I know at least 5 people, all around the 40-50 age group.
My first thought is that sometimes baby’s come sooner than expected - it might have been a C-section was scheduled but the bundle of joy arrived prior to the date and prior to getting to the hospital.
Obviously, if the woman is having an outbreak avoiding vaginal delivery would be a good idea.
But women with herpes have given vaginal birth without infecting the child - if there’s no current outbreak no transmission may occur. Of course, as pointed out, you can transmit the virus without having the lesions present. Probably best to avoid the risk when possible, just remember it’s not always possible.
Actually, assuming they got it treated, it should be A-ok to sleep with them. The clap (aka gonorrhea) is a bacterium, not a virus, and is cured with some doses of antibiotics.
Having worked for years at Planned Parenthood, and discussed the diagnosis of genital herpes with many, many… many people, all I have to say is that you probably know several people with herpes.
People would sometimes panic or be completely devastated with the diagnosis. It was sad to see, and if it didn’t feel like a completely inappropriate thing to say, I’d remind them that, though incurable, it’s not fatal, and that something like twenty five percent of folks have been exposed.
Protect yourself as much as possible, and choose your partners wisely, but understand that many folks don’t know they’re positive and some folks know but omit the detail.
Not the worst that could happen, but certainly to be avoided, if at all possible.
Oh, I realize this. I omitted the fact, but the friends who have all had gonorrhea are all in the same circle (I hang out with the sometimes, but not too often). I’d rather just stay out of the STD sex circle if it all possible, curable or otherwise.
I know two people with herpes. One is mid-30s, the other is in her 40s.
Why do the statistics seem high? Many people our age have random hookups, which doesn’t always include the act of sex, but I would bet pretty often involves oral sex. And how many people do you honestly think use condoms when engaging in oral sex? 2-3%?
When there are sexual themed threads on this board everyone always mentions about getting tested and making sure that their partners have been tested, but this rarely happens out on college campuses. I’ve never seen two people exchange paperwork and test results before going off to an empty room together. So no, the one-in-four statistic doesn’t seem alarming to me at all. Honestly, I’m wondering how many people out there have even more serious STDs and either don’t know it yet, or are too embarrassed to tell anyone.
I’ve had herpes since I was twenty, and I had two vaginal births (both perfectly healthy). My obstetrician and I discussed the matter thoroughly; I don’t get frequent outbreaks and I’m pretty aware of their onset when they do occur, so we decided that the risk of the baby contracting herpes was much smaller than the risks an unnecessary c-section would pose. Had I been having an outbreak when I went into labor, we’d have made a different choice. C-sections are a godsend for people who need them, but they’re not a walk in the park.
Honestly, herpes is just not that big a deal. I remember all the to-do about it in the 70’s, but shortly after I learned I had it, we were just starting to hear about AIDS, and herpes seemed like pretty small potatoes compared with that.
As far as I know none of my friends or acquaintances do, but as others have said, having an STD isn’t really the sort of thing you broadcast to people who don’t need to know. Most of my friends are in their early mid 20s.
How accurate are the estimates for the amount of people with herpes? How do they figure things like this out? Are these figures estimated in the same way HIV/AIDS rates were in Africa?
I hear on the radio and on tv somthing like 1 in 8 people have genital herpes. I don’t know a single person with them. I don’t know if thats just because my friends are lying (which I’m sure they aren’t because they are extremely open with a lot worse stuff) or a lot of younger people don’t have them!?
They may have it and just not know.
For some people - most people, even - herpes is a very quiet infection with little drama. The pustules may be very small and nearly painless. You might think you have a small pimple or an ingrown hair. The statistics I’ve read is that more than half of those who have been infected with HSV I or II don’t know they have it and when told, have no idea when they caught it.
A person with herpes can shed the virus from their skin without having any symptoms at all. Thus, if they don’t know, and they don’t show any symptoms, their partner could easily catch it, and if they have a mild infection, they may never know either.
A lot of people find out when they have a general STD screening.
Well, I doubt it, since very little fundraising is predicated on dire herpes statistics.
And I would imagine very few young people are responsible enough to get one of those. Either that or they’re afraid of what the results will be so they steer clear? The fact remains that the number of casual hookups seems to dwarf the number of people concerned with safety and STD awareness by quite a few magnitudes.
I know of one person who has it.
Side note, a good friend has an ex that all freaked out because he thought he’d contracted herpes from my friend. He had symptoms of burning on his johnson, so assumed herpes. She went to the doc. No signs of herpes. We talked muchly about the blood test. Well, has he seen a doctor, says I? No, he refused to see a doc. He KNOWS he has herpes and he KNOWS my friend gave it to him
Well, when the schmuck finally went to see a doc, turns out that all he had was significant irritation from having paint thinner or some such all over his hands and then not washing his hands before touching his dick.
What an idiot.
I know one woman (and of course her former partner) who has genital herpes.
ETA: Oooo! Google ads for Genital Herpes pix! And, all this talk is making my usual cold sore lip spot tingle.
Are you suggesting that HIV/AIDS rates were intentionally inflated to cause alarm and raise funds? As an aside, the is always money on the line, whether it’s Herpes, AIDS, or something else.
I’ve wondered about this statistic too. If I know of anyone with genital herpes they haven’t told me. One or two friends have implied having something with regards to worrying about passing it on to someone they’ve slept with but they weren’t specific. Two of my friend have mentioned getting crabs… And one of my friends has HIV.
I’m not surprised if people don’t know if they’ve never had really obvious symptoms. Usually when people get tested just because they are sexually active in general, it seems like they are only tested for HIV. I once got tested for “everything” and I had to specifically ask for it, and it involved not just a blood test but swabbing the tip of my penis.
I once had a “scare” with some kind of pimple around my nether regions and the quack doctor insisted it was something or other, and I had to copiously wash my hands and so forth, and then the test came back negative. It was just a pimple.
One of my best friends has Type I but genitally. She’s 25, has no idea who gave it to her, and at that time, there were a lot of possible candidates. She told the guy she was with at the time, and he FREAKED out, even though he showed no signs of having it. They broke up quite acrimoniously for that and a number of other reasons, and he proceeded to make an anonymous myspace account and sent PMs to everyone on her friends list about her having herpes. She knows it was him who told because only 3 people knew, and two of them (one of whom was me) wouldn’t broadcast it for spite. It was horrible, yet another reason I hate myspace.
I wish the stigma would go away a little. It really could happen to anyone who’s sexually active, even if you use a condom. My friend probably got it from a guy who had Type I giving her oral, so a condom would have been no help there.
As for Type I, it seems like a lot of people have it. I have seen 7th graders with herpes on their mouths, and kids even younger than that. Stands to reason then that more people would have genital herpes, since it can be transmitted oral to genital. Apparently you can even give it to yourself in other parts of your body, making it not actually a sexually transmitted disease in that case, though few people would really care about the niceties of tranmission when dealing with it.