Licensed Vocational Nurse Sophia Mineros administers a dose of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine to a person at an L.A. County vaccination site on August 10, 2022, in Los Angeles, Calif.
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“They’re gambling with the health of the gay community,” Krellenstein said. “They have gambled since May and they have lost every bet they have made.”

More broadly, health care providers and LGBTQ community leaders are frustrated that there hasn’t been a more nuanced approach to messaging around the disease to make sure the people most at risk are first in line to get the information, testing, treatment and vaccines they need.

They say that top HHS officials — including Becerra and FDA Commissioner Robert Califf — have not spoken clearly enough about the outsized threat the disease poses to men who have sex with men, both heightening anxiety in the general population unnecessarily while also failing to emphasize the urgency for those most affected to take precautions.

“It’s important for everyone providing monkeypox messaging to understand the history and the health inequity that LGBTQ people have faced,” said Adrian Shanker, the executive director of the Spahr Center, an LGBTQ community group in Marin County, Calif. “This is not the first virus that we’ve experienced.”

Daskalakis disagrees with the characterization that the administration has not been direct enough. He said health officials have used communication and community engagement strategies based on the experience of HIV and other diseases to get the word out about monkeypox through trusted messengers and platforms without creating harmful stigma.

“We’ve been very frank,” he said. “In fact, if you look at the sort of communications that have gone out from CDC and other agencies about this, the language is the frankest it’s ever been in the history of the public health response. … I feel pretty confident in saying we did it right.”

Danya Rosario receives a monkeypox vaccine at The Pride Center on Aug. 10, 2022, in Wilton Manors, Fla.