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.
Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

In a call with reporters on Tuesday, Daskalakis noted that Covid-19 vaccination rates are over 90 percent among gay and bisexual men. He said he was optimistic that this would lead the men most in danger of contracting monkeypox to get vaccinated for it, too.

Getting vaccinations in the arms of the most at-risk individuals requires intentional communication with them — even if that means acknowledging the limits of science at the moment.

“We need to get [LGBTQ community leaders’] engagement, get their buy-in, and talk about some of these difficult decisions, which sometimes there isn’t a clear answer,” said Philip Chan, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Brown University who specializes in HIV prevention.

If that happens, some public health experts say they will remain hopeful, considering that the virus doesn’t appear to be spreading easily to household contacts. And the vaccines, however slow to come, are coming, they say, and there is still a good chance that if the government can get enough doses out to at-risk individuals, the virus can be stopped.

But the clock is ticking.

“We’re in this period of time where we still have a shot at it,” said John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “I don’t know how fast the door is closing, but it is closing.”