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Fox News host Tucker Carlson jokingly announced plans to rename monkeypox ‘schlong COVID’ after a woke official deemed the existing moniker racist.
Carlson announced the results of a Twitter poll on his Fox News show Thursday night, saying: ‘So, monkeypox is about the coolest name ever for a disease.
‘But they are changing the name because racism or something.’
‘So, we had a vote,’ Carlson then said: ‘There was no ballot harvesting. You can trust our counting. And the new name for monkeypox is now officially – and we’re declaring it – schlong COVID. That won our audience election result with about 40% of the vote. So, let Rochelle Walensky at the CDC know.’
Walensky is the director of the CDC, and one of the most public health officials in the United States’
The term ‘schlong COVID’ appears to be a reference to the fact that around 95 per cent of people so-far infected by COVID have been gay men.
Carlson’s Twitter poll had more than 26,000 votes, with schlong COVID the favorite among 39 per cent of respondents.
Midterm Variant was runner-up, with 24 per cent, while Adam Schiffilis came third, with 20 per cent, and Hunter Hives was fifth, with 17 per cent.
Some progressive health officials have asked for monkeypox to have its name changed because the original title could be construed as racist.
Last month, the World Health Organization said it would rename the disease, although it has yet to announce the replacement term.
Tucker Carlson said Thursday the winner of his Twitter poll to rename ‘monkeypox’ was ‘Schlong covid,’ in reference to the high rate of gay men contracting the disease
Monkeypox has exploded in the US, with New York and California becoming the hardest-hit states. San Francisco’s mayor declared a state of emergency over the disease, in part because of calls from LGBTQ leaders
The jokes came as San Francisco, a city with a high population of gay people, declared a state of emergency due to the outbreak of the disease.
Mayor London Breed’s said her announcement would allow officials to cut through red tape and fight a public health crisis reminiscent of the AIDS epidemic that devastated the city in the 1980s.
Monkeypox generally resolves itself with mild symptoms, while AIDS had an almost 100 per cent death rate for the first 15 years of the epidemic, up until the mid-1990s.
Others have suggested that San Francisco is an overreaction.
‘We are at a very scary place. And we don’t want to be ignored by the federal government in our need. So many leaders of the LGBT community have also, weeks ago, asked for additional help and support and assistance,’ said Mayor London Breed.
The city is in ‘desperate need of vaccines,’ she said.
The declaration, which takes effect Monday, was welcomed by gay advocates who have grown increasingly frustrated by what they called San Francisco’s lackluster response to a virus that so far has affected primarily men who have sex with men, although anyone can get infected.
‘San Francisco was at the forefront of the public health responses to HIV and COVID-19, and we will be at the forefront when it comes to monkeypox,’ said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents the city. ‘We can´t and won´t leave the LGBTQ community out to dry.’
The city has 281 cases, out of about 800 in California and 4,600 nationwide, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. A national shortage of vaccine has resulted in people waiting in line for hours for scarce doses, often to be turned away when the shots run out.
The United States has become the global epicenter of the monkeypox outbreak, overtaking Spain following a record-breaking 24 hours in which 1,048 new cases were confirmed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday that the uptick in cases was likely due to an increase in testing, after it expanded capacity from 10,000 to 80,000 swabs per week.
But the infection rate in the U.S. is below many other European countries including the UK and Germany (both at three per 100,000).
Experts fear the disease has already spilled over into more vulnerable groups, such as children under eight years old that health officials say are at high risk of severe disease.
Two children — in California and ‘transiting through’ D.C. — have tested positive for monkeypox to date, the CDC says.
America’s response to monkeypox was slammed for being too slow to roll out tests and vaccinations at the start of the outbreak, especially to gay or bisexual men where most cases are being recorded.
No deaths have been registered to date but several patients have been hospitalized.
