Biden Monkeypox Adviser Makes Taxpayer-Funded Appearance in BDSM Harness President Joe Biden's monkeypox adviser appeared on stage in bondage gear last month at an event where, as part of his official duties, he discussed "sex positivity" during pandemics. A video that started making the rounds on social media over the weekend showed Demetre Daskalakis, the White House deputy monkeypox response coordinator, strutting onto the rainbow-lit dais and rallying the crowd as dance music blared. Daskalakis, wearing a business suit and sex harness, was escorted by two shirtless men wearing brightly-colored bikini bottoms with matching socks. The occasion was the seventh annual Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit on April 11 and 12 at The Cosmopolitan, a casino hotel in Las Vegas. Daskalakis took part in the kickoff panel discussion, which was titled "'Sex is natural, sex is fun.' The politics of sex and pleasure in the age of pandemics" according to the event website. The panelists—who included a transgender "equity consultant" and a "sex-positive Leatherman"—explored "the historical perspectives on the politics of sex positivity during the last four decades of the HIV pandemic to the present days of COVID and MPOX." Specific topics included "kinks, barebacking, fetish, BDSM, Chemex, group sex, bathhouses/sex clubs, porn, consent, and more." Daskalakis was described as "on assignment" in his role as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's director of the division of HIV/AIDS prevention—for which he was paid a taxpayer-funded salary of about $246,000 last year.