NYC Health Commish Demands Immediate Monkeypox Action: Rebranding

NEW YORK CITY — Amid an outbreak dangerously close to becoming "uncontainable" and after a botched vaccine rollout, New York City's top health official told world disease experts that they're running out of time for one thing: renaming monkeypox.

City health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan wrote in a Tuesday letter to the World Health Organization that the virus's name risked "stigmatizing" already vulnerable communities and should be immediately changed.

"We are at a critical crossroads of the 'monkeypox' outbreak," Vasan wrote in his missive. "The WHO must act in this moment before it is too late."

Vasan's demand drew a mixed, at best, response from New Yorkers who questioned if the critical and immediate action needed against monkeypox was a rebrand.

"Don’t you have better things to do like making sure there are enough vaccines available for New Yorkers?" tweeted @SamAntar.

"Renaming the virus will surely stop the spread," tweeted @CCCR_NY.

"Fully supportive of renaming Monkeypox to Vasanpox and banning Vasan from the medical profession," @MaxNordau tweeted.

Monkeypox recently surpassed 1,000 cases in New York City since May, making the city a hotspot for a virus that previously was rarely seen outside rural areas in Africa.

The virus is steadily spreading worldwide, primarily among social networks of men who have sex with men, although health officials have stressed that anyone is at risk of contracting it.

Vasan, for his part, argued in the letter that the "monkeypox" name is not only a misnomer — the virus does not originate in monkeys — but also risks stigmatizing those in the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as Black and other people of color.

He wrote the name could fuel the same type of "false messaging" around the first detection of HIV/AIDS that created harmful stigmas, and thus kept people from engaging in health care services.

WHO officials, who talked about officially changing the virus's name in June, need to "avoid another public health failure of words with potentially catastrophic consequences," Vasan wrote.

Vasan's letter stuck many New Yorkers and Twitter users as tone-deaf.

"Interesting that it was ok to call it monkeypox when only Africans were getting it, but now that people outside of Africa are getting it, the name is no longer ok?" tweeted @denise_dewald. "This might not be the look you were going for."

Other chided Vasan for losing focus on practical solutions.

"As a member of a community at high risk of monkeypox transmission, really wish you’d spend this time and energy on advocating for and procuring more vaccines instead of whatever this is," tweeted @Literroy. "Vaccines will help us. This won’t."

Find out more information about monkeypox in New York City, including vaccinations, here.