Yes, there is a needle to thread, but just as it is inappropriate to label monkeypox a gay disease, it's unhelpful to ignore the fact that right now in North America and the EU, it is specifically targeting men who have sex with men.

I write for the LGBTQ newspaper The Los Angeles Blade, and for the last 2 weeks, we've been grappling with public communication strategies – needing to let our readers understand they are at particular risk, because of the way the virus has infiltrated networks of gay men.

We've featured editorials, for example, by AIDS-era activists like Michelangelo Signorili, pointing out that the U.S. public health response to monkeypox has been inadequate, that not enough vaccine has been made available to people who are at risk – meaning gay and bisexual men.

But we're concerned about stigma and adverse political reaction too. Some editorial meetings have featured shouting by people with different takes on the situation.

But our perspective is a little different from yours. You seem to be mostly concerned that straight people will be put at risk of infection if they don't get good information.

We're concerned that gay and bisexual men are already at high risk, and that our needs are not being met by public health authorities – in terms of either vaccines or education campaigns.

The needle to thread is knowing how to counter that without bringing more irrational hate down on us from the public at large.

We can't just be silent and let the epidemic swell among us. That would ultimately increase stigma, not reduce it.

So we've settle on an editorial policy acknowledging that monkeypox is right now primarily a threat to gay and bisexual men, and that public health authorities need to treat it as such, while recognizing that if they don't treat it as such, then it will likely spread to the general public.