This is being downvoted to oblivion but I'm not sure if it's true or not; hopefully someone can weigh in before it disappears.

Well hepatitis C wasn't and isn't easily curable, but i guess awareness of it was pretty low.

Is a stronger statement that hepatitis C is NOT curable, as it's a retroviral infection, thereby rewriting host DNA? [ Edit: i'd remembered incorrectly from decades ago: it's an RNA virus ]

>hepatitis C is NOT curable, as it's a retroviral infection

Hepatitis C isn't a retrovirus, so I don't understand what you're saying.

To be clear, hepatitis C now has a 95+% cure rate with modern treatments.

There's a cure for Hepatitis C since 2015.

Importantly, while the bacterial STIs were curable, Herpes was definitely not.

Herpes wasn't considered a disease at the time. It was not pathologized until later.

And HPV wasn't linked with cervical cancer yet - that doesn't mean it wasn't a disease. And I'm comfortable calling HSV-2 a disease based on the potential congenital consequences alone.

It's certainly a manageable one, and the stigma around it is silly, but if the common cold is a disease, then herpes is.

This is more or less true. The pharmacy company Burroughs Wellcome is largely blamed for pathologizing "genital herpes" starting in the late 70s.

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ypa8nb/did-big-pharma...

Wait a second. With heroes you get painful, oozing sores on your genitals. It sometimes never goes away and can flare up at any time.

Does it really take a company to make people think of it as a disease?

"Oh my penis feels like it's on fire and oozing all over me. However, I wouldn't call it a disease."

AIUI it wasn’t considered a disease similar to how cold sores aren’t.

Doesn't seem likely. Do you have data on this?