to get vaccinated, but at the time there were only a few hundred cases around the world, “and the odds didn’t seem like this would happen to me.”
So, the wireless communication expert hopped on a plane and headed down to Dallas, where he spent the holiday weekend at a series of dance parties, pool gatherings and bar events.
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At pretty much the same time — though roughly 5,000 miles away — Sao Paolo resident Jean Araujo was similarly unconcerned.
“Yes, I had heard about monkeypox, but as a thing that happened in other places,” the 37-year-old says. “I really didn’t expect it to affect me.”
And about a month earlier and 6,000 miles away, David — a 49-year-old British attorney based in London — says he’d also been oblivious to the risk.
“This was mid-June and, yes, I had heard about this rare something,” he adds. “I mean, it had been reported in the news. But getting monkeypox didn’t even occur to me. The idea seemed ridiculous. And it certainly didn’t affect any of our plans,” which included an upcoming trip to Mykonos, Greece, with his husband, Marc.
Prior to the trip, Marc hooked up with a man he met in London. “We are married, but not monogamous,” David explains.
The problem is that a month earlier that individual had attended a gay pride festival in Spain, an event that would eventually be linked to some of the very first cases in the outbreak.
In short order, all three men would end up testing positive for monkeypox, which can be transmitted via any kind of intimate skin contact with either a rash, scab or body fluids, and/or with contaminated clothing and linen, according to the WHO.
On July 5, Watson received a text from a friend in New York City. He and Watson had been at several of the same events in Dallas, and the friend had just tested positive for monkeypox.
Back in Chicago, Watson, who is HIV-positive, immediately contacted his doctor, who put him in touch with that city’s Department of Public Health. Within two days, Watson — and the partner with whom he’s in a committed but open relationship — were able to