via – Two-thirds of the world’s population has the virus that causes cold sores, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
That’s 3.7 billion people under the age of 50 with the pesky and incurable herpes virus.
But it causes more than cold sores.
The herpes simplex 1 virus (HSV-1) can also cause sores on the genitals — and oral sex is becoming a leading way it’s being transmitted, the WHO reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
“The global burden of HSV-1 infection is huge,” the WHO research team writes.
“An estimated 140 million people aged 15-49 years were calculated to have prevalent genital HSV-1 infection globally in 2012,” they wrote.
That means two kinds of incurable herpes viruses are causing sexually transmitted infections in the populations.
HSV-2 is traditionally called genital herpes, and it’s the kind most people think of as causing sexually transmitted infections. HSV-1, while annoying and sometimes painful, is usually caught in childhood and often via kisses.
Alright, first things first. The World Health Organization needs to chill a bit on dishing out the bad news. On Monday they tell us that bacon, hot dogs, red meat and basically anything that tastes good is going to give us colorectal cancer and then on Tuesday we find out that we’ve been eating chopped up human fingers in our hot dogs. That’s a LOT to take in for one week. So who do they think they are, just casually dropping this herpes bomb on all of us under 50?
This totally feels like The Walking Dead. Everyone has it. Everyone’s a carrier. It’s just a matter of time. Basically there is a real world zombie/herpes fighting equivalent to Rick, Darryl, Carol and Michonne out there, just battling to stay one step ahead of the virus. They’re probably somewhere in northern Minnesota or something because with all the action Newport sees they’re certainly not here, they’re not in Boston and there isn’t a snowball chance in hell they’re in NYC. So enjoy the herpes, I guess.
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