On Monday, CNBC ran a story headlined, “Monkeypox Outbreak Is Primarily Spreading Through Sex, WHO Officials Say.” The sub-headline notes that “The most recent surge in cases appears to have been spread among men who have sex with other men.”

Not sure about you but where I come from, we call “men who have sex with other men” gay men! Did I miss the memo, do we have to contort language so much now that instead of saying “gay men”, we refer to euphuisms like “men who have sex with other men?” Now before you post a comment, I’m not really looking for an answer, frankly I don’t need to know. It was just a rhetorical question being mused out loud.

But they haven’t given up the fear campaign, I mean public health campaign. The story explained that “WHO officials … emphasiz[ed] that ANYONE can contract monkeypox.” The gist is that they think the transmission is from close physical contact with open body sores rather than something particular to the kinds of sexual contact between gay men. So if hetero people also join up in “sexual networking” — whatever that is — and have sex with random people that have open monkeypox sores, the hetero people could catch it, too.

The fear porn continued as the article direly predicted, “monkeypox can kill as many as 1 in 10 people who contract the disease.” Well. We haven’t seen that yet, or anything like that kind of fatality rate. They’re just guessing, or modelling and in the case of Bill Gates, hoping, or something. The old African figures they are citing and referring to involve the very worst cases in third-world people who waited a long time to seek treatment.

If there’s one “silver lining” about Monkeypox, it’s that at least they’re acknowledging how the disease is really spreading. Late Monday night, CNBC ran another article headlined “CDC Officials Sound Alarm for Gay and Bisexual Men as Monkeypox Spreads in Community.” That’s even closer to reality than the first article. The evening article included the same warnings as the earlier article, but the headline says what it needed to say.

Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb apparently said, “there is a possibility now this has gotten into the community [and] if in fact it’s more pervasive than what we’re measuring right now, that becomes hard to snuff out.” Excuse me, hard to snuff out, really?

I’m just one of those “deplorables”, not a sainted public health expert, nor am I a “swinger” I’m sure even the use of that term dates me and reveals that I don’t know all the ins-and-outs of sexual networking, but here is a suggestion. Maybe — hang with me for a minute — maybe if people stop having sex with other people they don’t know and aren’t married to for a while? Could that help? The puritan in me says, hey maybe take a year if they have to. Maybe THAT could “snuff it out?”

Why would they, well why wouldn’t they? Do I really need to remind everyone about what we’ve heard over and over again for the past two years, you know, “do it for the community,” and “if it saves just one life,” and “don’t kill grandma?” So I’m not asking for much, just a teeny weeny bit of abstential sacrifice for grandma and the community, gay people! I’m sure the public health experts are working on those “public service announcements” as I speak right?

Yeah, I doubt it as well. Somehow, I think this is going to come down to them telling us ALL to take some kind of a vaccines to combat it, like, smallpox vaccines. Makes sense since the cases are exploding worldwide, according to Epoch, as of May 21st, about 80 cases of monkeypox have been reported in Australia, the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Now before you accuse me of being cynical or paranoid, or maybe a bit of both, can you blame me, especially after the past two years?