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It doesn’t seem to be so much an immune system problem as mode of transmission problem with this monkeypox outbreak. Immune function may well play a role, as this particular group is more likely to be HIV+, and to also be picking up other STIs along with the pox.

It can be spread by skin-to-skin contact. If you had a little cut or laceration on your hand and touched the weeping pustule of someone suffering from monkeypox, you very well might catch it, even with a strong immune system. And the little monkeypox bumps would likely begin on your hand.

Think about how gay men are spreading it — there are already skin tears and lacerations in that, er, place they find interesting. Their bumps start out in the genital and nether regions.

The outbreak began in earnest after a few “superspreader events”:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4065116/posts?page=43#43

Given these men are doing that with other men whose names they don’t know and often travelled from another country, contact tracing must be tough! So it spiraled in that “community”.

These men flew home on planes while symptomatic, and the health departments in their home countries monitored their fellow passengers, but none caught it. It can be spread by touching objects that have come in contact with an oozing pustule, and through prolonged face-to-face contact (droplet spread) — so if people on the planes had weakened immune systems from the Covid vaccines... Hmm. Would not a few have caught it? Maybe yes, maybe no. Can’t really say. There have been symptomatic people on planes a few times before Covid or vaccines and no one caught it.

Previous outbreaks have been easily contained, including the 2003 “pet prairie dog” outbreak in the US:

In 2003, forty-seven confirmed and probable cases of monkeypox were reported from six states—Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. All people infected with monkeypox in this outbreak became ill after having contact with pet prairie dogs. The pets were infected after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana. This was the first time that human monkeypox was reported outside of Africa.

Link: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/outbreak/us-outbreaks.html

What appears to have happened, is now that those who never got the smallpox vaccination are old enough to spread it this way, and some guy who picked it up in West Africa happened to be, or be in “close personal contact” with, an attendee of one of these superspreader events — we got the pox in that group. As some of these men flit from one event to another, it wound up in a number of Western countries quickly. With contact tracing so difficult, it’s no wonder this outbreak has been tough to stop — but has thankfully not spread beyond that group.

I think the outrageously prolongued lockdowns and masking weakened our natural immune systems. I have not seen any evidence yet that the vaccines did, so keeping an open mind on that question, although it does seem unlikely to me.

BTW, I am not vaccinated. I had the original Covid very early on (Feb 2020) and then got Omicron earlier this year. The first was horrible, the second, meh, no biggie. I’m not pro- or anti-vaxx, but very much anti-mandate.