Hillary Clinton just slammed the stigma surrounding sexually transmitted infections

Washington Post ^ | September 7, 2016 | Danielle Paquette

[Pinkbell]

Ella Dawson expected to find a Netflix bill in her Brooklyn mailbox. She discovered instead a letter from Hillary Clinton. The 24-year-old blogger, who writes often about living with genital herpes, figured it was a standard campaign mailer. She once donated $50 to Clinton.

She tore open the envelope. She froze. Did the Democratic presidential candidate, one of the most famous figures on the planet, just thank her for talking about sexually transmitted infections on the Internet?

“I am so grateful to you for not only speaking out against the stigma,” Clinton wrote, “but for also taking a courageous stand against the ridiculous, but very real, barrage of hate you received online.”

Dawson shared a photo of the letter Tuesday with her 7,600 Twitter followers:

Thank you, @HillaryClinton, for reading. I'm incredibly moved. To be accurate, I'm ugly crying. #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/kt5tAVWrFX

Messages poured in:

Thank you for standing up.

I'm sorry you have had to suffer harassment, Ella, but thank you for fighting.

#UglyCrying too!! There are so many of these personal stories out there!

Politics aside, Dawson hopes the high-profile recognition will help change the way people talk about herpes — a condition she says is misunderstood and common. Two out of three people under the age of 50 have Herpes Simplex Virus 1, which can cause oral and genital sores, according to a January report by the World Health Organization.

That amounts to roughly 3.7 billion people with an incurable virus. Doctors say the majority never see an outbreak.

(Snip)

Dawson’s diagnosis came days before she turned 21, she told The Post, and the news left her confused. She said she used condoms, but didn’t know herpes spreads through skin-to-skin contact and latex doesn’t always stop it. She feared she could never enjoy intimate relationships again.

[Tax-chick]

LOL!

[Jaded]

Most people don’t know the difference or significance.

[Mears]

I was plagued with cold sores most of my life-—Lysine was a miracle for me.

.

[jacknhoo]

Is this a prelude to Hillary’s health records exposing the STD’s she has?

[tumblindice]

There was a young girl from Bavaria
Who thought her disease was malaria,
.. But the family doc
.. Explained to her shock,
“It began in your genital area.”

[LambSlave]

The girl is an ignoramus....calling HSV 1 an STD is ridiculous.

Actually HSV-1 is certainly an STD when it results in a genital infection; it has exactly the same symptoms as HSV-2. For whatever reason, fewer people are developing immunity during childhood to HSV-1 as in the past, and as a result HSV-1 is causing more cases of genital herpes. Probably due to a combination of (i) the increase in oral sex combined and (ii) no pre-existing childhood immunity of the uninfected sexual partner. HSV-1 is now responsible for ~40% of all cases of genital herpes!! When I studied infectious diseases in the 90s, they were just starting to recognize how widespread HSV-1 mediated genital herpes was, but I did notice the older textbooks (70s/80s) on infectious diseases made the same distinction that you infer-- HSV-1 common virus that leads to cold sores, HSV-2 less common virus that leads to genital sores. It is no longer that simple. Also, HSV-2 is in fact also from the same general family of viruses that includes chicken pox/ shingles.

[achilles2000]

Viruses and bacterial infections can enter many places in the body. An STI has been traditionally been considered to be an infection that is primarily sexually transmitted. HSV 1 IS NOT, while I don’t disagree that it is sometimes transmitted during sex. But if being transmissible during sex is the criterion, then I suppose staph or any UTI, for example, would have to be an STI, too, because they could be transmitted during sex, as would also be the case with other infections that are not typically sexually transmitted.

The public health profession has become highly politicized, and claiming that HSV 1 is an STI is part of an effort to destigmatize the consequences of the promiscuity encouraged by the left. Frankly, saying, in effect, that a 6 year-old with occasional cold sores has an STI is despicable. In sum, lots of things can cause infections in the genitalia, but only a few of them involve what have been commonly understood to be STIs. Broadening the definition is political, unless something new has been discovered that is primarily transmitted sexually.