My understanding is there's 2 big changes. The biggest concern of HSV previously was cervix cancer, but as women are pretty standardly immunized against HSV it's almost disappeared, but for men it's relatively new (well like a decade, but it's still not pushed like it is on young women) to be immunized against HSV as part of standard care so it's no longer an issue of immunize to prevent cervix cancer but immunize to prevent throat cancer. I'm in my mid thirties and asked my pharmacist about it, I can get the shot but my insurance says I'm to old so I have to pay out of pocket for it.

Also, yes, sex practices have changed widely in regard to oral sex, many men considered it to be emasculating to go down on a woman and sex was pretty much just PIV until the man finishes and then done.

> Also, yes, sex practices have changed widely in regard to oral sex, many men considered it to be emasculating to go down on a woman and sex was pretty much just PIV until the man finishes and then done.

It's always felt normal to me. I learned that it might not had always been like that from the Sopranos.

Thrush is a fungal yeast infection that's almost universal for most people -- you're going to have these critters living on or in you eventually anyways.

And it's not an issue unless you're immunocompromised or otherwise highly vulnerable. It's not an issue for most people.

That scene on the golf course with Tony making fun of Uncle Junior.

> I'm in my mid thirties and asked my pharmacist about it, I can get the shot but my insurance says I'm to old so I have to pay out of pocket for it.

Are you sure? Also a mid-30s male and my PPO insurance covered it fully last year, no copay, coded as preventative. Call your health insurance and ask about “CPT code 90651”.

Such a fascination the various incantations one must give when interfacing with insurance companies to have any hope of achieving whatever your objective might be.

In Canada and received it three years ago in my early-30s. Public health didn't cover due to age, and private insurance covered most of it, but remaining cost after deductibles and injection costs was still non-trivial. ($170 across three shots.)

Compared to US medical costs, $170 CAD is a nothingburger.

If anything, I'd be more annoyed about the 3-shots and repeated trips, vice a <200 charge; time is money, too.

Get it

When I was in grad school (mid-20s) I was consulted not to get it.

NowI'm pretty sure any adult with insurance can get it through any pharmacy that does vaccines. I think the actuarial tables must have changed or the cost of the vaccine decreased.

I'll try that, I didn't get it at the time cause life was busy but it has been on my mind.

They seem to be expanding the recommendation to wider and wider groups, was told the insurance company pretty much assumed you had HPV over a certain age and wouldn't cover it.

Same. Had no problem getting it done at CVS. I saw it selectable when getting some standard boosters and opted into it. I did have to look up the schedule for adults on the CDC website.

I was super annoyed as a teen and young adult when they kept opening the window for when you could receive it for a few years younger than me. My understanding is the manufacturers didn’t want to market an STD vaccine so Cervical cancer it was. Never mind men could transmit and harbor it. Guarding all susceptible parties just didn’t work with how they were going to market it.

I reached out to mine, not covered :(

> Call your health insurance and ask about “CPT code 90651”.

There's no point to this. Health insurance providers are explicitly exempted from having to be truthful with you about coverage. The better ones will just tell you they don't answer coverage questions at all as a blanket policy; the rest will tell you whatever they think profits them the most.

Most have tools that will tell you if a provider is in network and what a procedure will cost at them. Most have a pre-authorizarion process to confirm coverage as well. Also, if your insurance is through an employer, HR typically has liaisons that can help.

> Health insurance providers are explicitly exempted from having to be truthful with you about coverage

citation needed? What entity rules that they are explicitly exempted?

A long time ago, sure. But even the previous generation would have had more open views. Not to mention, wouldn't the oral cancers still show up in women if the power dynamic was as you say?

> Not to mention, wouldn't the oral cancers still show up in women if the power dynamic was as you say?

It did. It's just a much lower prevalence than cervix cancer so it was framed around preventing cervix cancer, but as that's largely gone away the focus has shifted to preventing throat cancer.

According to the article, there is a new epidemic, indicating a rise in rates. I'm asking why we didn't see it before. If it was there all along as you say, then is the article wrong for suggesting a rate increase?

I think you're massively underestimating the change in sex practices in the last 2 or 3 decades.

Statistically, if you're sexually active, what's the chances you already have HSV, and will the vaccine do anything if you already have it?

They might mean HPV. HSV consists of HSV-1 (oral herpes) and HSV-2 (“pubic area” herpes).

There isn’t really a consensus across studies for what percentage of the population has HSV-1, but all studies agree that it’s “very common”. The reason you don’t see more people with herpes sores around their mouths is because most people with HSV-1 never have an outbreak, and those that do only usually have an outbreak when they are under a lot of stress or ill (because the immune system is occupied with things other than the HS virus).

A few companies are working on vaccines and cures for HSV-2 and even HSV-1 that are based on the COVID 19 RNA vaccines and we might be able to get them in the next decade.

Yep, definitely meant HPV.

The more active you are the more likely you are to have been exposed to both hsv and HPV. Hsv can be passed through just kissing, so a lot of kids get it long before they are sexually active. I’m of the boomer generation, and somewhere around 50% of us have one or another version of HSV. I have been lucky enough not to get it (so far!), but I don’t believe there is an accepted test for HPV unless you have a cervix.

For HPV, my personal opinion is that it is worth it to get vaccinated no matter what age you are, since only certain strains cause cancer and you might not have gotten those strains yet. The medical profession doesn’t agree with me however.

HSV (Herpes simplex virus) vaccine? Do you mean HPV (Human papillomavirus)? I've only ever heard of the HPV vaccine, as well as its relationship to cervical cancer.

yep, meant HPV

Yeah I was wondering the same too, I was given the HPV vaccine when I was born

Yeah, meant HPV

Isn't that unusual?

Yeah I don't think that's status quo anymore. I didn't know I had it until I was going through my vaccination records and saw it was listed as one of the ones I got when born and then a booster like 2 months later

Men in the US of almost any age can get the HPV vaccine, but it rarely happens. The medical establishment ignored men and so failed when it should've vaccinated everyone.

The medical establishment in the US thought it was a great idea to circumcize men for ages after the rest of the developed world abandoned the practice. They'll still happily do it for newborns if the parents request it, even though there's no medical basis, only religious.

It should be no surprise the US medical establishment wouldn't want to push a vaccine for an STD.

I wonder if the old cases were essentially hidden in the larger number of cases caused by smoking? With smoking on the way down, the percent of cases that would be attributable to HPV would go up. Trying to find the throat cancer rate by year for the past few decades and not having any immediate luck though.

Edit: This data from the CDC seems to indicate that the increase is in number of new cases, but the rate has been fairly flat since 1999 https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/

This is about the previous generation. The article says that 2 in 3 cases develop in adults over 55, and ony 1 in 8 in people younger than 50.

Yes, but even boomers (from the first sexual revolution) would have been 55+ around 2000ish.

Masterbation

Huge change in hookup culture due to dating apps.

That would only apply if it meant people had more partners now on average than they did in the past. That might be true, I haven’t seen statistics on it.

But that wouldn't be manifesting as cancer yet. It should take a few decades to see the results.

Based on what, perception? Most people report how bloody useless those apps are.

The top 10% most eligible (attractive, well off, etc.), are slaying on those apps, but studies have shown that Millennials and Gen Z are having less sex overall.

And those highly eligible folks are were slaying long before apps -- meat-market bars were a thing before most of HN was born.

This is all happening in the last 20 years, so less than a single generation.

In those 20 years we've had another sexual revolution, deconstruction of any barrier to promiscuity and any number of apps to facilitate hookups.

The demographic hit hardest is 55+, which is unsurprising. We only started pushing HPV vaccines to teenagers (only) right around that time, so most of the current generation is unvaccinated.

We wouldn't be seeing the data from people in th last 20 years since it takes longer for cancer to develop. I would expect that we would have seen this since the last sexual revolution when boomer are hitting 55+ (2000ish).

> The demographic hit hardest is 55+, which is unsurprising.

Not surprising, just like smokers don't get throat cancer at 25, but more likely at 50,60 year old.

hmmm was there a some mass v-x-x that caused people to destroy their natural immunitet? hmm...

To be clear, your claim is that a vaccine caused people to lose immunity to HPV? The reason why an HPV vaccine was developed _in the first place_ is that people don't have a "natural immunity" to HPV.

If your claim is that the covid-19 vaccines is related to an increase of HPV...you don't need to "hmm" about it. If you look at the data, you can see that the rate of HPV today is around the same as it was in 2019--before covid-19 and before the covid-19 vaccines.

As someone who claims to promote "common sense," I would hope that you would attempt to answer your questions and share the answers, rather than merely pose them.

Viruses and Bacteria evolve much faster than large organisms.

All STD's are evolving rapidly to the point even condoms might not protect you.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/sexual-health/3-common-stds-b...

https://apnews.com/article/monkeypox-the-next-std-3266fd0ae4...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/massachusetts-concerning-new-dr...

Typically they don't classify generally infectious diseases as STDs. It depends on the main path of infection. For example, lyme disease, zika, and many other diseases can be passed sexually yet are not called STDs.

But of course condoms already don't protect against HPV and HSV.

How do you claim sexual practices are "similar" today as a generation ago? Christianity has been prescribing missionary sex position for a long time now, and even Islam has guidelines on sexual activity (that covers the first two largest religions of the world). (Remember the line in catholic influenced Godfather where someone says that he can't have oral sex with his wife because she also kisses their kids with the same mouth, and hence his need for prostitutes for oral sex?). Pornography is the next biggest influencer. And if you look at that, oral sex were heavily promoted in the past, and now anal sex is heavily promoted. Now, even movies and television have normalised oral sex in the last 2 decades or so.

The mentioned line is from "Analyze this", not Godfather.

Oh, ok. My mistake. Don't know how I associated it with Godfather ...