Seattle Man Resorts to Canada to Get Monkeypox Vaccine

The response to the monkeypox outbreak has been so poorly managed in the United States that some gay men have simply decided to get their shots in Canada. One Seattle man told the media his story, Newsweek reported.

Justin Moore crossed the border from Washington State into British Columbia to get the vaccine, having given up on waiting for local health authorities to make the shots available to a broader range of people than the state's current approach, which is to provide the vaccine to "only those who have been in close contact with a confirmed monkeypox case, or those who have contracted the virus," Newsweek detailed.

The problem is that as the outbreak continues to grow, there are not enough doses of the vaccine to go around, "meaning only certain people are being prioritized," Newsweek explained.

Washington state only "requested and received 3,550 doses of the vaccine," local news channel KING5 detailed.

The health authority in Moore's county "was being very slow with the uptake of access to dosing and communicating in general," he told KING5. "It became apparent to me that I was going to have to seek out other places to get it," he added.

Unlike the U.S., getting the vaccine in Canada was a "very easy, very seamless" experience, according to Moore.

Until very recently, monkeypox was rarely seen outside of Africa. That changed a couple of months ago when an outbreak in Europe appeared to have been sparked by two raves in two different countries.

The outbreak spread to the U.S., where, health authorities believe, an International Mr. Leather conference in Chicago served as a superspreader event for the virus. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global emergency this past weekend.

Monkeypox is not an STI, despite the ill-informed opinions of some high-profile individuals, nor is it a "gay disease," as some anti-LGBTQ+ pundits have sought to characterize it. All the same, in the United States the first specific demographic to be afflicted has been men who have sex with men (MSM), which includes gay and bisexual men. Health authorities, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, have argued that the prudent and effective thing to do would be to prioritize MSM for the vaccine.

At the same time, health authorities have cautioned the general public against politicizing the outbreak or seeing it as a "gay" health concern. The monkeypox virus – which, like chicken pox, causes painful pustules that take several weeks to heal – is extremely contagious. Unlike HIV or other STIs, monekypox can be spread through casual contact like a handshake or even the sharing of clothing, linens, or hand towels.

That means anyone, of any sexual orientation or gender identity, can easily become infected through non-sexual contact with a person carrying the virus.

"Please do not think that you don't identify as a gay person or the LGBTQIA community that you are not at risk for monkeypox," Dr. Stephaun Wallace advised in comments to KING5. Dr. Wallace added that "The way that stigma has been perpetuated for monkeypox has certainly appeared to me, and others, that we have not learned enough'' from similar episodes of stigmatizing diseases by associating them with a particular sexuality, like what happened with HIV/AIDS, for example.

Moore took note of this, as well, telling the news station, "I can't help as a gay man feel that as a gay man we haven't learned much from other crises where we've been used as targets for these outbreaks."