Monkeypox...

[Arckangel]

I was not sure where to post this... The media and various health authorities are now referring to the monkeypox epidemic as something that mostly concerns gay and bisexual men... Why does it feel like the late seventies again? That's ammunition for those saying it's mostly gay/bi men that spread certain diseases, and some are saying it's divine punishment.

Gay adult entertainer SilverSteele has gotten the monkeypox, and there are calls from health officials for gay and bisexual men to reduce their number of partners. And this happens just as life was gradually getting back to normal, though we're still in the COVID-19 era...

 

[br6205]

While I heard about the outbreak I did not hear it being associated with gay or bi men. I sincerely hope it won't be.

 

[Arckangel]

'We need vaccines, and we need them yesterday': Frustration builds in LGBTQ community over government response to monkeypox Read more on CNN

Monkeypox is on the rise in the LGBTQ community. Here's what to know Read more on CNN

As Montreal Pride approaches, city increases efforts to vaccinate against monkeypox Read more on CBC

Gay man drives 120 miles from US to Canada to get monkeypox vaccine Read more on PinkNews

Monkeypox could soon spread beyond gay and bi men, World Health Organization warns Read more on PinkNews

Canada urges gay, bisexual men to reduce their sexual partners to stem monkeypox. Advocates say focus should be on funding Read more on The Star

As evidenced above, the monkeypox is now seen by some as a "gay disease," and the stigma resurfaces just like in the eighties.

 

[br6205]

Arckangel , TY for that information.

 

[Jaybifla]

I unfollowed a guy on twitter yesterday because he tweeted a picture of a condom and sarcastically asked, “what’s this?” With PrEP and guys who are positive and undetectable, HIV is the only thing most gay men worry about and other viruses are just not a concern. If they get something else they’ll just get treatment for it and then carry on with their unhealthy sex practices. Honestly, I’m not surprised at all that monkeypox is a concern within the gay community. Unfortunately the gay community brings a lot of this blame on themselves. A lot (not all) of gay sex workers film all of this content for their Onlyfans and they put too much trust in verbal commitments from the people that they collaborate with that both parties have been tested. Too much of our community just take extreme risks. We should do better.

 

[br6205]

What need to be done is active gay men need to be tested and carry their test results like a driver carries his license.

 

[dande01]

I unfollowed a guy on twitter yesterday because he tweeted a picture of a condom and sarcastically asked, “what’s this?” With PrEP and guys who are positive and undetectable, HIV is the only thing most gay men worry about and other viruses are just not a concern. If they get something else they’ll just get treatment for it and then carry on with their unhealthy sex practices. Honestly, I’m not surprised at all that monkeypox is a concern within the gay community. Unfortunately the gay community brings a lot of this blame on themselves. A lot (not all) of gay sex workers film all of this content for their Onlyfans and they put too much trust in verbal commitments from the people that they collaborate with that both parties have been tested. Too much of our community just take extreme risks. We should do better.

You are so on point about this subject. In the past few years, before and during covid era, the gay community has been very reckless with HIV, and STD's. I see it time and time again, especially when these guys collaborate for social media. The all get together to film for social media and with just taking each other's word, they all claim to be free of HIV and STD's and at least 90% the time, these guys film there footage for social media and weeks later they get an STD.

They all claim to be on Prep, which is great, but many of these guys have the mindset if they are on Prep, they are okay with STD's and they don't realize that Prep only protects you for HIV, not STD's.

The other mindest is that if they do get an STD, they will just get a shot, or anti-biotics and they will be fine, others are okay with getting HIV because there reasoning is that then they go have sex with other HIV pos guys and take Biktarvy or a similar drug which is keep them undetectable.

So now we have MonkeyPox and yes, the media is telling everyone that anyone can get it, but the media and the CDC emphasis it's mostly effecting the gay community. So of course, WE "the gay community" is going to be blamed for spreading Monkeypox.

Its just crazy now with everything, bring me back to the 70's or 80's....if I only had a time machine...LOL

 

[tampa24]

I unfollowed a guy on twitter yesterday because he tweeted a picture of a condom and sarcastically asked, “what’s this?” With PrEP and guys who are positive and undetectable, HIV is the only thing most gay men worry about and other viruses are just not a concern. If they get something else they’ll just get treatment for it and then carry on with their unhealthy sex practices. Honestly, I’m not surprised at all that monkeypox is a concern within the gay community. Unfortunately the gay community brings a lot of this blame on themselves. A lot (not all) of gay sex workers film all of this content for their Onlyfans and they put too much trust in verbal commitments from the people that they collaborate with that both parties have been tested. Too much of our community just take extreme risks. We should do better.

Agreed. I get very fed up with the ambivalence (and ignorance) about HIV among younger people. It's almost an attitude of, "Well if I do get it, I'll just pop a couple of pills each day for the rest of my life." And then presumably they think they can just keep on doing sexually what they've been doing.

Or another line I've heard... "Well I'm undetectable. Which means I can't transmit it to anybody else." Uhhh... That's a hard NO. It means that the risk of you transmitting is lower. Yes. But it doesn't mean that just because your last labwork showed undetectable, means that the risk of you transmitting it to someone else is zero.

 

[tampa24]

I do wish there was enough Monkeypox vaccine to go around. There is not enough supply to meet the demand right now.

 

[dande01]

Agreed. I get very fed up with the ambivalence (and ignorance) about HIV among younger people. It's almost an attitude of, "Well if I do get it, I'll just pop a couple of pills each day for the rest of my life." And then presumably they think they can just keep on doing sexually what they've been doing.

Or another line I've heard... "Well I'm undetectable. Which means I can't transmit it to anybody else." Uhhh... That's a hard NO. It means that the risk of you transmitting is lower. Yes. But it doesn't mean that just because your last labwork showed undetectable, means that the risk of you transmitting it to someone else is zero.

Tampa...I hate when a potential model tells me during the interview that they are "undetectable" so my question to them is, "If you take a HIV test what is the results?" 9 out of 10 tell me, it will come out HIV POS, but they will argue that its can't be transmitted so I explain to them we go by tests, and if the test results will show that your HIV POS, we can't accept you and that is a hard NO!!!!

 

[tampa24]

Tampa...I hate when a potential model tells me during the interview that they are "undetectable" so my question to them is, "If you take a HIV test what is the results?" 9 out of 10 tell me, it will come out HIV POS, but they will argue that its can't be transmitted so I explain to them we go by tests, and if the test results will show that your HIV POS, we can't accept you and that is a hard NO!!!!

Amen to that!

How many of us fallible humans are absolutely perfect in taking all of our prescribed meds exactly how we are supposed to take them every single day? And we never miss a dose? Forget if we've already taken it when we did... Thought we already took it when we didn't, and so on. I'm on a bunch of daily meds. So I know pretty much all of the pitfalls. This issue of supposedly being "undetectable" is a fragile status that gives too many people a false sense of security. And therefore it makes them more reckless with other people's lives. Taking the medication to supprees the HIV in one's system is like any other med that we take on a regular basis. Life gets hectic and there are days we might forget to take one of our meds. Or we don't take it as many times a day as we're supposed to. Or we fill our daily pill boxes and think we dropped our important pill in the Tuesday box, but we really didn't. But we think we took it on Tuesday. So we only got six doses that week instead of 7.

Someone may be so broke that they can't afford the co-pay for the med. So they temporarily go off of it against medical advice. Or the pharmacy says our med (HIV or otherwise) is back ordered and won't be in for a couple more days. So instead of hunting other pharmacies around the city, transferring the script to a different pharmacy location, and picking it up somewhere else...our laziness will kick in and we figure that just a couple days without the med(s) won't hurt.

All kinds of scenarios can happen. If an HIV+ person misses only a couple doses of their important meds, they might enter a window of time where the viral load will creep up into detectable territory again. Other factors may come up physiologically. They may go through a period of high stress in their lives, sleep deprivation, poor diet, dehydration, etc. Just something that will change or tamper with the way their bodies normally metabolize their daily meds. A window of detectability may surface for only a brief little blip. But if that's when they decide to have unprotected sex with someone...the consequences could be awful.

So if you get the spiel from a poz person telling you (as I've had told to me personally) that it's safe for you to have sex with them because they are undetectable... (Based on labs they had done 6 months ago, one month ago, last week...) Take that with about a 5 gallon drum of salt.

 

[dande01]

Amen to that!

How many of us fallible humans are absolutely perfect in taking all of our prescribed meds exactly how we are supposed to take them every single day? And we never miss a dose? Forget if we've already taken it when we did... Thought we already took it when we didn't, and so on. I'm on a bunch of daily meds. So I know pretty much all of the pitfalls. This issue of supposedly being "undetectable" is a fragile status that gives too many people a false sense of security. And therefore it makes them more reckless with other people's lives. Taking the medication to supprees the HIV in one's system is like any other med that we take on a regular basis. Life gets hectic and there are days we might forget to take one of our meds. Or we don't take it as many times a day as we're supposed to. Or we fill our daily pill boxes and think we dropped our important pill in the Tuesday box, but we really didn't. But we think we took it on Tuesday. So we only got six doses that week instead of 7.

Someone may be so broke that they can't afford the co-pay for the med. So they temporarily go off of it against medical advice. Or the pharmacy says our med (HIV or otherwise) is back ordered and won't be in for a couple more days. So instead of hunting other pharmacies around the city, transferring the script to a different pharmacy location, and picking it up somewhere else...our laziness will kick in and we figure that just a couple days without the med(s) won't hurt.

All kinds of scenarios can happen. If an HIV+ person misses only a couple doses of their important meds, they might enter a window of time where the viral load will creep up into detectable territory again. Other factors may come up physiologically. They may go through a period of high stress in their lives, sleep deprivation, poor diet, dehydration, etc. Just something that will change or tamper with the way their bodies normally metabolize their daily meds. A window of detectability may surface for only a brief little blip. But if that's when they decide to have unprotected sex with someone...the consequences could be awful.

So if you get the spiel from a poz person telling you (as I've had told to me personally) that it's safe for you to have sex with them because they are undetectable... (Based on labs they had done 6 months ago, one month ago, last week...) Take that with about a 5 gallon drum of salt.

amen to that...I agree!!!

 

[tampa24]

Tampa...I hate when a potential model tells me during the interview that they are "undetectable" so my question to them is, "If you take a HIV test what is the results?" 9 out of 10 tell me, it will come out HIV POS, but they will argue that its can't be transmitted so I explain to them we go by tests, and if the test results will show that your HIV POS, we can't accept you and that is a hard NO!!!!

Amen to that!

So if you get the spiel from a poz person telling you (as I've had told to me personally) that it's safe for me/you/us to have sex with them because they are undetectable... (Based on labs they had done 6 months ago, one month ago, last week...) Take that with about a 5 gallon drum of salt.

Amen to that...I agree!!!

Hi David,

I can only imagine you being given that same spiel from a poz person (as you say you've heard personally more than once) but from your pespective. You have the responsibility for not just protecting yourself... Like in a possible one night stand scenario with a rando you meet in a club who you might want to have sex with. You have on your shoulders as the director the responsibility of protecting about 3, 4, 5 or more other models. So when a poz person is asking you to let them film for you on the basis of an "undetectable" status, he's actually asking you to put your faith in that, put aside all of your professional responsibility, and put the lives (and lifelong future health) of every other model at risk. The lifelong health of guys (who just by the way) are mostly in only their late teens, early 20's. Forget about the huge liability issues for the company if something goes wrong. The moral issues alone are enough to take very seriously. As a director, crap like that could give me nightmares and a few sleepless nights for sure. I feel very sorry for anyone who is positive. But again there is still that kind of ignorance out there about how seriously to take the disease. A poz person asking to become a porn model. smh

 

[dande01]

Hi David,

I can only imagine you being given that same spiel from a poz person (as you say you've heard personally more than once) but from your pespective. You have the responsibility for not just protecting yourself... Like in a possible one night stand scenario with a rando you meet in a club who you might want to have sex with. You have on your shoulders as the director the responsibility of protecting about 3, 4, 5 or more other models. So when a poz person is asking you to let them film for you on the basis of an "undetectable" status, he's actually asking you to put your faith in that, put aside all of your professional responsibility, and put the lives (and lifelong future health) of every other model at risk. The lifelong health of guys (who just by the way) are mostly in only their late teens, early 20's. Forget about the huge liability issues for the company if something goes wrong. The moral issues alone are enough to take very seriously. As a director, crap like that could give me nightmares and a few sleepless nights for sure. I feel very sorry for anyone who is positive. But again there is still that kind of ignorance out there about how seriously to take the disease. A poz person asking to become a porn model. smh

Back in the past, there was a few studios that would place HIV pos with HIV pos guys, they no longer film anymore but that was the studio that had all the HIV guys. I always, always was very careful, its not 100% when filming porn and having guys come and go week after week, month after month. Back in the BSB1.0 era, 99% wore condoms and if you watched the rare occasion no condoms, we took those guys to get tested here locally but that didn't mean they didn't get an STD. We never got any feedback or complaints from former guys that they got an STD, I think back then it was different and if they did, they never told us and got cured. The worse thing we got was "crabs", we had to cancel one of the shoots and go to the drug store and get lice remover (crab remover) and wash and clean all the sheets and all the models from that week had to use crab/lice remover.

But testing right now is very, very good...also not 100%. But I feel confident and I feel good and I can sleep at night knowing we did the right thing and models are now thoroughly tested before we film them and the guys are cool with it and feel comfortable and we get praised from them that we do test. I've heard so many crazy stories with other top studios the immoral practices they do with there models, I am shocked and surprised what goes on in this industry...all of us do everything we do to make sure everything is safe and take lots of percussion for the models that film with us, and that is the most important rule for us. Health cums first...

 

[mikeyank]

Back in the past, there was a few studios that would place HIV pos with HIV pos guys, they no longer film anymore but that was the studio that had all the HIV guys. I always, always was very careful, its not 100% when filming porn and having guys come and go week after week, month after month. Back in the BSB1.0 era, 99% wore condoms and if you watched the rare occasion no condoms, we took those guys to get tested here locally but that didn't mean they didn't get an STD. We never got any feedback or complaints from former guys that they got an STD, I think back then it was different and if they did, they never told us and got cured. The worse thing we got was "crabs", we had to cancel one of the shoots and go to the drug store and get lice remover (crab remover) and wash and clean all the sheets and all the models from that week had to use crab/lice remover.

But testing right now is very, very good...also not 100%. But I feel confident and I feel good and I can sleep at night knowing we did the right thing and models are now thoroughly tested before we film them and the guys are cool with it and feel comfortable and we get praised from them that we do test. I've heard so many crazy stories with other top studios the immoral practices they do with there models, I am shocked and surprised what goes on in this industry...all of us do everything we do to make sure everything is safe and take lots of percussion for the models that film with us, and that is the most important rule for us. Health cums first...

Whether I love the current models or not, I’ve always felt confident that you and Eddie at D&E and Mark and Sha at BluMedia treat the models well from every point of view. You guys all teat these guys correctly and do not compromise their health or well being from everything I’ve seen and heard.

 

[tampa24]

But testing right now is very, very good...also not 100%. But I feel confident and I feel good and I can sleep at night knowing we did the right thing and models are now thoroughly tested before we film them and the guys are cool with it and feel comfortable and we get praised from them that we do test. I've heard so many crazy stories with other top studios the immoral practices they do with there models, I am shocked and surprised what goes on in this industry...all of us do everything we do to make sure everything is safe and take lots of precautions for the models that film with us, and that is the most important rule for us. Health cums first...

I think you've hit the nail on the head there David. You can only take care of you and the two companies and all the models therefrom that you're responsible for. Then you can sleep at night with a clear conscience. Just because other studios might play fast and loose with the testing rules and/or HIV guidelines... Or consider federal industry standards and local health department requirements to be merely casual recommendations rather than mandatory obligations... It doesn't mean your studios have to have the lax morals and extreme corruption of other players out there living in a Wild West, anything goes mentality.

 

[Jaybifla]

David, have you heard anything about monkeypox in the adult filming industry? Heard anything from other studios?

 

[tampa24]

David, have you heard anything about monkeypox in the adult filming industry? Heard anything from other studios?

Great question!

 

[mikeyank]

I haven’t heard much about the symptoms and severity of monkeypox. I know that there are very few if any fatalities. Does anyone know about the actual disease?

 

[dande01]

David, have you heard anything about monkeypox in the adult filming industry? Heard anything from other studios?

Great question. I can't speak for other studios since I have not really spoke to many of them regarding the MonkeyPox. I know its an issue, Eddie and I got lucky that we just recent got vaxxed for MP.

For now, besides dealing with covid...before we book any flights, I have just started asking the model to go onto Skype so I can inspect there bodies for anything that looks like MP.

There is another studio that films here in South Florida and they are now inspecting all there models prior to filming. We are going to do the same when they arrive. The tricky part of MP is that you can't touch the person nor have them touch anything so it becomes a bit tricky. It is becoming an issue within the gay community and within filming since most of the guys we do hire are bisexual or have some sort of gay sex. We do get newer guys that never had sex with a guy before, but that is very rare these days. We have to assume now that anyone can get covid and MP at this point.

So now, I ask the individual guy to test for covid before arriving at least 2-days prior to getting onto there flight and now I do a video inspection and then when they arrive and we get home, we are now doing a visual inspection of the person and hope for the best.

We already just this week, had a model that has MP, the other studio here in South Florida, most of there models got MP, so its effecting there production, while other studios are filming a lot of footage just in case this turns into a huge issue.

For now its effecting the gay community, but wait until college starts and regular school starts, you will see a huge outbreak of MP with students and then will spread to everyone else. My straight friends, don't really care about MP, they all seem to "think" its a gay virus...LOL...just wait...LOL.