| In your own words you stated: > It's not life altering in any way besides the fact that HSV2 has such a strong stigma <snip>... It is potentially quite life-altering, and you may agree with me after you're over 60 years old. If you instead asserted "it hasn't been life-altering in any way so far besides..." then I wouldn't have replied at all. Adding a persistent genital herpes outbreak to six months of shingles in old age qualifies as life-altering in my book. Your comment comes across as if everyone should get over it and not exclude partners infected with genital herpes from their intimate lives, that this stigma exists just because it's associated with sex. Nobody wants to be infected with any form of the herpes virus, the variants of which will cumulatively add life-altering complications when your immune system deteriorates. Genital herpes is appropriately highly stigmatized because it has the most potential for effective prevention through avoidance. Choice of sexual partner is already culturally accepted as a highly discrimatory exercise, it basically goes unnoticed for the uninfected population to exclude those infected with genital herpes from their sex lives, it's not like the uninfected end up without sufficient available partners as a result. It has zero impact on their daily goings on. Compare that to the futility of stigmatizing Chickenpox however, the difference seems obvious. |
For a not-insignificant minority, HSV is life-altering. Both for the reasons you've mentioned, and also for increased instance of suicide, and increased risk of infant mortality if the mother is experiencing an outbreak during birth.