Shortage of Monkeypox Vaccine Sparks Protest and Fear in Bay Area

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many Bay Area residents are scrambling and traveling long distances to get a monkeypox vaccine. Public health officials are warning of the serious shortage of vaccines needed to combat the growing outbreaks of monkeypox across the country. Since it was detected in the U.S. in May, the CDC has reported over 1,800 cases of the painful, but very rarely fatal, viral disease. About a quarter of the cases are in California, which expected to receive 15,000 doses of the vaccine this week but logistical, bureaucratic and technical errors on a federal level have slowed the distribution of nearly 7 million doses nationwide. Although anyone can get the disease, U.S. monkeypox cases have disproportionately affected men who have sex with men. LGBTQ activists protested federal offices in San Francisco this week out of concern we’re seeing a repeat of the public health failures of the early days of the HIV epidemic. We’ll discuss concerns about monkeypox and what local public health officials are doing to respond. Guests: Anne Rimoin , professor, Center for Global and Immigrant Health, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Susan Philip, director of Director of Population Health Division, San Francisco Department of Public Health Tyler TerMeer, CEO, San Francisco AIDS Foundation Fernando Gomez-Benitez , deputy director, Mission Neighborhood Health Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport.
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1:00.9	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:16.2	For reasons that scientists don't quite understand, the monkeypox virus, which has been endemic
1:20.7	in parts of Africa for decades, has spread rapidly across the world in recent months.
1:25.9	The painful but only rarely fatal disease has mostly
1:28.7	affected men who have sex with men. Here in San Francisco, there's been an outbreak, and activists
1:33.8	have criticized what they describe as the anemic federal response. This isn't COVID. This isn't
1:39.9	HIV. There's a vaccine. Very few people are hospitalized or dying. But at least the undertones of
1:46.3	what's happening recall the government's botched response in the early days of those pandemics.
1:51.2	We'll talk with Monkey Puck's experts and local activists about what could be done and what's
1:55.2	actually happening. That's all coming up after this news.
2:07.5	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
	...

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