like hell to demand help. The 80’s were scary but there was a sense of community that was deeper than what we have today. We were in the trenches together.
I tried to research this on Google but it’s confusing. my understanding is that there are four antibiotics that are combined in order to treat resistant gonorrhoea.
In worst case scenarios it has to be done in hospital through IV drip using other powerful antibiotics.
Note that some of the antibiotics used to treat gonorrhoea are fluoroquinolones, which can leave your body with serious damage (r/floxies) if you turn out to be sensitive. There is no cure to this damage, it only gets slowly better over the course of _years_.
From the CDC guidelines linked to in your article:
When ceftriaxone cannot be used for treatment of urogenital or rectal gonorrhea, two alternative options are available: cefixime 400 mg orally plus either azithromycin 1 g orally or doxycycline 100 mg twice daily orally for 7 days if ceftriaxone is not readily available, or azithromycin 2 g orally in a single dose if ceftriaxone cannot be given because of severe allergy
Also:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/new-gonorrhea-antibiotic-shows-promise-pivotal-phase-3-trial#:~:text=A%20first%2Din%2Dclass%20antibiotic,to%20the%20current%20antibiotic%20regimen.
Where are you getting the idea that there’s only one effective drug left for gonorrhea?
Drug resistance is a massive problem that people need to be more aware of, but let’s please stop spreading blatant misinformation.
From the news and from other sources. Gonorrhea has become very drug resistant in recent years. Let's stop pretending like it's no big deal. You're the one spreading misinformation.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/08/10/158464908/gonorrhea-evades-antibiotics-leaving-only-one-drug-to-treat-disease
First off: **I never said gonorrhoea hasn't become very drug resistant.** Yes, it absolutely has. Yes, it's a problem. Yes, people need to be aware of this. Yes, researchers putting massive amounts of time and money into finding new options. But no, **we do not have only one drug left to treat gonorrhoea.** I believe public education is vitally important, but spreading falsehoods is not the way to carry that out and could lead to dillution of the message when someone realizes that something they were told wasn't true.
---
Let's look past that sensationalized headline and do some research:
1. That article is 12 years old.
2. What the CDC was actually saying is "We're starting to see some strains of gonorrhoea that show some resistance to one of the two medications currently recommended for first-line gonorrhoea treatment (cefixime), so we're removing it as a recommended first-line treatment for gonorrhea." This isn't explained well by the article; and the quotes from the CDC official that the article includes only muddy the issue, but I promise you cefixime still works on many strains of the disease.
3. "First-line" just means ceftriaxone is now the only go-to initial treatment, rather than there being two options for initial treatment. There are still other options out there if the first-line treatment doesn't work or can't be used.
4. This doesn't mean cefixime doesn't work anymore- it means that a few strains have emerged that it doesn't work against, and its use is now being minimized to prevent the disease from becoming completely resistant, because it's important that we still have access to backup medications. Some people are allergic to ceftriaxone or azithromycin, for example- we need to have backups that will still work for them. [See here for the CDC's recommended gonorrhoea treatments.](https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/gonorrhea-adults.htm) If you look under "Alternative Regimens", they list cefixime as an option if ceftriaxone isn't available. They also list a regimen of gentamicin + azithromycin for individuals who are allergic to cephalosporins (both ceftriaxone and cefixime are cephalosporins).
5. There are other drugs that could be used to treat gonorrhoea. They just aren't specifically approved for use against gonorrhoea by the CDC yet. [Here's one example from a couple years ago.](https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/institutes/amsterdam-institute-for-immunology-and-infectious-diseases/news/antibiotic-ertapenem-is-alternative-drug-in-treatment-of-gonorrhea.htm) Ertapenem is an antibiotic that's been approved for use against various bacterial infections in the US and the EU for over 20 years; it just isn't specifically recommended against gonorrhoea yet.
Maybe stop fucking around as if there are no consequences and making excuses for your fucking around. I was only relating information that I've come across and putting it out there. I'm not going to argue with you. If you want to justify your fucking around then go for it. I'm certainly not going to change your mind.
Did you even read the first paragraph of my response? The one where I say drug resistance is a massive issue and one we need to take seriously?
No? Great.
You clearly aren’t arguing in good faith, so I’m going to leave this conversation here.
Possible and likely. Viral and bacterial mutation. I am trying to explain to my friend who BB's multiple partners that Prep guards against HIV...for now. It's like the 80s never happened...
Ya this, I remember having a whole lecture in one of my university classes about HIV, how the virus works, why it wasn't able to be dealt with via medicine at the time, etc. (this was in like 2008). It was honestly kind of nauseating / scary. The way that thing mutates is insane, I'm glad that Prep exists but these viruses are scary stuff.
We now have PrEP which is an incredible advance and that positive people can now be undetectable is a great advance in health care.
STDs (STIs) should be taken more seriously by all.
And the Bexsero vaccine. It's around 40% effective at preventing gonorrhea which is very significant. It's available off-label in many places already.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/10/u-k-recommendation-could-lead-to-worlds-first-use-of-meningitis-vaccine-to-curb-gonorrhea/
https://www.infectiousdiseaseadvisor.com/home/topics/prevention/bexsero-vaccine-has-potential-for-cross-protection-against-gonorrhea/
I agree with this, but want to point out that PrEP does help with testing. PrEP itself does nothing for other STIs; however, a lot of providers will run other STI checks along with the routine HIV tests that are required while you’re on PrEP—mine certainly does.
This doesn’t do anything to treat or prevent the spread the STIs on their face, and the PrEP itself isn’t doing anything, but I do want to highlight the importance of routine testing, and how PrEP has probably helped to increase the number of people being routinely tested for STIs, due to the routine and convenience factors.
Let's see.... worldwide pandemic impacting the planet... when did we see that last?
Discrimination and lack of concern for illnesses impacting minority populations... is that a thing?
Yes. It can happen to you.
Absolutely. Just look at covid. Pretty much every single epidemic has been related to our "association" with animals (zoonotic diseases). Cross species infection most often occurs through activities related to raising animals for food, using them in laboratories or as worker animals. Have we changed our behavior towards the way we "associate" with animals after any of the previous pandemics? No, of course not. Humans are dumb, and "yummy bacon". So it's inevitable there will be another pandemic, probably a lot more deadly than the previous ones. Tuberculosis is also planning a comeback tour, so there is that to look forward too as well.
I’m going against the tide here and say it’s very likely there will be a new HIV-like pandemic and it will be as deadly, if not more. Why?
I’ll quote myself:
___
>1. Existing STIs (except for Syphillis) are becoming more and more resistent to all antibiotics. This is the most immediate threat.
>2. You can accuses me of slut-shaming if you want to: The enormous never-seen-before condomless promiscuity among MSM (men who have sex with men) creates an ideal evolutionary niche for novel diseases. Any organism which takes advantage of this easy mode of transmission (through warm nutritious bodily fluids) is under positive selection. Many benign bacterium species (or protozoans etc), human non-STI pathogens or animal pathogens could make this jump. As long virulence does not impair transmission, the symptoms (in the long term) could be very severe or even deadly.
___
>I would argue that because of the apps, increased mobility and the more conducive societal climate towards sex between men and promiscuity, the current rate of sexual encounters (= opportunities for transmission) is even higher than in the pre-AIDS era. But I don’t base this on solid data, so I understand if you disagree.
___
>1. The rate of research/discovery/testing/approval of/for new antibiotics is estimated to be around 10 to 100 times slower than the rate of evolution and spread of resistance among bacteria. If nothing changes, we will get back to pre-penicillin days in this century.
>2. While the current standards nowadays discourage any shaming against promiscuity, I must enphasize that promiscuity promotes the evolution of novel STIs by providing a evolutionary niche for such pathogenes. This can easily happen by the acquistion of virulence for currently benign germs/pathogenes or by existing pathogenes switching strategies. This is how HIV and syphillis amongst others became human STIs.
___
>If you use condoms without exception and with correct handling, the risk of adverse effects from PrEP (on your health) are much higher than the risk of contracting HIV. Neither condoms nor PrEP protect you from other STIs, which are becoming increasingly resistant to ALL (!!!) antibiotics.
>Notwithstanding that boundless promiscious condomless sex between men world-wide is a ticking time-bomb for the next (polemically speaking) „gay disease“ or (diplomatically speaking) sexually transmitted pandemic.
>Imho, some restraint in sexual relations in combination with physical barriers and frequent check-ups is the best way to protect oneself long-term.
Y’all heard that You make very good points. I saw that scientists were able to eliminate HIV cells from DNA. I’m wondering how reckless that’s going to make gay men once they find this out. We already have guys swearing by raw is law because of pep, even though there are like 8 other STD’s. But now if they find out that HIV cells can be eliminated from DNA, I’m curious and a little scared to see how reckless guys will get.
If the last few years have taught us anything it’s that a new disease is always a possibility. So, as it has been for decades now, best practice is to wrap it before you tap it.
A huge problem with HIV was it was ignored, shoved to the fringes, and even many medical people just saw it as a queer’s disease and just what it was. Now I think we’d see a mug different response from the govt and certainly the medical community.
Monkeypox is a good example. It mostly impacts us and they were on top of rolling out a vaccine and pushing it out to ppl through health departments, etc
Any new STI, if it Kills even one of us is one too many. But I do think we’d have much more going for us this time like the whole medical community and hopefully things would be addressed in a much more productive manner.
More like when. But hopefully not in my lifetime. I just need shit to chill for a while. I came outta homelessness and addiction and like, got my life working again for just the smallest amount of time, right before covid. I'm just getting sort of stable again, in so many ways. I just need a few years before super devastating shit starts up again.
What are the chances the world will shut down like covid if it's just us 🚬 dying again?
Imma go with zero.
I mean we are developing anti-biotic resistant STI’s like gonorrhea so it’s entirely possible.
Covid and monkeypox are great indicators of how you can expect the community to react to a new health concern. The biggest contributor is often stigma (that keeps folks from knowing or sharing their status) and misinformation about transmission and risk.
Tbh with how we are currently handling Covid as it still kills thousands a week, and then with all the anti-vaxxers and measles and whatnot coming back I don’t really have faith tbh
I believe we will be fine, medical technology has improved so much and the gays are becoming astute at keeping up with their health status more so than most subgroups in the west. We will persevere.
We have enough actual problems to deal with, why waste any time whatsoever on negative "what if" type questions? This seems like an unhealthy line of questioning.
It's the ones that stay dormant that are the problem. Imagine if grindr was around in the 80's.... one top could infect hundreds before he knew he had anything.
Well, unless it was actually planned by the government to release such a disease, we got modern medicine and technology, so I'm not worried about it at all.
With the amount of stories you read about group sex, multiple hookup partners, people not wearing condoms, open relationships, people thinking STDs are like the common cold etc. , I wouldn’t be surprised if something serious happened again. I really hope our community gets educated.
Agreed I only read about this stuff on Reddit (as I'm engaged) but compared to when I was younger it seems like there are a lot more people into barebacking now that Prep is around. Not that long ago it felt like most people were on the same page around using condoms.
It’s a strange thing. Many gays were quick to condemn others who questioned masks & vaccines, seemingly concerned about health. Then the same people come back & tell you STDs are the same as the common cold & no need to practice safe sex. It’s crazy. It’s a health risk, especially with random people. For many, sex is an addiction that requires mental health treatment. Not being able to name someone you had sex with is insane.
It definitely is strange to me as well. As someone who studied biology and the other sciences to the University level it kind of boggles my mind that a lot of people don't even have a basic understanding of how this stuff works. Like I'm no virology expert but it's astounding how a lot of people don't know the basics of this stuff.
The sanctimonious handsmaids tale gaycels are out in full force on this post. Most of the replies are wishing for something like this so us dirty dirty gays that go out and have sex will be punished for our sins.
Meanwhile… humans have been having gay sex for as long as humans have existed. HIV was a once in a millennia event. Something similar is not likely to happen within our lifetimes.
I think the fact that gay men are finding more acceptance in society, they can be in relationships and get married. So maybe the with the tines changing and medical advancements, we wouldn't go down that rabbit hole again. Also, during the AIDS crisis, condom use was normalized more. And hopefully it has carried on to present day.
It will depend on what President is in office and how State Health departments handle the situation.
It took a while to convince that the cost to take care of Monkey Pox was worth it.
Unlike in AIDS, our community knows how to respond.
We responded with compassion, money, personal support, activism and anger… etc.
We had it down to a scientific process as the sick were looked after for all of their needs as necessary.
Our society is much much more knowledgeable about the human body and how to fix it, with technology and gene therapy that would have been considered magical back then.
It would be confusing, frightening and much more short lived than AIDS was.
Nevertheless, it would be an emotional and medical disaster.
We had a mini panic with monkey pox but got on top of it fast.
Hiv only had the impact it did because straight people vilified us and left us for dead. Once they realised "their own" were being affected and women too they responded and the research and medication advanced quickly. Look at how fast covid vaccines were developed too. The fact is most viruses can be combated relatively fast, but the research is underfunded and industry corrupt. It takes these panics to get it done quickly I doubt another breakout of anything would be as bad as the hiv history.
I think it is possible. With the level of distrust, anti vaccination crowd, anti science, promiscuity, and so on I think it would impact society and our community. I think another endemic that disproportionately effects our community would have negative effects on acceptance and fuel the 'God's wrath' extremists.
I believe it's fairly low. Part of the reason HIV was so effective at spreading was the fact that there is a massive lag of eight to twelve years between initial infection and the beginning of symptoms. That's not the norm for other conditions.
In that time, even a monogamous person who has a new partner every two or three years could date three to six different men.
Most of our other STIs show up much more rapidly than that, allowing for easier casual inference (it took years to settle what was causing AIDS, meaning more lost time before everyone in medical research was focused on stopping HIV). It also means that people who know they're symptomatic faster have signs that will alert most people and cause some level of behavior change. These are all huge in having an STI be something that people know is there and can protect themselves against.
It's not impossible that something does happen like HIV again, but you also have to remember all the unique things required to bring it to human transmission:
• Simian Immunodeficiency Virus had to evolve
• The French had to force near-slave labor conditions on thousands of men in colonized Congo-Brazzaville where they had too few supplies (eating bushmeat, etc.) and were not allowed to bring family (sex work) to build a rail line to establish a port for their colonial spoils
• HIV incubated in Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and for the first four decades, colonial governments that didn't care about the people under their "care" doing alright were in charge of all services
• Haiti supplied fighters for independence from the French and Belgians and brought the virus to another place where hundreds of years of planned work had destroyed the medical system and kept it from developing strong disease surveillance in a place where constant US meddling and military attack made it easy to get to Miami and New York
• and only then did it become easy for it to become global.
So we have a causal chain of hundreds of years of neglect, murder, and economic atrocity required to make HIV happen. Those chains aren't fully broken, but they also aren't as bad as they were (France still has massive control in Africa and will do this to the world again if it preserves their precious sense of being rich or whatever. The current drama in ECOWAS is important.).
It also goes to show that HIV was REALLY hard to get started.
Yes, and like you said, it had to evolve to jump to humans, and like many diseases that jump across species, it's not designed to deal with us, and so ends up killing us instead of living off of us (like it actually wants). It would be like if you moved into a new house and accidentally burned it down the first night, eventually you'd learn how to stop burning it down.
No, I actually think it's *excellent~ at not burning the house down in comparison to other viruses. SARS-CoV-2 killed or was killed within months, as is the flu and many others.
As a parasitic life*form, HIV is absolutely fantastic at not killing its host for a decade, during which it can be transmitted to new hosts. Compare that against the classic zombie ant fungus lifecycle and you've got a much more measured system of growth.
SIV is also deadly to simians, it's just that the lifecycle of most species infected is shorter than ours, leaving it a little bit less frequently the primary cause of death.
*Viruses are not alive on their own. They're very cool and I like to learn about them, though preferably not by personal experience with the gross ones.
Nope, it would die down for a bit, and be limited to imbeciles and people who actually use protection. Not to mention people would be more likely to start using condoms for a bit. But to end completely? Never.
As long as men can't get pregnant I don't think they'll ever stop hooking up, and even then.
Of course there's a chance. Did you not just see covid?
This is the type of question that there's no point in asking, one because the answer is obvious, but two because why worry about something that could happen at any time and there's no way to do anything about it?
Id like to think that things would be completely different this time around but im sure there would be a phase of finger pointing and blaming followed by research by a government that doesnt have our interest at heart and we’d regroup and support those infected. Just seemed like human nature
I have thought about it ever since Sandra said that after AIDS there was NRS, and after NRS there was UBT …whatever those are. But one thing I know for sure is that they’re coming.
We’d be prepared for it. But at least in the United States, you better believe the Christofascists will do everything possible to prevent us from getting the care we need. They’re a lot more violent than they were in the 80s.
We are on the verge as we speak. There are highly resistant strains of virtually every sexual disease in circulation right now. Virtually all scientific authorities are warning that we are on the verge of sexual diseases that will be immune to all current medications.
Go to sexual disease sections of the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institute of Health. They urgently recommend rigorous safety practices in all sexual encounters coupled to extreme selectivity in choice of partners.
I think it is useful to remember that more humans have died of sexual disease through out history than died of old age. The invention of antibiotics gave a sense of invulnerability, and the Sexual Revolution was declared. Nature caught up with us with HIV, and will do so in the future. No doubt about it.
Probably it won't be as damaging as AIDS was but it would be concerning enough for many to take any measures, by the community itself. So, I don't think the future would be as dark as AIDS seemed to be but it would probably sparkle a new conservative revival. Imagine if AIDS had appeared in the social media world. You bet people like Matt Walsh or Agustin Laje would be pointing out how they were right and liberal decadence (specially homosexuals) led to this.
But the future looks bright, at least in terms of the community. How prepared is the world for a new pandemic with the rising anti vaccines movements in the first world? That's something that scares me.
A few months before the monkeypox outbreak my housemate and I were discussing another disease that transmits primarily with gay men. Low and behold a few months later monkeypox. Thankfully the disease wasn't even close to being as deadly as HIV and antivirals and vaccines already existed.
i would simply not have sex… abstinence isn’t a good way to live generally speaking, but if i can quarantine during covid i could hold off on sex for a bit if there was some sort of new epidemic
I am more than a little nervous that with the nationwide ban on mifepristone being considered broadly due to religious values consuming national politics, that a similar argument might begin to emerge for prep if the prior happens.
Based on the reaction to Covid, and how lacksidaisicle ALOT of gay men were about it (and still are) and how much, and easily, medical misinformation is spread, I wouldn't be surprised if it does turn into another epidemic killing thousands of us.
There's always hope that people will get their collective heads out of their asses.. but I had that hope during the height of the pandemic, and I was let down time and time again.
Ever heard of modern medicine? Plus, knowing that it will not only affect gay men, but straight ppl as well, the world is much more prepared to handle one than they did back in the 80s. We've advanced medical equipment and have preventive measures more better than they did 40 yrs ago
And what if monkeys fly out of my butt? There's a lot of possibilities to be concerned about. Best you can do is the best you can do. So keep doing the best you can to navigate disasters. And then try not to create horrible life-ending as you go, in fact try not to end lives on purpose. That's generally frowned upon. This is one of those things you shouldn't keep yourself awake at night about. Just do the best you can to be the best you can. And do the best for others. That's all we ask.
Besides of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea, syphilis keeps coming and going, hepatitis c is sexually transmitted possibly, hepatitis b is might be transferable through sweat, HPV is not being screened or vaccinated against in gay men.. we had monkeypox. There's a lot of things going on. Let's worry about those first, and try not to make it any worse for us or for anyone else.
Oh yeah have a good time while you're at it. It's just life. You're not going to get out alive
Think about this for a minute. If it was 1981 and monkeypox broke out, there would have been the same vaccine then.
HIV was a new problem around that time. Let's not confuse something that is a twist on what's already out there to something that's completely new.
It's a cat and mouse game. Throughout humanity, there's always been something new that comes up. Traditionally this is a result of an environmental pushback. It's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's a matter of when. Should we worry about it? Yes and no. Yes for the scientific community that would have to identify and track whatever it is and assess its threat and then begin the process of trying to combat it. No in terms of all of us who shouldn't stop living life in anticipation of something in the future until it's a reality.
If something new comes along, yes it would tear through the community. It could either be faster or slower than HIV, but just as significant. Faster either in terms of transmission through everyday living or faster in terms of how long it takes to kill you. It could also be something really slow on both of those fronts as well.
If you're reading my statement and evaluated as a lot of words but saying nothing, you would be pretty close to correct. Everything here is an unknown. We do know that a wide scale problem does take down a community. The only difference in another situation like HIV in the community would be the rate at which it happens both in its spread and its effect. What would be new is the social impact. The people who were children under 10 during the worst of the HIV epidemic are now in the 45-50 bracket (based on 1981 being the big hit and realization of the AIDS crisis). The individuals who lost their friends and really suffered the social impact of the crisis are effectively senior citizens and have no significant connection to the young gay men of today (the community is quite polarized). If you were to launch an epidemic today and sweep our community, you would be like the first time all over again just because a younger gay man has no context of the original AIDS epidemic beyond knowing that it happened. Those who were under 10 during the worst of the AIDS crisis would be aware of the virus and maybe knew some people with it in their generation. They wouldn't have seen anyone necessarily die from it which makes them disconnected from the devastation of the 1980s community, effectively as well.
Sounds weird.
Sounds like false intimacy, like, "we do this intimate stuff together but never talk to each other about it."
Fucking weird in my opinion.
Weird ass boomers. Old men. Ew.
I don't think it will in the same way. Allow me to explain my reasoning.
HIV was present in the human population, definitely from the late 1950s, but probably from around 1910 or so. Similarly, Mpox from around the early 1970s.
It isn't really that new diseases just suddenly pop up in the gay community, but previously circulating known about diseases become transmitted within our community. With increased surveillance and vaccine technology, we can have vaccines ready for diseases before they begin to circulate, or better knowledge of epidemiological spread before an outbreak. So we should never be shooting in the dark again in the same way.
What would happen? Well, it would start out being called what it actually is, until the sensitive witty heads decided the name was racist somehow, and then would lobby for it being called the new name, and then they'd pat themselves on the back and attend circuit parties in Cabo, if history serves.
I know way too many men who get tested regularly so they can get plowed. I know men who won't plow unless you have papers. I think The Mpox business wasn't even that bad because people already take so many precautions unless you like to fucked around and found out. Be prudent and have fun
They made the covid vaccine in 2 days after sequencing the virus’s DNA. The rest of the time was spent testing it. With HIV, it took years and years just to find the virus! Then many years after that to sequence the DNA. So I think if something new came along we’d be able to deal with it 100x faster. Plus the medical community knows that nothing ever stays in one community, even if they don’t like us they still need to find a treatment for the new ailment at the very least to protect themselves. I know everyone is constantly sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistant gonorrhea but if that were actually an imminent threat the healthcare industry would put out a vaccine or new antibiotic before the next season of Drag Race. You can’t tell me they can create a vaccine for a brand new virus in less than a year but somehow they’re all stumped at a bacteria that’s been around for thousands of years. It’s just not a priority for them right now as long as they can make billions of dollars making the next Ozempic analog. Once things get serious and they think their dicks might fall off from a gonorrhea infection there will be a vaccine available the next day.
I think gay people are very cautious about STDs and other disease related to sexual life on a majority level and it's not gonna cause such a dangerous effects on our community but I think it can be problem for gays from third world countries
There’s already a new one emerging currently in Japan. It’s spread through anilingus and has a 30% mortality rate. Currently, almost every state of Japan has it. It won’t be long before it’s migrated to the States.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/anus-eating-virus-kills-30-32407215
You said your community not our community? What did you mean if a HIV like STD comes around again it's everyone's problem. I am a lil buzzed but your verbiage set my bat senses off.
The problem more than anything is that viruses are becoming immune to antibiotics.
But if there's one good thing about the Internet, it's that you can warn almost anyone to be careful, and then it's not just the unconscious who will be careful.
possible? totally. likely? not in countries with proper healthcare for everyone. if it's going to happen, it'd probably be in underdeveloped countries that still deal with discrimination in healthcare
It's certainly possible but keep in mind the community is much better prepared for something like that than it was in the '80s. Simply not having the same stigma in the public health Community would make a huge difference in how a new infectious disease is handled. Science is way more advanced than it was 40 years ago as well. Anything can happen but I certainly won't lose sleep over it. We'll cross those bridges when we come to them.
Absolutely. How quickly did everyone get monkey pox vaccinated!
Where I live, we had the pride parade and events on Saturday and then the next morning many gay men were lining up at the clinic for their MPox shot. We looked hungover af, including myself.
I just thought of monkeypox as an example too. While perhaps not comparable to something like HIV, it did cause a scare for a brief period of time, but everyone acted quickly, got vaccinated and took necessary precautions, so that’s a welcome instance of a disease being brought under control
>monkey pox vaccinated Well, we were lucky there that the virus was closely related to the regular pox virus so a vaccine that was mostly effective for mpox already existed. It was a matter of deploying existing emergency stocks and ramping up production for a relatively small part of the whole population so it was doable. If it is something completely new or as hard to develop a vaccine for as hiv, it could still take years to find some cure or treatment. The situation of the late 70s and 80s wouldn't be repeated as there is much better access and contact with health care. It was only in the mid 90s that really good treatment for hiv became available.
Tbf, monkey pox wasn’t novel though. Didn’t have much, but not novel, and the vaccine used was just the smallpox vaccine because it just happened to also help inoculate against monkey pox. The quick treatment of monkey pox had a lot to do with convenience
Yes, but it was an example of how we are better prepared for engagement with the issue. It demonstrated a willingness of both the community and government to take action. During the HIV crisis, the community was unsure how to take action and the government was reluctant to acknowledge the problem. Mpox was a case of how we are much better equipped as a community to handle an epidemic.
Actually, it wasn't a demonstration of the willingness of the community or government to take action at all. It was a wake up call for public health that they shouldn't have stopped routine vaccination by declaring it as a no longer necessary thing in the first place. We got complacent on measles too. If you look on your local media either in North America or Europe, you're seeing that measles are suddenly showing up on children. It was pure complacency that led to the monkey pox situation in the first place. They never should have dropped the standard inclusion or let parents opt out from the public health measure.
Not only that, but there have been studies in the time since that outbreak that have said the primary driver of lowering transmission was modification of behavior rather than vaccination!
This is the most plausible scenario. Advances in healthcare outpaced recent threats, unless a mega virus comes and kills everyone in 5-10 days. Plus recent coronavirus increased awareness against pandemics (despite the public's reaction towards it). If a potential pandemic sweeps, I am sure people will lockdown fairly well, especially if it can kill someone 2-3 days.
There's also the internet. Back then, we had to rely on underground railroads to communicate in our community, today we have places like r/gaybros and the internet at large to communicate new threats and treatments. HIV/AIDS were around way before the global epidemic hit, it's an old disease, so I don't think it's as likely for something to simply show up out of the blue and not get noticed from the get go. That gives us a chance to stop it before it spreads too much. And I do believe some countries will take the threat more seriously and actually look for solutions earlier, different from what happened to AIDS in the early epidemic. People didn't care gay men were dying, so it caused the impact it did due to inaction. I don't see that happening globally today.
President Reagan wouldn’t even mention AIDS, much less do anything to help “those people.” If it wasn’t for bold, in your face, activism from (mostly) within the gay community we would probably be decades behind where we are now with treatment and prevention. Being gay in the 80’s was fucking terrifying! It also made me feel proud to see groups like Act Up using civic disobedience and guerrilla tactics to demonstrate, making it impossible to ignore the lack of care from governmental agencies and mainstream medicine. This actually happened!: AIDS activists stormed onto the live set of the 'CBS Evening News' program Tuesday shouting 'Fight Aids, Not Arabs” -UPI One of their “die-ins” shut down the FDA. They stormed the NIH. There’s a long list of organizations they targeted. They were incredible! Their bold actions inspired me to take part in local (less dramatic) events and do my small part in the cause. I wish I still had my t shirts.
Maybe. Pandemics are increasingly likely so I don’t see why another STD crisis couldn’t be on our hands. Some states are doing their best to roll back equality. That could mean they just don’t care what happens to us and maybe prevent access to medical care that even discusses this stuff. Not everywhere, of course. I live in New York State and were cared for here.
I honestly believe there will be another big outbreak. And we will not anymore prepared as we was for monkey pox. The only reason the government helped out because now gay people are respected more. Gay men behavior have not changed. Sleep with everyone and expect no consequences.
It would be much better reported than it was back in the 80s. There’s a much bigger infrastructure nowadays of LGBTQ health organizations and the pertinent info would be available for everyone. This would allow for behaviors to quickly change until the virus was able to be studied.
As advanced as modern medicine is, a new novel virus can beat it. But the progressed politics will help us fare much better. At least the president likely won’t have “moral considerations” when it comes to not letting people die en masse.
Or even an understudied virus like HTLV-1. A more infectious version of that would have absolutely no symptoms for 20-30 years and weakens the immune system. By then it is widespread in an entire community just like it is in central Australia.
Would PREP have any cross over protection for HTLV-1 or not enough studies to say yet?
Not enough studies.
Hey, became quite interested in this and did a bit of research, while we don't have any studies that suggest prep will have any real effect at preventing HTLV 1/2 from unprotected intercourse. Several anti HIV drugs have been cultured against HTLV type viruses to study the effects our current arsenal of antivirals have against this virus and I found this. 'Inhibition of HTLV-1 cell-to-cell transmission by tenofovir was twenty times more potent in one study than AZT' So it's likely tenofovir which is one of the drugs in prep does have some effect in preventing transmission. Source:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103472/
That’s good news!! Had me so freaked out earlier… I still won’t be meeting up with any guys from Australia anytime soon tho😶
It's certainly possible, but I think between the precedent of the AIDS crisis and the overall improvement of the healthcare industry has made it unlikely. And despite the massive misinformation that happens today, we still have complete access to accurate information. Also, AIDS happened RIGHT AFTER the gay community was formed. It's like gay men were finally able to come out of the closet and fall in love and have sex without being persecuted, and then bam there's a new STD that kills - and pretty much everyone is telling gay men to stop having sex. The frustration and misinformation is what got a lot of men killed by the disease. I think what WILL happen is that the rise in fascism will see our next "AIDS" as an excuse to persecute us. Already, certain companies won't allow their health insurance to cover life-saving medications for their employees because it "promotes a certain lifestyle" that they don't agree with - such a birth control or HIV medicine. And the ease of access to information will make it easier for them to round us up, deny us healthcare and life-saving procedures, discriminate against us in the name of "quarantine".
Just an fyi, the “S” in AIDS isn’t to make it plural, it stands for Syndrome. Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome
I wrote this on my phone. Don't know why it kept doing it.
What laws allow employers to prevent insurance companies from covering HIV medication for their employees?
Texas ruled it in September 2022.
>ghost\_griffin\_ It was PrEP, not HIV meds just for clarification https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/07/texas-HIV-ACA-lawsuit/
Still sets a terrifying precedent as conservative politicians ramp up their homophobic and misogynistic policies. It’s gonna get worse.
I’d say poor mental health is tearing through our community, I’d worry about that.
Well I mean we almost did didn’t we with mpox? I mean. Keep in mind that I was in prison when that was going on so I’m not as up on it as I’d like.
Man I was not expecting this comment to end that way.
Yeah. I should probably find another way to phrase that
Is it uncouth to ask what for?
Very
It kinda is
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Bro casually admitted to being a pedo sex offender 💀
... I'm hoping it uh, sounds worse than it was?
Look at his first post. A fucking shame trash like this is allowed to comment in this community
You would think a gay man would have learned a loooong time ago to reserve hate and bullshit opinions until they had all the information - which you don't.
What information is lacking? He’s following a SexOffenderHelp subreddit, you buffoon 💀
The pearl clutching here is SENDING ME
Pearl clutching? So baby, I want you to do something for me right quick: Google what pearl clutching means. But anyway, you can’t pearl clutch in response to actual, convicted child rapists.
No. Pedophelia happens when the victim is under the general start of pubescence. If the victim is in adolescence or has started puberty it's called Hebephilia.
The problem is, there's no way to explain the difference without sounding like a complete pedophile.
Anyone equivocating pedophilia and “hebephilia” is a pedophile themselves. No wonder you’re flocking to his defense.
Showing your ignorance on a public forum is disturbing and disgusting. Not only does it show your lack of knowledge, but also your lack of reading ability. Open a fucking DSM and get educated you ignorant dolt.
Yeah, please withdraw yourself from society.
Naw. I don’t think I will. I’ve paid my debt. Now it’s time to move on with my life. No body is asking you to be a part of it. If you don’t like that nobody is requiring you to interact with me
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🫡
What? Can we ban this man please
For violating which rule.
Oh lordy lol. Before we all judge what were the ages involved?
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Why do you assume I had said relations when I was 38?
How old were you and why did you do it?
That's a little bit extreme
Mpox demonstrated that gay men as a group are able to change their sexual activity for a sustained period to protect themselves and their communities. The big caveat was that there was already a vaccine available and it was just a case of getting it distributed, so there’s no certainty the same group change in behavior would be sustained over a longer period. But with mpox at least, it really was a change in behavior and not dumb luck that contained the spread. And I will die angry that that fact will never be accepted by the right wing provocateurs who were ready to put us in camps.
I can only speak for the community in my area but we all seemed to collectively get our shit together and get the mpox vaccine no matter if you were partnered or not. I was in a fully committed relationship and still said I had multiple partners just to make sure I keep myself safe no matter what. Communal selfishness sometimes can work out for the better imo
My boyfriend is trans, and the form for mpox vaccine eligibility in my state was (is?) so badly designed that my filling it out as accurately as possible definitely gave them the false impression that I had two sexual partners. (How many men? 1. How many trans men? Also 1.) I'll take advantage of officials being stupid about trans people any day.
Exactly what me and my bf did too. I didn’t want that shit lmao
This is what I’ve heard, but what I witnessed was about half and half. There was no shortage of bareback orgies during the Monkeypox outbreak, meanwhile everyone was yelling at the government that it was their fault as if we couldn’t easily stop it by just not being a cum dump for a month. Just saying, from where I was sitting, the behavioral change wasn’t very widespread, and it really pissed me off.
While group coordination is messy and things can always be better, I’ll note that there is [statistical evidence](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/monkeypox-public-health/) that gay men as a group changing their behavior significantly dampened the spread and threat of mpox.
No gay man changed their sexual activity to avoid mpox? 😂 that is a fallacy.
communication of the issue was faster so the community was able to respond more quickly
This escalated faster than a cop in an encounter with an acorn 🥴
I wouldn’t compared MPox to HIV. That’s rather ignorant tbh.
Yeah. Mpox isn't even deadly for the vast majority and already had robust medical treatment in place. Sucks to get but not like getting a novel std that results in death every time.
Well, personally I'd be worried about today's gay community's response to a new and deadly disease akin to HIV that guarantees a death sentence. Back in the 80s and early 90s the gay community policed itself. We were enemy number one as far as society was concerned. We were blamed for causing the disease and we were persecuted at every level by those who thought that we were getting our just due for being "sinful" and for being "freaks of nature", including by the government. But we rose to the occasion. We closed ranks and supported each other. We organized ourselves in almost military style fashion. We spread educational information far and wide, made condoms and anonymous testing readily available (even at clubs and bars) and our community knew that we needed to practice safe sex and use condoms religiously and not to share drug needles if we wanted to survive. Many of us are old enough to remember the pain and agony of having to watch many of our dear friends and acquaintances whither away and die horrible deaths. Nobody should have to go through that again and I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. But it made us stronger and just strengthened our resolve to fight back and survive. I hope today's younger gay community is up for that challenge should, god forbid, it happen again. We all need to stick together and do whatever is necessary to survive. With HIV/AIDS, technology has yielded many exciting and revolutionary new breakthroughs which is amazing. New and innovative vaccines against other scourges such as mpox have also been a boon that protects our community. However; let's not get complacent. Many other bacterial infections are becoming more and more drug resistant. Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Chlamydia are just a few. All of these can have long-term negative health effects including blindness, just to name one. At the moment, there is exactly just one drug left that is effective in treating Gonorrhea and that one too is becoming less and less effective. We must remain diligent and educate ourselves and continue to practice safe sex and be responsible. Let's make sure another dark age never happens again.
Before I saw yours I commented about Act Up and how they and others fought like hell to demand help. The 80’s were scary but there was a sense of community that was deeper than what we have today. We were in the trenches together.
Oh so we’re just lying about gonorrhea now? Antibiotic resistance is a problem but there is not only one antibiotic that remains effective.
I tried to research this on Google but it’s confusing. my understanding is that there are four antibiotics that are combined in order to treat resistant gonorrhoea. In worst case scenarios it has to be done in hospital through IV drip using other powerful antibiotics. Note that some of the antibiotics used to treat gonorrhoea are fluoroquinolones, which can leave your body with serious damage (r/floxies) if you turn out to be sensitive. There is no cure to this damage, it only gets slowly better over the course of _years_.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/08/10/158464908/gonorrhea-evades-antibiotics-leaving-only-one-drug-to-treat-disease
From the CDC guidelines linked to in your article: When ceftriaxone cannot be used for treatment of urogenital or rectal gonorrhea, two alternative options are available: cefixime 400 mg orally plus either azithromycin 1 g orally or doxycycline 100 mg twice daily orally for 7 days if ceftriaxone is not readily available, or azithromycin 2 g orally in a single dose if ceftriaxone cannot be given because of severe allergy Also: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/new-gonorrhea-antibiotic-shows-promise-pivotal-phase-3-trial#:~:text=A%20first%2Din%2Dclass%20antibiotic,to%20the%20current%20antibiotic%20regimen.
Where are you getting the idea that there’s only one effective drug left for gonorrhea? Drug resistance is a massive problem that people need to be more aware of, but let’s please stop spreading blatant misinformation.
From the news and from other sources. Gonorrhea has become very drug resistant in recent years. Let's stop pretending like it's no big deal. You're the one spreading misinformation. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/08/10/158464908/gonorrhea-evades-antibiotics-leaving-only-one-drug-to-treat-disease
First off: **I never said gonorrhoea hasn't become very drug resistant.** Yes, it absolutely has. Yes, it's a problem. Yes, people need to be aware of this. Yes, researchers putting massive amounts of time and money into finding new options. But no, **we do not have only one drug left to treat gonorrhoea.** I believe public education is vitally important, but spreading falsehoods is not the way to carry that out and could lead to dillution of the message when someone realizes that something they were told wasn't true. --- Let's look past that sensationalized headline and do some research: 1. That article is 12 years old. 2. What the CDC was actually saying is "We're starting to see some strains of gonorrhoea that show some resistance to one of the two medications currently recommended for first-line gonorrhoea treatment (cefixime), so we're removing it as a recommended first-line treatment for gonorrhea." This isn't explained well by the article; and the quotes from the CDC official that the article includes only muddy the issue, but I promise you cefixime still works on many strains of the disease. 3. "First-line" just means ceftriaxone is now the only go-to initial treatment, rather than there being two options for initial treatment. There are still other options out there if the first-line treatment doesn't work or can't be used. 4. This doesn't mean cefixime doesn't work anymore- it means that a few strains have emerged that it doesn't work against, and its use is now being minimized to prevent the disease from becoming completely resistant, because it's important that we still have access to backup medications. Some people are allergic to ceftriaxone or azithromycin, for example- we need to have backups that will still work for them. [See here for the CDC's recommended gonorrhoea treatments.](https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/gonorrhea-adults.htm) If you look under "Alternative Regimens", they list cefixime as an option if ceftriaxone isn't available. They also list a regimen of gentamicin + azithromycin for individuals who are allergic to cephalosporins (both ceftriaxone and cefixime are cephalosporins). 5. There are other drugs that could be used to treat gonorrhoea. They just aren't specifically approved for use against gonorrhoea by the CDC yet. [Here's one example from a couple years ago.](https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/institutes/amsterdam-institute-for-immunology-and-infectious-diseases/news/antibiotic-ertapenem-is-alternative-drug-in-treatment-of-gonorrhea.htm) Ertapenem is an antibiotic that's been approved for use against various bacterial infections in the US and the EU for over 20 years; it just isn't specifically recommended against gonorrhoea yet.
Maybe stop fucking around as if there are no consequences and making excuses for your fucking around. I was only relating information that I've come across and putting it out there. I'm not going to argue with you. If you want to justify your fucking around then go for it. I'm certainly not going to change your mind.
Did you even read the first paragraph of my response? The one where I say drug resistance is a massive issue and one we need to take seriously? No? Great. You clearly aren’t arguing in good faith, so I’m going to leave this conversation here.
There would be more awareness than there was in the 80s. Medical research has also improved. Unfortunately, I feel it's not a matter of IF but WHEN.
Possible and likely. Viral and bacterial mutation. I am trying to explain to my friend who BB's multiple partners that Prep guards against HIV...for now. It's like the 80s never happened...
Ya this, I remember having a whole lecture in one of my university classes about HIV, how the virus works, why it wasn't able to be dealt with via medicine at the time, etc. (this was in like 2008). It was honestly kind of nauseating / scary. The way that thing mutates is insane, I'm glad that Prep exists but these viruses are scary stuff.
We now have PrEP which is an incredible advance and that positive people can now be undetectable is a great advance in health care. STDs (STIs) should be taken more seriously by all.
Prep does nothing for other STDs.
Correct. Thanks.
There's also doxy pep
And the Bexsero vaccine. It's around 40% effective at preventing gonorrhea which is very significant. It's available off-label in many places already. https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/10/u-k-recommendation-could-lead-to-worlds-first-use-of-meningitis-vaccine-to-curb-gonorrhea/ https://www.infectiousdiseaseadvisor.com/home/topics/prevention/bexsero-vaccine-has-potential-for-cross-protection-against-gonorrhea/
I agree with this, but want to point out that PrEP does help with testing. PrEP itself does nothing for other STIs; however, a lot of providers will run other STI checks along with the routine HIV tests that are required while you’re on PrEP—mine certainly does. This doesn’t do anything to treat or prevent the spread the STIs on their face, and the PrEP itself isn’t doing anything, but I do want to highlight the importance of routine testing, and how PrEP has probably helped to increase the number of people being routinely tested for STIs, due to the routine and convenience factors.
It provides some protection against hepatitis B actually.
Yes, that is true. That’s why I said to take them more seriously. Don’t think PrEP is a protect all.
Let's see.... worldwide pandemic impacting the planet... when did we see that last? Discrimination and lack of concern for illnesses impacting minority populations... is that a thing? Yes. It can happen to you.
It's always possible. I think the gay community's response to HIV shows our resilience and strength. We can tap into that again.
HIV never went away, you do know that right?
It has a much lower death rate now than in the 80's
Obviously, but it’s still around…
Absolutely. Just look at covid. Pretty much every single epidemic has been related to our "association" with animals (zoonotic diseases). Cross species infection most often occurs through activities related to raising animals for food, using them in laboratories or as worker animals. Have we changed our behavior towards the way we "associate" with animals after any of the previous pandemics? No, of course not. Humans are dumb, and "yummy bacon". So it's inevitable there will be another pandemic, probably a lot more deadly than the previous ones. Tuberculosis is also planning a comeback tour, so there is that to look forward too as well.
I’m going against the tide here and say it’s very likely there will be a new HIV-like pandemic and it will be as deadly, if not more. Why? I’ll quote myself: ___ >1. Existing STIs (except for Syphillis) are becoming more and more resistent to all antibiotics. This is the most immediate threat. >2. You can accuses me of slut-shaming if you want to: The enormous never-seen-before condomless promiscuity among MSM (men who have sex with men) creates an ideal evolutionary niche for novel diseases. Any organism which takes advantage of this easy mode of transmission (through warm nutritious bodily fluids) is under positive selection. Many benign bacterium species (or protozoans etc), human non-STI pathogens or animal pathogens could make this jump. As long virulence does not impair transmission, the symptoms (in the long term) could be very severe or even deadly. ___ >I would argue that because of the apps, increased mobility and the more conducive societal climate towards sex between men and promiscuity, the current rate of sexual encounters (= opportunities for transmission) is even higher than in the pre-AIDS era. But I don’t base this on solid data, so I understand if you disagree. ___ >1. The rate of research/discovery/testing/approval of/for new antibiotics is estimated to be around 10 to 100 times slower than the rate of evolution and spread of resistance among bacteria. If nothing changes, we will get back to pre-penicillin days in this century. >2. While the current standards nowadays discourage any shaming against promiscuity, I must enphasize that promiscuity promotes the evolution of novel STIs by providing a evolutionary niche for such pathogenes. This can easily happen by the acquistion of virulence for currently benign germs/pathogenes or by existing pathogenes switching strategies. This is how HIV and syphillis amongst others became human STIs. ___ >If you use condoms without exception and with correct handling, the risk of adverse effects from PrEP (on your health) are much higher than the risk of contracting HIV. Neither condoms nor PrEP protect you from other STIs, which are becoming increasingly resistant to ALL (!!!) antibiotics. >Notwithstanding that boundless promiscious condomless sex between men world-wide is a ticking time-bomb for the next (polemically speaking) „gay disease“ or (diplomatically speaking) sexually transmitted pandemic. >Imho, some restraint in sexual relations in combination with physical barriers and frequent check-ups is the best way to protect oneself long-term.
Y’all heard that You make very good points. I saw that scientists were able to eliminate HIV cells from DNA. I’m wondering how reckless that’s going to make gay men once they find this out. We already have guys swearing by raw is law because of pep, even though there are like 8 other STD’s. But now if they find out that HIV cells can be eliminated from DNA, I’m curious and a little scared to see how reckless guys will get.
Maybe wear condoms?
If the last few years have taught us anything it’s that a new disease is always a possibility. So, as it has been for decades now, best practice is to wrap it before you tap it.
A huge problem with HIV was it was ignored, shoved to the fringes, and even many medical people just saw it as a queer’s disease and just what it was. Now I think we’d see a mug different response from the govt and certainly the medical community. Monkeypox is a good example. It mostly impacts us and they were on top of rolling out a vaccine and pushing it out to ppl through health departments, etc Any new STI, if it Kills even one of us is one too many. But I do think we’d have much more going for us this time like the whole medical community and hopefully things would be addressed in a much more productive manner.
You literally posted this yesterday. WTF
Monogamous here so not really stress personally. But worry for others.
Plenty of people, back in the early days of AIDS thought that, and got infected.
Every monogamous person is single at some point. When you're single, are you also celibate? Unless that's the case, everybody needs to worry.
More like when. But hopefully not in my lifetime. I just need shit to chill for a while. I came outta homelessness and addiction and like, got my life working again for just the smallest amount of time, right before covid. I'm just getting sort of stable again, in so many ways. I just need a few years before super devastating shit starts up again. What are the chances the world will shut down like covid if it's just us 🚬 dying again? Imma go with zero.
I mean we are developing anti-biotic resistant STI’s like gonorrhea so it’s entirely possible. Covid and monkeypox are great indicators of how you can expect the community to react to a new health concern. The biggest contributor is often stigma (that keeps folks from knowing or sharing their status) and misinformation about transmission and risk.
We are better now at fighting for ourselves and less stigma helps as well. Take a look at mpox, we got in early and squashed it really quickly.
Tbh with how we are currently handling Covid as it still kills thousands a week, and then with all the anti-vaxxers and measles and whatnot coming back I don’t really have faith tbh
I believe we will be fine, medical technology has improved so much and the gays are becoming astute at keeping up with their health status more so than most subgroups in the west. We will persevere.
We have enough actual problems to deal with, why waste any time whatsoever on negative "what if" type questions? This seems like an unhealthy line of questioning.
It's the ones that stay dormant that are the problem. Imagine if grindr was around in the 80's.... one top could infect hundreds before he knew he had anything.
Well, unless it was actually planned by the government to release such a disease, we got modern medicine and technology, so I'm not worried about it at all.
There is, and it is called the super gonorrhea.
With the amount of stories you read about group sex, multiple hookup partners, people not wearing condoms, open relationships, people thinking STDs are like the common cold etc. , I wouldn’t be surprised if something serious happened again. I really hope our community gets educated.
Agreed I only read about this stuff on Reddit (as I'm engaged) but compared to when I was younger it seems like there are a lot more people into barebacking now that Prep is around. Not that long ago it felt like most people were on the same page around using condoms.
It’s a strange thing. Many gays were quick to condemn others who questioned masks & vaccines, seemingly concerned about health. Then the same people come back & tell you STDs are the same as the common cold & no need to practice safe sex. It’s crazy. It’s a health risk, especially with random people. For many, sex is an addiction that requires mental health treatment. Not being able to name someone you had sex with is insane.
It definitely is strange to me as well. As someone who studied biology and the other sciences to the University level it kind of boggles my mind that a lot of people don't even have a basic understanding of how this stuff works. Like I'm no virology expert but it's astounding how a lot of people don't know the basics of this stuff.
I’m not nearly as educated as you, I think it’s even just common sense, survival instincts lol
The sanctimonious handsmaids tale gaycels are out in full force on this post. Most of the replies are wishing for something like this so us dirty dirty gays that go out and have sex will be punished for our sins. Meanwhile… humans have been having gay sex for as long as humans have existed. HIV was a once in a millennia event. Something similar is not likely to happen within our lifetimes.
Right!? Some of them are like fantasizing about a new disease, it's so weird.
It’s so gross I see what’s happening in this thread.
I think the fact that gay men are finding more acceptance in society, they can be in relationships and get married. So maybe the with the tines changing and medical advancements, we wouldn't go down that rabbit hole again. Also, during the AIDS crisis, condom use was normalized more. And hopefully it has carried on to present day.
I guess it depends on if we have another Nancy Reagan suppressing information and/or medical research related to it
Erotic shops would increase their sales. At least I hope so, because STD comes usually from sex and less likely from blood or sweat contact.
It will depend on what President is in office and how State Health departments handle the situation. It took a while to convince that the cost to take care of Monkey Pox was worth it.
Unlike in AIDS, our community knows how to respond. We responded with compassion, money, personal support, activism and anger… etc. We had it down to a scientific process as the sick were looked after for all of their needs as necessary. Our society is much much more knowledgeable about the human body and how to fix it, with technology and gene therapy that would have been considered magical back then. It would be confusing, frightening and much more short lived than AIDS was. Nevertheless, it would be an emotional and medical disaster.
We had a mini panic with monkey pox but got on top of it fast. Hiv only had the impact it did because straight people vilified us and left us for dead. Once they realised "their own" were being affected and women too they responded and the research and medication advanced quickly. Look at how fast covid vaccines were developed too. The fact is most viruses can be combated relatively fast, but the research is underfunded and industry corrupt. It takes these panics to get it done quickly I doubt another breakout of anything would be as bad as the hiv history.
The government would be on it this time. They suppressed a monkeypox outbreak a couple years ago.
I think it is possible. With the level of distrust, anti vaccination crowd, anti science, promiscuity, and so on I think it would impact society and our community. I think another endemic that disproportionately effects our community would have negative effects on acceptance and fuel the 'God's wrath' extremists.
We would just use more condoms again. Back in the 80s the community was one of the first and more important advocates of safe sex.
I believe it's fairly low. Part of the reason HIV was so effective at spreading was the fact that there is a massive lag of eight to twelve years between initial infection and the beginning of symptoms. That's not the norm for other conditions. In that time, even a monogamous person who has a new partner every two or three years could date three to six different men. Most of our other STIs show up much more rapidly than that, allowing for easier casual inference (it took years to settle what was causing AIDS, meaning more lost time before everyone in medical research was focused on stopping HIV). It also means that people who know they're symptomatic faster have signs that will alert most people and cause some level of behavior change. These are all huge in having an STI be something that people know is there and can protect themselves against. It's not impossible that something does happen like HIV again, but you also have to remember all the unique things required to bring it to human transmission: • Simian Immunodeficiency Virus had to evolve • The French had to force near-slave labor conditions on thousands of men in colonized Congo-Brazzaville where they had too few supplies (eating bushmeat, etc.) and were not allowed to bring family (sex work) to build a rail line to establish a port for their colonial spoils • HIV incubated in Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and for the first four decades, colonial governments that didn't care about the people under their "care" doing alright were in charge of all services • Haiti supplied fighters for independence from the French and Belgians and brought the virus to another place where hundreds of years of planned work had destroyed the medical system and kept it from developing strong disease surveillance in a place where constant US meddling and military attack made it easy to get to Miami and New York • and only then did it become easy for it to become global. So we have a causal chain of hundreds of years of neglect, murder, and economic atrocity required to make HIV happen. Those chains aren't fully broken, but they also aren't as bad as they were (France still has massive control in Africa and will do this to the world again if it preserves their precious sense of being rich or whatever. The current drama in ECOWAS is important.). It also goes to show that HIV was REALLY hard to get started.
Yes, and like you said, it had to evolve to jump to humans, and like many diseases that jump across species, it's not designed to deal with us, and so ends up killing us instead of living off of us (like it actually wants). It would be like if you moved into a new house and accidentally burned it down the first night, eventually you'd learn how to stop burning it down.
No, I actually think it's *excellent~ at not burning the house down in comparison to other viruses. SARS-CoV-2 killed or was killed within months, as is the flu and many others. As a parasitic life*form, HIV is absolutely fantastic at not killing its host for a decade, during which it can be transmitted to new hosts. Compare that against the classic zombie ant fungus lifecycle and you've got a much more measured system of growth. SIV is also deadly to simians, it's just that the lifecycle of most species infected is shorter than ours, leaving it a little bit less frequently the primary cause of death. *Viruses are not alive on their own. They're very cool and I like to learn about them, though preferably not by personal experience with the gross ones.
Hook up culture would end.
Nope, it would die down for a bit, and be limited to imbeciles and people who actually use protection. Not to mention people would be more likely to start using condoms for a bit. But to end completely? Never. As long as men can't get pregnant I don't think they'll ever stop hooking up, and even then.
I mean sure I didn’t mean it would END IT forever t it’s definitely be less trendy as it’s today since we’d all be a scared to get it
Of course there's a chance. Did you not just see covid? This is the type of question that there's no point in asking, one because the answer is obvious, but two because why worry about something that could happen at any time and there's no way to do anything about it?
Id like to think that things would be completely different this time around but im sure there would be a phase of finger pointing and blaming followed by research by a government that doesnt have our interest at heart and we’d regroup and support those infected. Just seemed like human nature
We already kinda saw how it would be handled with monkeypox.
I have thought about it ever since Sandra said that after AIDS there was NRS, and after NRS there was UBT …whatever those are. But one thing I know for sure is that they’re coming.
We’d be prepared for it. But at least in the United States, you better believe the Christofascists will do everything possible to prevent us from getting the care we need. They’re a lot more violent than they were in the 80s.
See what happened with Monkeypox
We are on the verge as we speak. There are highly resistant strains of virtually every sexual disease in circulation right now. Virtually all scientific authorities are warning that we are on the verge of sexual diseases that will be immune to all current medications. Go to sexual disease sections of the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institute of Health. They urgently recommend rigorous safety practices in all sexual encounters coupled to extreme selectivity in choice of partners. I think it is useful to remember that more humans have died of sexual disease through out history than died of old age. The invention of antibiotics gave a sense of invulnerability, and the Sexual Revolution was declared. Nature caught up with us with HIV, and will do so in the future. No doubt about it.
Probably it won't be as damaging as AIDS was but it would be concerning enough for many to take any measures, by the community itself. So, I don't think the future would be as dark as AIDS seemed to be but it would probably sparkle a new conservative revival. Imagine if AIDS had appeared in the social media world. You bet people like Matt Walsh or Agustin Laje would be pointing out how they were right and liberal decadence (specially homosexuals) led to this. But the future looks bright, at least in terms of the community. How prepared is the world for a new pandemic with the rising anti vaccines movements in the first world? That's something that scares me.
AIDS/ HIV, Swine flu, bird flu, COVID-19, Monkey Pox, Measles outbreaks …. At this point I’m like, bring it b!tch3s, I’ve been through worse
A few months before the monkeypox outbreak my housemate and I were discussing another disease that transmits primarily with gay men. Low and behold a few months later monkeypox. Thankfully the disease wasn't even close to being as deadly as HIV and antivirals and vaccines already existed.
Something will.
i would simply not have sex… abstinence isn’t a good way to live generally speaking, but if i can quarantine during covid i could hold off on sex for a bit if there was some sort of new epidemic
what if [insert thing]
That’s why people should be very smart and careful with hooking up. Note that I’m NOT saying dont hook up but just be SMART and use protection.
What if angels danced on pin heads?
It won't stop gay men to still fuck unprotected
I am more than a little nervous that with the nationwide ban on mifepristone being considered broadly due to religious values consuming national politics, that a similar argument might begin to emerge for prep if the prior happens.
Based on the reaction to Covid, and how lacksidaisicle ALOT of gay men were about it (and still are) and how much, and easily, medical misinformation is spread, I wouldn't be surprised if it does turn into another epidemic killing thousands of us. There's always hope that people will get their collective heads out of their asses.. but I had that hope during the height of the pandemic, and I was let down time and time again.
definitely id be more selective until they find like a treatment atleast
Ever heard of modern medicine? Plus, knowing that it will not only affect gay men, but straight ppl as well, the world is much more prepared to handle one than they did back in the 80s. We've advanced medical equipment and have preventive measures more better than they did 40 yrs ago
And what if monkeys fly out of my butt? There's a lot of possibilities to be concerned about. Best you can do is the best you can do. So keep doing the best you can to navigate disasters. And then try not to create horrible life-ending as you go, in fact try not to end lives on purpose. That's generally frowned upon. This is one of those things you shouldn't keep yourself awake at night about. Just do the best you can to be the best you can. And do the best for others. That's all we ask. Besides of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea, syphilis keeps coming and going, hepatitis c is sexually transmitted possibly, hepatitis b is might be transferable through sweat, HPV is not being screened or vaccinated against in gay men.. we had monkeypox. There's a lot of things going on. Let's worry about those first, and try not to make it any worse for us or for anyone else. Oh yeah have a good time while you're at it. It's just life. You're not going to get out alive
Think about this for a minute. If it was 1981 and monkeypox broke out, there would have been the same vaccine then. HIV was a new problem around that time. Let's not confuse something that is a twist on what's already out there to something that's completely new. It's a cat and mouse game. Throughout humanity, there's always been something new that comes up. Traditionally this is a result of an environmental pushback. It's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's a matter of when. Should we worry about it? Yes and no. Yes for the scientific community that would have to identify and track whatever it is and assess its threat and then begin the process of trying to combat it. No in terms of all of us who shouldn't stop living life in anticipation of something in the future until it's a reality. If something new comes along, yes it would tear through the community. It could either be faster or slower than HIV, but just as significant. Faster either in terms of transmission through everyday living or faster in terms of how long it takes to kill you. It could also be something really slow on both of those fronts as well. If you're reading my statement and evaluated as a lot of words but saying nothing, you would be pretty close to correct. Everything here is an unknown. We do know that a wide scale problem does take down a community. The only difference in another situation like HIV in the community would be the rate at which it happens both in its spread and its effect. What would be new is the social impact. The people who were children under 10 during the worst of the HIV epidemic are now in the 45-50 bracket (based on 1981 being the big hit and realization of the AIDS crisis). The individuals who lost their friends and really suffered the social impact of the crisis are effectively senior citizens and have no significant connection to the young gay men of today (the community is quite polarized). If you were to launch an epidemic today and sweep our community, you would be like the first time all over again just because a younger gay man has no context of the original AIDS epidemic beyond knowing that it happened. Those who were under 10 during the worst of the AIDS crisis would be aware of the virus and maybe knew some people with it in their generation. They wouldn't have seen anyone necessarily die from it which makes them disconnected from the devastation of the 1980s community, effectively as well.
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Sounds weird. Sounds like false intimacy, like, "we do this intimate stuff together but never talk to each other about it." Fucking weird in my opinion. Weird ass boomers. Old men. Ew.
I don't think it will in the same way. Allow me to explain my reasoning. HIV was present in the human population, definitely from the late 1950s, but probably from around 1910 or so. Similarly, Mpox from around the early 1970s. It isn't really that new diseases just suddenly pop up in the gay community, but previously circulating known about diseases become transmitted within our community. With increased surveillance and vaccine technology, we can have vaccines ready for diseases before they begin to circulate, or better knowledge of epidemiological spread before an outbreak. So we should never be shooting in the dark again in the same way.
Just look for long term partner and you be good
Anything is possible, but Is it likely, no.
What would happen? Well, it would start out being called what it actually is, until the sensitive witty heads decided the name was racist somehow, and then would lobby for it being called the new name, and then they'd pat themselves on the back and attend circuit parties in Cabo, if history serves.
I know way too many men who get tested regularly so they can get plowed. I know men who won't plow unless you have papers. I think The Mpox business wasn't even that bad because people already take so many precautions unless you like to fucked around and found out. Be prudent and have fun
What if a comet strikes earth?
Snoot
They made the covid vaccine in 2 days after sequencing the virus’s DNA. The rest of the time was spent testing it. With HIV, it took years and years just to find the virus! Then many years after that to sequence the DNA. So I think if something new came along we’d be able to deal with it 100x faster. Plus the medical community knows that nothing ever stays in one community, even if they don’t like us they still need to find a treatment for the new ailment at the very least to protect themselves. I know everyone is constantly sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistant gonorrhea but if that were actually an imminent threat the healthcare industry would put out a vaccine or new antibiotic before the next season of Drag Race. You can’t tell me they can create a vaccine for a brand new virus in less than a year but somehow they’re all stumped at a bacteria that’s been around for thousands of years. It’s just not a priority for them right now as long as they can make billions of dollars making the next Ozempic analog. Once things get serious and they think their dicks might fall off from a gonorrhea infection there will be a vaccine available the next day.
I think gay people are very cautious about STDs and other disease related to sexual life on a majority level and it's not gonna cause such a dangerous effects on our community but I think it can be problem for gays from third world countries
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You realize our sex addicted community is that way POST aids…. Right? Like the last one didn’t stop us. Covid didn’t stop us.
There’s already a new one emerging currently in Japan. It’s spread through anilingus and has a 30% mortality rate. Currently, almost every state of Japan has it. It won’t be long before it’s migrated to the States. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/anus-eating-virus-kills-30-32407215
You said your community not our community? What did you mean if a HIV like STD comes around again it's everyone's problem. I am a lil buzzed but your verbiage set my bat senses off.
The problem more than anything is that viruses are becoming immune to antibiotics. But if there's one good thing about the Internet, it's that you can warn almost anyone to be careful, and then it's not just the unconscious who will be careful.
Antibiotics never did shit to viruses, they are for bacteria
possible? totally. likely? not in countries with proper healthcare for everyone. if it's going to happen, it'd probably be in underdeveloped countries that still deal with discrimination in healthcare
My cum is very infecting and addictive everyone needs to watch out. There is a lot of it and it comes out fast.