Sharing Monkeypox Sores on Social Media - The New York Times

Men and women with monkeypox share their stories on social media, to fight stigma and demand more action.

When Matt Ford, 30, an actor in Los Angeles, tested positive for monkeypox in June, he posted videos on Twitter and TikTok to show what it was like.

“The reason I’m speaking out,” he said in the video, “is mainly because it’s one thing to know there’s a monkeypox outbreak happening, but it’s another to know exactly what it means for someone’s body and particularly what it means if it happens to a friend or to you.”.

Jeffrey Todd, 44, a casting director in Los Angeles, went public with his monkeypox diagnosis in late July, including a video in which he removed a bandage from his face to reveal a purplish lesion.

Todd said that his video was taken down momentarily by TikTok, but was restored when he made another video addressing the haters.

What is monkeypox?

Monkeypox is a virus similar to smallpox, but symptoms are less severe.

There is no way to test for monkeypox if you have only flulike symptoms.

But if you start to notice red lesions, you should contact an urgent care center or your primary care physician, who can order a monkeypox test.

What is the treatment for monkeypox?

If you get sick, the treatment for monkeypox generally involves symptom management.

The speed at which people with monkeypox have come out of the shadows has managed to feel both utterly of-the-moment and eerily familiar.

Indeed, like AIDS activists before them, many of these monkeypox patients say they are going public to raise awareness and protest the government’s slow response.

“Forty years ago, we had a virus and people stayed silent and scared,” Mr.

Steele said.

4, nearly two months after cases emerged in New York and Massachusetts, the Biden administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency.

Steele said.

“I want to ruin the stigma,” said Maxim Sapozhnikov, 40, the chief executive of Fashion to Max, a creative services company in Milan, who began documenting his monkeypox journey on Instagram in June.

Seaton, who in July was one of the first women in Georgia to test positive for monkeypox, wanted to dispel the notion that women are immune.

“Be for real,” she said, as the video cut back to her in the present day, standing in her living room

Nancy Nydam, the communications director of the Georgia public health department, said that although 98 percent of the 544 cases last week in the state are among men, the six women who have tested positive all did so in the last couple of weeks