Understanding Herpes Statistics: Shedding Light on the Unknown
I’ve always believed in the power of statistics to initiate conversation and change around education and normalization of herpes. But often, these can be difficult to conceptualize or make sense of given the stigma.
What does 90% look like? How many people do we see each and interact with each day, whether online or in-person? What’s 90% of that? How many partners have you engaged with? How many of them did you ask for their STI Status, or share your own? What’s 90% of those numbers?
I bring up one’s partners as a sexual self-analysis in consideration of what we DO know about herpes, specifically HSV-2, for relevancy. Despite how someone’s genitals appear, despite frequent STI screenings and self-reports, despite barrier use, they likely cannot with full assurance confirm their herpes status.
90% of people don’t know that they have HSV-2 because:
•it doesn’t always present with symptoms
•you usually need presenting symptoms to be tested for herpes
•symptoms don’t match what you saw in sex ed (or your Google search) so you think it’s a scratch or ingrown hair and move on
•the CDC doesn’t mandate testing for herpes (for several reasons—I have another post that dives into this) so being “tested for everything” has its limitations
Lack of awareness and knowledge of one’s own infection can and does lead to transmission. Sure, you could spend hours ruminating over the ifs, ands, buts, and hows of the odds of transmission and your own sexual statistics and likelihood of contracting herpes (which, btw is stigma), but my advice is this: if you don’t know your herpes status (like many folks), have requested/been denied a test and/or cannot access/afford a test—be honest about that and share this with your partners.
Being sexual with someone includes multiple levels of education—teaching someone else about your body, learning someone else’s, learning communication styles, and also learning more about yourself and sex along the way.