Duran Stands By Meningitis Response

Despite taking some harsh criticism from Weho residents and social commentators for sounding the alarm to gay men about the risk of a bacterial meningococcal meningitis, West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran stands by his urgent warning.

In the wake of West Hollywood resident Bret Shaad's diagnosis with meningitis and reports that seven gay men in New York City had died from the died from the disease since 2010, Duran urged residents, particularly gay men, to be aware of the disease's presence in Los Angeles.

"We don't want to panic people, but we learned 30 years ago the consequences of delay in the response to AIDS," said Duran, who also serves on the Board of Directors of Equality California. "We are sounding the alarm that sexually active gay men need to be aware that we have a strain of meningitis that is deadly on our hands."

Response to Duran's comment was swift.

Nearly 200 residents commented on Patch's posting of the City News Service story containing Duran's comments, many of which chided the councilman for singling out men who have sex with men in his statement. 

"How on earth is this a GAY disease? It is offensive to even mention this--it is spread by saliva and infected spray from coughs and possibly hankies and tissues. Do not lick hankies and tissues. Last I looked everyone has the ability to cough and spit," said Patch reader Chloe Ross. "Who cooks up this crap? It is a form of carrying the disease and causing fear--not treatment. Duran is reprehensible and needs to be censured by someone for his stupid, fear mongering statements."

In blog post on the Huffington Post, Moorfield Storey Institute James Peron criticized Duran for what he deemed an alarmist approach.

"Duran falsely connects the disease to being gay and being sexually active -- thus giving a false impression. [HIV and meningitis] are so far apart in risks and dangers they shouldn't be compared in the same breath. Meningitis, if caught in the early stages, can be treated with antibiotics," Peron wrote.

However, Duran said that given all he'd experienced as a HIV-positive gay man who lived through the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s, said he was confident he approached news of Shaad's diagnosis with the urgency it required.

"Given that we had somebody who was healthy and fit and died within a 5 day period of bacterial meningococcal meningitis--something that had been showing up in gay men in New York City--a response needed to be quick, so that people would know that anybody who had any contact with this individual needed to know that we were in a window period," Duran said. "Unlike HIV, which takes seven to 10 years to develop symptoms, this is quicker. It appears to be like a flu. It can be fatal. Given that scenario, given the information I had at the time, given that we had a severe meningitis case in a gay man, at least from my experience, it was imperative that the public be alerted that we had a case that is is not spread though sex and spread casually and that as a community we had something very dangerous in our midst."

Duran noted that he posted on his Twitter account that meningitis was not a sexually transmitted disease.

He also defended himself against allegations that he was the first to release Shaad's name to the public and that he had explicitly stated that Shaad had contracted meningitis at the White Party in Palm Springs.

"At the 2 p.m. press conference, I did not disclose the name. I told the media I would not. The media discovered Bret's name on their own, and I only confirmed it later that evening. I was not the one that brought up the issue of the White Party. What I said was that [meningitis could spread] at a large gatherings, and that could be something like a White Party or any weekend in West Hollywood."

Duran said he apologized to the Shaad family for any infringement on their privacy he may have spurred.

Asked if he would have handled things differently if given the opportunity, Duran said he would have only made some minor changes, including not mentioning the White Party and stressing that heterosexuals and lesbians could catch meningitis just as easily as men who have sex with men. 

"What I would not have changed is the urgency with which it was handled, people who survive, they come often come out of it with mental retardation, deafness of blindness," he said. "When we're talking about losing one of five senses or death, and this is a disease that's  passed though the air, I do think it requires an urgent response. It may have been different it we hadn't had the New York Scenario, but we do. We are the second largest city in country, and we should do everything we can to prevent foothold."

Duran said he felt the response to his statement has been a net positive, given the heightened awareness of meningitis.

"It's on the the minds of everyone in the community. I overheard people talking about it over the weekend at parties. Everybody is talking about meningitis and now they're blogging about it and criticizing my response,  but reality is it's out in the consciousness of community," he said.

Free meningitis vaccinations are now being made available throughout the Los Angeles area.