Thanks, Beck. I mistakenly thought he was referring to a strain of syphilis bacteria, not weed.
I dont. I expect just about the worst, with maybe Florida and the Deep South coming in as the worst.
Well, since there is no such thing as “unchecked immigration” I would have to say no. Not to mention those people come from nations with UHC.
Hmm, good info , thanks.
Okay, I had to look that up.
Cresco is a strain of cannabis, not Treponema pallidum.
Birth control was also unreliable, and often hard to obtain.
BTW, one treatment for gonorrhea in the pre-antibiotic era was Lysol. Women were given a douche of a capful or two in a few quarts of the hottest water they could stand, and men had their urethras flushed with the straight product.
Some soldiers were even given small tubes of a mercurial ointment, to be rubbed on their “parts” if they had a suspect exposure.
My local city, which has several colleges and a thriving LGBT community, has billboards that say things like “HIV is treatable - know your status” and my local newspaper has ads saying the same thing. It’s not just my local paper, because I recently saw a paper from my mother’s hometown in rural Iowa, population about 700, and they carry those ads too.
I’d heard of Lysol douches. Thank dog we’re beyond that now.
tyvm.
ETA: What CairoCarol said.
I live only to serve 
@kayaker I hope you’re not angry with me.
No, but one party is vehemently opposed to sex education and public health initiatives.
Newborns still get drops in their eyes to prevent blindness if their mother has gonorrhea, although nowadays its modern antibiotics instead of the silver nitrate solution they used to use.
They were also advised to wash with soap thoroughly immediately after sex, which reduced transmission rates. And from 1910 on Salvarsan was available to those with access to premium medical care, although it required an arduous treatment course (but still vastly superior to mercury compounds).
We do?
Love you! Yes, Cresco is a company that sells pharmaceutical grade cannabis to Pennsylvanians like myself. A particularly potent strain was to blame for the thread title.
For those who want to see a more recent take on STD statistics nationally and by state, here is a 2023 source:
This echoes @Jackmannii’s post:
Given that the OP was in reference to 2021 statistics for Houston and while the year over year growth is alarming, the numbers are not that big. But this link has a very alarming long-term graph, showing a steady decrease in infections from the 50’s until the early 2000’s, then an explosion from about 2008-2010 to 2021 (I mean, it undoes about 50 years of progress in about 10 years).
This raises the question of what caused this sudden, explosive growth of syphilis infections in the past 10-15 years? (And secondarily, what caused the spike in the 80’s. Was it just the rise of HIV as an STD?)
One thought I had was whether anyone has tried to correlate the rise in STDs with the (fairly successful) assault in certain states on clinics offering free sexual health services (like Planned Parenthood closures, reduction of state-funded services, etc.,) and/or reduction of sex education in schools?
From my link above, under the Texas statistics is the following description (bolding is mine):
A number of factors are thought to contribute to this statistic, including limited access to healthcare services, inadequate sex education programs, and high levels of poverty in certain areas.
Even though Texas is in the middle of the pack among states, I note that they’ve gone from under the national average in 2021 to over the national average in 2023.
Sorry if this has already been discussed, but I seem to remember a while back reading about increases in sexually-transmitted diseases in senior communities, where sex with many partners had apparently become quite common. Is that part of this?
While those between 15-24 account for half of all STDs reported, you may be right about syphilis. From the link below, only 20% of syphilis cases are in ages 15-24.
STI Statistics and Young People : I Wanna Know
Here’s some specific numbers on 55+
freeSTDcheck.org advertises in Ohio, too, but around here the billboards mostly seem to focus on HIV.
And were the old mercury-based medicines effective at all (given, of course, that they were certainly less effective and had worse side effects than proper antibiotics)?
Crikey!
(also, a note to young graphic makers: please also include a line for the overall average. thanks in advance).
Shame, shame Granny.
+1.
And can someone find a pie chart that shows the contribution of each age demographic to the overall numbers? While seniors have the highest percentage increase, they are one of the smallest segments of the population, so the absolute contribution to the overall numbers may be relatively minor, even with the bigger percentage increase within that population, but I didn’t find a direct comparison of the numbers by age demographic anywhere (in the half dozen sites I clicked on).
No pie chart, but tables of raw statistics, here’s syphilis. Young people are still the ones with by far the highest rates. Of course, they’re also likely getting it on more frequently (cue Barry White).
Index of tables: