Originally Posted by
John Littlejohn
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Too late.
You already have it.
Everyone has it.
Well, OK, not absolutely everyone, but over 90% of the world population has HSV. If you have ever had a cold sore, you have herpes. If you've never had a cold sore, you have asymptomatic herpes. You should pretty much just assume that anyone you have sex with has it too. It's not that this guy has herpes; it's that he has symptoms. Most people don't, even when they carry the virus.
The only thing you need to know is that before the late 1970s, doctors told patients with herpes to go home, sleep it off, no biggie, they'll go away. It wasn't even considered an STD because the virus is transmitted in a variety of ways, not just sex, and it causes no illness. What changed? In the late '70s, pharma company Burroughs Wellcome developed Zovirax to treat herpetic infections in severely immuno compromised patients. The problem was that the market for that is small. Since Zovirax also treats the symptoms of generic herpes outbreaks they developed a marketing campaign to stigmatize the genital version, to create anxiety in consumers and sell more pills. It was one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever. Overnight, 3/4 of the population got reclassified as sick lepers in need of their medication. We now call this type of campaign "disease mongering."
Now, it is up to you to decide whether to love this man or be a dupe to an advertising campaign from the 1980s about a harmless skin condition that has been around since biblical times and that you probably already have.