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Well known for its flamboyant LGBT culture and hard-left policies, San Francisco has become the first U.S. city to declare a public health state of emergency due to the spread of monkeypox, an infectious virus that almost exclusively affects gay men.
San Francisco officials made the declaration Thursday, giving the green light to the city’s Democrat Mayor London Breed to “marshal resources and personnel to confront the intensifying monkeypox outbreak,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The move comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared monkeypox a global health emergency last weekend and as Americans await a possible federal emergency declaration from the Biden administration.
San Francisco health officer Susan Philip said Thursday that city officials “want the flexibility to be able to use our resources to best serve the public and protect health,” adding that as San Francisco has “historically always done,” officials “want to affirm our commitment to the health of our LGBTQ communities in San Francisco,” according to the Chronicle.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month found that 98% of people infected with monkeypox outside of Africa, where the disease is endemic, were gay or bisexual men. The study also found that 41% of people infected with disease also have HIV.
Mayor Breed said that as of Thursday the city of nearly 875,000 has recorded just 281 monkeypox cases. However, the number is expected to grow as the infection spreads. To date, no deaths from monkeypox have been reported in the U.S.
It’s unclear whether San Francisco will ask gay men to refrain from sexual activity in a bid to stop the spread of the virus.
In the San Francisco health officer’s statement, she explained that the emergency declaration didn’t mean the city was looking to use the same mechanisms it employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as lockdowns or public health restrictions.
The San Francisco Public Health Department said the declaration “will help with City resources, emergency planning, staffing, coordination across City agencies, and allow for future reimbursement by the state and federal governments.”
San Francisco’s public health emergency is set to take effect August 1.
As monkeypox continues to spread throughout the U.S., conservatives like Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh have pointed out that while public health officials seemed eager to impose restrictions on the ordinary lives of everyday Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, they seem reticent to ask homosexuals not to engage in promiscuous sex amid the monkeypox outbreak.
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