100s of gay and trans people in Sacramento clamor for the monkeypox vaccine
One of the strongest tools in the fight against monkeypox in Sacramento County might be gay friendships.
A last-minute Wednesday vaccine event was first publicized by Sacramento County Public Health on Tuesday; people in line who spoke with The Bee all said they’d heard about it from people they know, mostly via social media.
People in line outside the Sacramento LGBT Community Center pop-up clinic were eager to get their monkeypox vaccinations. A steady line of more than 50 people waited for more than an hour outside for their shots in the sweltering early afternoon. The 240 doses were available on a first-come, first-served basis; the county ultimately doled out 173 shots.
“Literally, a buddy of mine texted me like an hour ago,” Calab Knowles said, standing in line behind more than 50 people. The towering cybersecurity analyst had been at work when the text notification popped up. “I told my boss, ‘Hey, monkeypox is something that’s affecting my community, and it’s on the rise in Sacramento. … Would you mind if I took some time off work and went and got my shot?’”
The supervisor told Knowles to “go for it.”
Earlier this week, Sacramento County public health workers raced to organize the vaccination clinic to protect gay and transgender Sacramentans against flu-like symptoms, fevers, rashes and painful lesions that are the hallmarks of the extremely unpleasant but rarely fatal virus. There are at least 24 people in the county with confirmed or probable cases; although anyone can get monkeypox, so far, trans people and men who have sex with men have faced the highest risk. Last week, the health department expanded eligibility for the shots to a wider pool of trans people and men who have sex with men. Previously, only people who had close contact with someone who had monkeypox were getting vaccinated.
“We are getting doses out as quickly as we receive them … shots in arms, as quickly as we can,” said Rachel Allen, the immunization program director at the county health agency. Vaccine supplies come in on a weekly basis, she said, and for this particular three-hour event, “We just set this up a little bit earlier this week.”
The number of vaccines that the county gets, county health program coordinator Hannah Aalborg said, “is really dependent, nationally, on the current (strategic national stockpile).” Shots are distributed to the states, which then distribute that supply to counties. As of Wednesday, Allen said, the county had distributed about 400 doses total. Additional doses have been distributed through Pucci Pharmacy, which sets up appointments and recently ran a vaccine clinic at a gay bar in Old North Sacramento.
Allen said she was “not gonna speculate” about whether the county is getting ahead of monkeypox: “Vaccine is gonna be the key to really keeping this from spreading, and so we will need more doses to keep that up.”
Demand is certainly not the issue — evidenced by the scores of people who showed up with virtually no notice to an event in the middle of the day and waited in 93-degree heat for over an hour. As Bret Gladfelty put it, “It’s avoiding more pain, if I get the vaccine.”
Gladfelty and his husband, Jael Dantas, learned about the event on Instagram — multiple friends had posted about the vaccine pop-up on Tuesday. Gladfelty said that members of the LGBT community were taking care of each other — and taking the virus seriously.
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 1:26 PM.
