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