Where can I find more info on this? You’ve peaked my curiosity and I want to learn more about HSV and how it works.
Comment on Anon contracts herpes
Opisek@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Literally ⅔ of all humanity has at least one type of HSV. It is not the end of the world.
Turret3857@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
It works by making ugly sore blisters all over my mouth a couple times a year
Turret3857@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Huh, either I dont know I have it or I got lucky. Thats crazy. I imagine an STD test would pick up HSV-2 but I wonder if it also picks up the oral variant. Ive never actually noticed any symptoms on myself. This is actually crazy though I didnt know this, I feel like more people should. TIL lol
Opisek@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You can totally also be asymptomatic for your whole life and not know it. It is also useful to know that “oral herpes” doesn’t exclusively affect your mouth, and “genital herpes” doesn’t exclusively affect your genitals. Just more often. Both types can appear in both locations. The hypothetical person from the greentext would likely have contracted oral herpes.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I got tested once and the doctor told me testing for herpes is pointless because most everyone has the antibodies in their body due to how common it is. The test gives false positives most of the time.
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No one treats for HSV1 ever unless you have a bad active outbreak.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK47447/
Worldwide, ∼90% of people have one or both viruses. HSV-1 is the more prevalent virus, with 65% of persons in the United States having antibodies to HSV-1 (Xu et al., 2002). The epidemiology in Europe is similar, with at least half of the population seropositive for HSV-1. In the developing world, HSV-1 is almost universal, and usually acquired from intimate contact with family in early childhood
2/3 of the population UNDER 50 have some form of HSV, but virtually every person autopsied that died over the age of 60 will have HSV-1. It’s THAT common. That’s why they don’t test.
vfsh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
In my experience most standard STD panels will test for HSV-2 but not 1, usually you’d have to special request it
LOLseas@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
- piqued my curiosity…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Nah, OP has reached peak curiosity, it’s all downhill from here.
Turret3857@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
i choose this explanation. nothing is or will be as interesting as this question I asked at 3am
LOLseas@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yeah, well, that’s just like, your opinion, maaaan.
angrystego@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The important and nastiest part of HSV is some strains cause cervical cancer in women, so men with HSV must take care not to spread something that has the potential to kill their partner. There is a vaccine, but it doesn’t work 100%.
ThoGot@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Are you sure that you don’t mean HPV?
Saryn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Indeed, the cancer thing applies to women with HPV, a virus that most people have also been affected with (though the vast majority of cases do not lead to cancer which still leaves tens of million of women at risk).
angrystego@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, yeah, I seem to mess them up - HPV is the one with vaccine, HPS is similar in that it can be a cause of cervical cancer, but the matter is less researched and I don’t know about a vaccine.
ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Also throat cancer in men.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
the vaccine is very effective
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Tell me you have herpes without saying you have herpes.
edwardbear@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
1/3 gang represent. Passed midlife, still clean. I didn’t find my penis in the trash bin.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I didn’t find my penis in the trash bin.
but have you looked behind the couch?
Sandal6823@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
1/3 club 😎🤏
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Hey, it’s 1 in 10 for the genital version in the U.S. Not common. When someone dismissively says “oh it’s not that bad, it’s not the end of the world”, they’re not the ones who had to deal with pain of taking shots with sores in their ass. To deal with having a hard time being able to tell the difference between gas, liquid, and solids knocking at the door while on stool softeners to help make shots less painful. The fact is, it’s debilitated me mentally and physically. The scarring from it has taken all the pleasure away from anal for me, and it still hurts to shit half the time. Don’t treat it so fucking lightly.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
i’m sorry that you’ve had that experience and i don’t mean to diminish what you’re don’t through, but it’s also very important to note that this is far from the normal for the very large majority of people
fear doesn’t help sexual health… all sex comes with risks, and unprotected sex comes with significantly increased risk but the reality is by and large this is not what HSV looks like without other factors effecting it
downplaying risks is bad, but equally bad is people thinking a condition is worse than it is. this leads to more risky behaviour, because if they get the “scary” thing and it’s not as bad as they expect, they can take risky behaviour because they discount all their other education
it also only reinforces stigmas. this is particularly common with HIV-positive people: these days, if you have an undetectable viral load (if you take your daily medications) you can not pass on HIV… however the stigma remains, and people still often choose to not have sex with someone with an undetectable HIV infection (again, undetectable IS UNTRANSMITTABLE)
muddying the waters is very bad at scale
calm, unbiased information is what is required for public health. individual anecdotes about worst case scenarios do not serve to make people’s lives better
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Telling people it’s no big deal is doing them a direct misservice. By all means it should be destimized but you should also be honest about the risks and realities of what it can mean. What happened to me might be a worse case scenario but the average first breakout is still way worse than you would have people believe, and people should know what can actually happen. I’m so sick of people being dismissive of it
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
is it? i honestly have no idea?
what are the implications on quality of life of various STDs? how “bad” is it to catch herpes? is it even worth avoiding it? (as i read somewhere that most people catch it eventually anyways.)
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
There’s two variants. One is extremely harmless and is generally oral. This is the one that nearly everyone has and no one really notices. The other variant is generally genital (though either one can be in either place) and is more severe and less common. The first outbreak can be really bad, subsequent ones less so. An estimated 1 in 10 adults in the US have it, though I’d imagine it skews a lot more towards highly sexually active communities. It can be transmitted even if you don’t actively have sores, though that’s much rather. Condoms also don’t prevent transmission, though again they make it much more unlikely. While getting it certainly doesn’t have to be the end of the world it is worse than they generally say.
Glitterbomb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Here’s the really fun part of the above stat: the majority of those cases are spread via family members kissing.
napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That’s like saying blood out of your ass happens to everyone when most cases are just hemorrhoids and some are cancer.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
And it’s not infectious when it’s asymptomatic.
Two2Tango@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
And it’s asymptomatic most of the time. 😚
rirus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Thats false! “Transmission may still occur when symptoms are not present.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes