No, I don’t need an answer fast. 
It’s never been clear to me just how contagious are STD’s?
Does it vary according to the type of STD? The type of sex?
If you have sex with someone with an STD is it safe to say you just caught it?
Why are condoms effective in offering some protection? Your dick is covered. But the rest of the genitals are exposed to body secretions.
I’m not a doctor but my understanding is some sexually-transmitted diseases don’t actually transmit very well. HIV, for example, is not very contagious. One statistic I read said that the odds of unprotected sex resulting in a pregnancy are thirteen times higher than the odds of unprotected sex transmitting HIV from one partner to another.
You obviously want to avoid false confidence. Doing something that has even a one percent chance of killing you is still a bad idea.
HIV is mostly transmitted through blood. This is why it was originally found more in gay men where anal sex can cause bleeding. In our hospital we were told that blood should be treated as a hazardous substance.
I recall several porn stars were exposed to AIDS after doing scenes with John Holmes in the mid 1980’s. There was some panic.
AFAIK they never found any actresses that caught it from him.
It was a big scare. Some of the industry’s biggest stars had worked with him.
The short answers to your questions are :
**Does it vary according to the type of STD? ** yes.
** The type of sex?** Yes, that too.
If you have sex with someone with an STD is it safe to say you just caught it?
I wouldn’t use the word “safe” there. But no, having sex with someone with any STD doesn’t mean you now have it.
Why are condoms effective in offering some protection? Your dick is covered. But the rest of the genitals are exposed to body secretions.
The reason why I understand you asking in a forum of strangers, instead of just looking it up online, is because there are people who will tell you that anyone with an STD will cause you to get it too, if you fail to throw rocks at them from a distance and scream curses as they run away down the street.
A few general things:
Some STD’s are easier to catch than others. Some are harder to know the person has. Some have such low level symptoms in SOME people, that they don’t even know they have them, and then they pass them on to someone else.
The main reason why some people say not to trust a condom, isn’t because a condom wont work per se, it’s because people who are having a really good time, often fail to use a condom PROPERLY. This is because using one properly, will limit your fun.
Some STD’s are only transmissible SOMETIMES. Some people are only susceptible to some STD’s SOMETIMES.
Some STD tests are more reliable than others. Some give false positives. Some give false negatives. And you have to get a specific test for the STD you are concerned about…if you don’t specify, you wont know. Some STD’s are actually not yet understood well enough to say anything definite about them, so we get wide cautionary messages. Some STD’s have cures, and some don’t.
Some people who give official advice, want to avoid being sued, so they will tell you that you can catch an STD from a sneeze or a handshake. I heard a show on the radio (a long while ago now) where they were talking about the risk of getting pregnant, and they advised young people that they could get pregnant even if they never took their clothes off. They wouldn’t spell out the truth, due to censorship and the desire to discourage all young people from having sex.
Hope that helps, but I doubt it will, even though it’s accurate.
I don’t really understand this. Could you give me examples of proper condom usage and improper usage? And then specify how the improper method allows for more pleasure than the proper method?
Attempting to reuse them is improper use. Sometimes people, teenagers in particular, will have only one, but so as “not to limit their fun,” will reuse it. They may attempt to rinse it off in the sink first.
Using an expired one is another example of improper use. Again, people who do not have another one, will use the expired one rather than put their clothes back on and go to the store.
Then there is the “it ripped/came off” “oh, just keep going” error.
And, people do have to be taught how to put them on. You give one to someone who has not been taught how to use it, and they sometimes unroll it, then try to drag it on like a tube sock (on the banana you also gave them, what do you think?)
HIV isn’t actually that contagious at all except through anal sex, or else where the vagina has artificially been dried out (in a process called dry sex), or where there are sores from other STDs.
I believe this is right. One of the reasons it’s epidemic in Africa among heterosexuals, and women in particular is that they often have broken skin from other STDs because they don’t have easy access to treatment like people in Europe and N. America do. At least, I was told this by someone I knew who lived in Kenya for a couple of years while his father lectured at a university on some aspect of medicine-- he had a Ph.D in anatomy or something, and taught at a med school.
“STD” is a vaguely defined term. For example, Herpes (HSV2) and cold sores (HSV1) are basically the same thing and can infect the same areas, but since HSV1 more commonly affects the mouth it’s either not considered an STD, or only considered one if it infects the genitals. There’s a very weird selective social stigma where herpes is considered extremely dirty and awful to have but cold sores are not even something worth mentioning. Some things like Hepatitis B and C are not considered STDs even though sexual transmission is a major vector for their spread.
Transmission rates vary wildly between different diseases and different types of contact. If there’s a penis involved, generally the ‘catcher’ is much more likely to catch a disease than the ‘pitcher’. Condom usage significantly cuts the rate of almost all STDs, but doesn’t prevent any absolutely, especially if sufficient care is not taken. Some like HIV have a really hard time spreading without blood mixing, others spread just by skin to skin contact like HPV. Crabs (pubic lice) have become extremely rare in the US because shaved crotches are highly common. Generally genital-anal and genital-genital contact are the most likely way to spread any disease.
“Someone with an STD” is also not a very well-defined term. The CDC estimates that everyone who has been sexually active has some strain of HPV, 20% of Americans have HSV2 (herpes), 80% have HSV1 (cold sores), and that around 80% of the people who have it don’t know it. But at the same time, there’s no test for HPV in men, and only a test for the six cancer-causing strains in women. There’s no test that will show that a person doesn’t have herpes (or cold sores), and the only test that definitely shows that someone does requires testing a sample from a sore. Tests for Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are pretty reliable, and tests for HIV have become extremely fast and reliable.
Another improper use is not putting it on until they begin penetrative sex. It’s possible for the penis to produce viable sperm prior to that, and if they get into the vagina, to cause pregnancy. That’s possible even if the couple does not go on to full intercourse – thus a girl still a virgin can become pregnant.
Because it covers the membranes of the genitals and reproductive organs.
The urethra,vagina,uterus, etc is a warm wet place that the pathogen can survive in…
Most bacterial STI’s give a high chance of getting the disease from one contact.
Something like syphillis could perhaps be contracted sexually but then move away from the genitals and so the person would not be contagious via sex. But generally the infection is going to persist in the genitals. Having had bacterial STI provides little to no protection from getting it again,no matter how long ther person had it before being treated with antibiotics. No person ever got better without antibiotics.
The viral STI generally have a lower transmission rate,
In general STDs are not transmitted that easily at all. If you look up the odds for all of the individual ones, it’s astonishing really. There is so much misinformation out there. Medhelpis probably the best place online (in my opinion) for scientific, real information.
By that standard, Glandular fever should be classed as an STD because the main way it spreads is by teenagers kissing each other.
Actually, if I recall the Scientific American issue discussing this -
Sex, which usually involves vigorous skin-on-skin action, can cause micro-tears in the skin. This happens most often in the vagina - because the skin is soft membrane tissue, as opposed to tough external skin. Similarly, for uncircumcised men, the inside of the foreskin and the glans are much more like internal tissues than external. Also, under the foreskin and in the vagina, the fluids containing the virus linger in a moist wet environment, giving them much more opportunity to eventually seep into these tears in the soft skin and cause an infection. Obviously, the anal cavity with less natural lubrication is even more susceptible to tearing (and being more abrasive on the partner), giving the same danger.
As a result, studies in Africa found that the woman was far more likely than the man to become infected from heterosexual contact. Similarly, an uncircumcised man was (IIRC) about 5 times more likely to become infected than a circumcised man.
Compounding the problem in some areas of Africa was a male preference for what they called “dry sex”. (Yikes!) Men would actually use some form of something (herbs?) to dry out the woman’s vagina to make sex more “interesting” for the man. This of course increased the likelihood of tears in the vaginal walls. But then, we’re talking about male-dominated societies where sometimes women could be beaten for suggesting the man wear a condom. Plus a host of other social issues that aggravated the problem (i.e. in many places, migrant workers away from their family for extended periods made use of prostitutes, thus helping to spread the disease back to many villages…) Plus, as mentioned, open sores from other STD’s or problems made infection that much easier.
I recall a very disturbed drag queen interviewed on CBC Radio once about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, saying “I tried to get AIDS but all I got was fat…”
In fact, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, for a year or so, I recall the medical experts saying you could not catch AIDS through regular sexual intercourse- probably a combination of low odds and incubation times.
So short answer- for circumcised males, you are pretty safe; but it’s like pregnancy or Russian Roulette… It only takes one time, but which one? For uncircumcised males, less safe. And for females, even less safe; and for recipients of anal sex, worse yet. But in no way is it guaranteed… Unless, I suppose, you are pumped up with a litre of infected blood as happened to a lot of surgery patients. And like Russian Roulette, if you keep at it, sooner or later…
I am not a doctor, and I don’t know for other STD’s, but I assume the logic is the same. Then infection has to enter the bloodstream or at least get through the skin. It’s most likely to do so through the softer tissues, which would get small breaks from sexual activity.
I understand now why I got through my single years STD free. Safe sex wasn’t as big an issue prior to AIDS. We had antibiotics for any pesky drips from our penis or vagina.
Everything changed just before I married. The first mid 1980’s AIDS cases were just starting to be reported.
My wife and I both got throughly checked not too long after getting married. I am relieved any careless acts before marriage didn’t catch up with me.
Yes, as I understood the science articles, the other problem was that unlike other infections, the AIDS virus population was remarkably low even in a fully infected individual. During the early 80’s, the big race between two major labs was to examine blood samples from infected people and try to find a single instance of the virus. It took months. IANAD, but my understanding is that most other infections, whether sexual or not, the virus or bacteria count is significantly higher, so the odds of infection much much greater. But then, it also depends how often you did anything risky with an infected partner, what you did, and how vigorously.
An acquaintance of mine had the unfortunate experience of his wife and girlfriend meeting at the doctor’s office to have the same infection treated. The wife blamed the girlfriend, not realizing the guy had picked it up from a hooker at a local bar and infected both of them… funny but true story.
As Dr. Ruth used to say.
When I was 21 I impregnated my 20 year old GF in a heavy petting session. She was still a virgin and very nervous about initial intercourse. Long story short, we were both in our underwear grinding together like mad. Pop! Well, that was fun!
She missed her period. She began feeling sick in the mornings. She tested positive. She told her doctor she was still a virgin. Doctor said, “Yes, you are, but it is possible to get pregnant without penetration.”
:eek:
When a woman is young and fertile, ejaculate soaking through panties just might do the job.
The poor girl miscarried. Though it was scary and nerve-wracking for both of us, it was for the best. Neither one of us was even remotely ready for parenthood. She was from a staunch Catholic background. Abortion was out of the question for her.
I know the thread is about STDs, but my story is relevant. To be indelicate, just because you don’t stick it in doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant or sick.
Be careful out there, kids. Seriously.
There’s a reason they don’t make condoms out of woven nylon.
But in fact, one of my teachers in high school was a former priest, and told us the same thing - that they had counselled quite a few girls who were pregnant despite still being technically virgins. And Suzanne Sommers in her autobiography relates exactly the same thing happening to her when she got pregnant in college. Sperm just needs to get into her juicy bits before it dries up too much and dies, so it can swim the rest of the way… It doesn’t care if it has to soak through cloth, or dribbles there, or is carried in by fingers, or however.