each day, many attendees will head to large dance socials called circuit parties. When the official festival events end at 10 p.m. The city even got popular gay comedian Matteo Lane to make a public safety announcement on monkeypox for the festival, Arwady said. To make sure people are thinking about the disease and how to protect themselves from it, the CDPH has printed 10,000 palm cards and 1,000 posters that share information, Arwady said.īanners will be posted at gates, informational videos will be playing in bars and educators will be posted at entrances to answer questions and point people to resources. “Turn on the lights before you turn off the lights,” Arwady said, encouraging people to check for rashes and discuss monkeypox risks with potential sexual partners.Īvoiding contact with the virus’ rash, which can appear throughout the body and around the genitals, is an essential way to avoid getting monkeypox, she added. The city’s top doctor had her own advice. People should have open and honest conversations about monkeypox with their intimate partners, he added.Īnd in crowded spaces, like dance clubs, where people might be rubbing up against one another, “think about putting a shirt on,” Hazra said. Gay and bisexual men should think about with whom and where they are getting intimate this weekend, Hazra said. “There are ways to protect your health and still enjoy yourself.” “The first thing folks should know is that they can have a good time,” Hazra said. But while risk can never be eliminated, harm can be reduced. All mass gatherings have the potential to spread contagious diseases, last week’s Lollapalooza music festival with COVID-19 included, he said. Still, Hazra expects to continue to see case counts rise after Market Days. A major jump in public awareness, growing access to vaccines and new federal protocols for prescribing effective antiviral drugs have also bolstered the virus response, he said. “It’s much easier and much less cumbersome to send a monkeypox test,” Hazra said. Aniruddha Hazra, an infectious disease physician at Howard Brown Health Center and the University of Chicago Medicine. The city is better positioned to respond to monkeypox than it was during the large LGBTQ-focused Chicago Pride festival and International Mr. ![]() “Just use some common sense,” Tunney said. This time around, though, anonymous intimate contact “probably isn’t the right way to act,” Tunney said, adding that people should avoid mixing drugs and alcohol at the festival, too. It pulls in people from all over, especially across the Midwest, Tunney said. The festival is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and has been an essential part of the local gay community for decades. Market Days is set on Halsted Street in the Northalsted neighborhood, previously known as Boystown, which Tunney described as a “tourist mecca” for LGBTQ+ people across the country. ![]() “It’s kind of a love fest,” said Tunney, who is gay and represents the area where the festival will occur. That could be a problem at Market Days, said Ald. Monkeypox can spread through direct or indirect contact with the virus’ painful, distinctive pimplelike rash. Other people can and have gotten the virus across the city, however, and public health officials have repeatedly pointed out that the virus doesn’t discriminate. ![]() In Chicago, the virus has mostly been detected among gay and bisexual men, a trend that matches spread across the country and world, public health department data shows. Pritzker declared the spreading disease a statewide public health emergency Monday. ![]() The number of monkeypox cases in Chicago rose to 459 on Thursday after Gov. “I think there’s an opportunity for people to continue to enjoy living their lives, and to do so safely.” “It’s not something that’s easy to catch,” he said. Mark Liberson, a Market Days festival organizer and bar owner, poses for a portrait near the intersection of West Buckingham Place and North Halsted Street on Aug.
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