America’s Centre for Disease Control this week recommended travellers mask up to protect themselves from the MonkeyPox – a disease spread primarily through gay sex.

Now if, like 99.999 per cent of the population you’re thinking, ‘But I don’t have gay sex on commercial flights’, then you probably don’t need a mask.

But if you’re part of the 0.001 per cent of people at risk of contracting the MonkeyPox at 40,000 feet somewhere between San Francisco and Amsterdam, you’re probably asking, ‘Where do I put the mask?’

Well, follow the science!

The problem, of course, is that the science left the room a long time ago.

Warning that a disease is ‘most prevalent among men who have sex with men’ and then insisting that everyone wears a mask to protect themselves seems a bit, well, strange.

Then again, better safe than sorry, right?

I suggest wearing three masks – one for the Covid, one for the MonkeyPox, and one to show everyone just how serious you are about loving your neighbour.

Of course, the CDC could warn us to stay away from gay saunas and weird fetish festivals like the super MonkeyPox spreader event in Belgium. But where’s the fun in that?

It is wrong to imply that a disease most prevalent among men who have sex with men is a gay disease. That would be discriminatory. MonkeyPox could affect literally anyone who has gay sex.

The United Nations reported that:

‘A significant portion of the cases have been identified among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.’

I’m trying to work out who the men – other than the gay men and the bisexual men (but I repeat myself) – having sex with other men are. Maybe the UN are referring to biological female ‘men’ having sex with biological men. Or biological men having sex with biological female men.

Who knows these days?

Anyway, the UN pretty much covered every kind of man who’s having sex with every other kind of man.

Here in Australia, NSW-based sexual health organisation ACON CEO Nicholas Parkhill repeated the syndicated UN line about ‘cases have been identified among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men’.

And then he added…

‘It’s important we remember that viruses do not discriminate.’

Well, it kind of sounds like the MonkeyPox does play favourites.

But we’ll all mask up anyway, and pretend like it doesn’t.

(Wink!)

As of June 3 there were 21 recorded cases of the ape pox in America. That’s 21 cases in a population of 320 million people.

Get Anthony Fauci on the line now, before everyone’s got the chimp plague.

Meanwhile, you just knew that the Canadians were going to panic. I mean, their government freaks out at the sign of a truck. So, 81 cases of MonkeyPox in a population of 40 million is only one level short of a major health crisis for Trudeau.

In a level-two notice – one grade below a call to avoid non-essential trips – the Public Health Agency of Canada said travellers may be subject to procedures to limit the spread of MonkeyPox, such as isolation, should they become infected.

Why don’t they just go straight to level one and tell people to ‘avoid non-essential trips’ to gay bars and Pride festivals?

Maybe it’s because the MonkeyPox is especially common among men who have sex with other men and Canadians and, honestly, who can tell the difference?

BBC News argued there was…

‘A delicate balance of keeping those currently most at risk informed, without stigmatising them or letting others become complacent.’

Recommending everyone wears a mask to protect themselves from a non-airborne disease that is most commonly transmitted via gay sex seems a rather indelicate way of balancing plain speaking and political correctness.

NBC News reported that the US has 100 million MonkeyPox vaccine doses ready to be deployed, while Germany has ordered 40 million doses. 

That’s a lot of people who are achimptomatic!

We seem to have staggered out of Covidistan, and straight into Planet of the Apes!

Do authorities really want to avoid stigmatising gay men? Or are they actually just very committed to keeping the panic porn going?

Wear a mask on aircraft to avoid a disease you’ve basically got to wrestle another person naked to contract.

Authorities are monkeying with us all.

You can follow James on Twitter. You can order his new book Notes from Woketopia here.

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