Those are both treatable and not permanent.

They are treatable if a person knows they have it, but they often go undetected in women. Women often have no outward symptoms and by the time they are diagnosed, the damage is done and they are infertile. This is permanent damage that is devastating news to couples trying to get pregnant.

Which is precisely why people should get regularly tested for STDs.

Except, we all know that doesn't happen, mostly because of the state of healthcare in the USA. My brother got colon cancer, so I tried to get a colonoscopy (I'm over 50), they refused unless I saw a primary care doctor first, well the first available appointment was 6 months out. After that I got a colonoscopy appointment, another 6 months out. Ridiculous reality.

I think there are plenty of problems with US healthcare, but I don't think this is one of them. Standard of care in the US is to get screened for STDs at least annually for sexually active people, and more frequently depending on your risk factors. Being on PrEP involves mandatory testing for STDs every 3 months. There are also tons of free clinics where people can get checked for STDs.

Yeah I always remind my wife about that but she says she doesn’t like needles and it’s not necessary.

Oh well.

Testing only once in 3 months is insane to me

One Medical makes it easy to get tested for STDs; it's not a colonoscopy, which is a specialist procedure. Looking at my app, the next available appointment with my PCP is two days away, at which point she'll put in a lab order. I go down the hall, they draw blood, and I give them a urine sample, and a few days later I get a pdf of results in the app.

Not just for my own peace of mind, but potential partners have asked to see it in the past. Different cultures I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Herpes is permanent. While there are some stubborn antibiotic-resistant versions of the other two, they weren't that bad back then. So, yes, herpes is the worst thing.

Except, there is limited evidence that Herpes causes infertility in women while the other two definitely cause female infertility. I'd say the other two are worse since they often go undetected in women until the damage is already done.

Both of those are on the same order as "a bad cold" in terms of health - they are straightforward to treat and are not at all a big deal.

That's not true. Both can cause infertility in women. One of my friends is an ob/gyn and they say that one of the saddest parts of their jobs is telling a couple that the wife is infertile because of an STI she contracted (almost always Chlamydia or Gonorrhea) at some time in the past. Both of these STIs can go undetected in females for years. They just don't have any outward symptoms. By the time they find out, it is too late.

Gonorrhea has become drug resistant due to the overuse of anibiotics (both for people and animals).

Prior to fairly recently, it was easily cured if detected.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/multi-drug-...

It's the detection that is the problem. Ideally people will get checked regularly, but with the state of healthcare in the USA, we know that does not happen.

Well, in the sense that as a retrovirus that integrates into your genome and then erupts unexpectedly decades later.... yes.