
Why is syphilis on the rise? - pmoriarty
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44384289
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kpil
In Sweden, I'd say it's mostly due to the immigration. The prevalence is much
higher, unfortunately also strands that are harder to treat. It's not only
stds, also other diseases such as hepatitis and tuberculosis etc, but it's not
really addressed. No mandatory health checks, etc, that could help. Not
totally sure why, it's a known fact and shouldn't be a touchy subject.

Edit: Oh, and Grinder is probably not helping in certain demographics...

Also, compared to today, there was such a scare when I grew up regarding HIV
and AIDS, with non stop campaigns for safe sex. It really made us more careful
and more worried.

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amacbride
My guess would be that because more people are on PrEP, fewer people are using
condoms.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
For the hacker news crowd, I think this would be a very interesting data
mining project: correlate the prevalence of bareback gay porn with overall
rates of bacterial STDs.

In the late 90s and early 00s, gay bareback porn was quite rare, and it was
mainly "vintage" porn from before the AIDS epidemic. There were some studios
around the mid 00s I think that focused on bareback sex, which caused lots of
controversy in the time before PreP. Since PreP became widespread in the past
couple years, bareback porn has become very common.

I don't think anyone consciously thinks "Oh, that porn star didn't use a
condom, I don't need one either." But I think the overall change does tend to
desensitize people into just making the negative consequences of barebacking
easier to forget.

~~~
zwkrt
Doesn't this approach have the same issue as trying to correlate violent video
games with actual violence?

~~~
MickerNews
Watching porn makes people horny. Watching violence does not make people
aggressive and murderous.

~~~
candiodari
According to accepted psychological research ... it does. Well, not murderous,
as that sort of research would never get approved.

But aggressive ? Certainly.

Why can't people accept this ? It's the very idiotically basis of how the
human mind works: it learns. 99.99% of the time it learns by imitating
something else. Give it something violent to imitate (no matter how
artificial, fake, drawn, ...), and ... surprise ! It will come up with more
violent answers in the future. How is this strange or unexpected in the least
?

And yes, I get it, you feel like you are in control of your own mind. By the
way, how do you explain how advertising works if that were true ? Or the
obvious influence mass media have ? Or why absurdly large groups of people
keep coming to the same conclusion (from culture, to political "winds", to
google searches ... all shows strong correlations between huge groups of
people).

Now granted, this is results like 10% more likely to use minor violence in a
"get something taken from me" situation among children (the other alternative
generally being getting adult help, which may or may not cooperate depending
on the study). None of those studies are saying Rambo turns toddlers into
terminators. But objectively, measurably more violent ? Yes, yes it does. It
does so heavily in the short term (hours), then the effect slowly dies down
(but it's still significant 20 years after the exposure).

This has been incredibly thoroughly tested and yes, we are VERY sure this does
in fact happen.

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mc32
Their best guess is that group sex among men enabled by hookup apps and
enhanced by “chemsex” (where inhibitions are counteracted by drug usage) in
conjunction with cutbacks in health spending have resulted in an increase in
incidence.

~~~
dmix
In regards to both the headline (syphilis) and chlamydia it seems to be
limited to male-male hookup apps while it stayed the same largely for
heterosexual and female-female hookups. Even though one would assume all
parties had equally greater access to random hookups thanks to apps. Im
genuinely curious why that is. Tinder has most certainly made anonymous
hookups more socially acceptable for straight people. Or is this just one of
those cultural trends which impact gay culture first, before it reaches
mainstream culture, as happens (stereotypically) with fashion, music, and
other trends?

~~~
bobthepanda
MSM are generally more interested in hookups that involve barebacking because
it is considered both more pleasurable and more 'dirty', and MSM are not
likely to get pregnant. IIRC MSM also have many more partners than either
heterosexuals or WLW.

MSM until very recently had a very big incentive to use condoms in the form of
HIV, but these days PrEP is widespread and not expensive, so that risk has
largely abated.

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5DFractalTetris
Because it evolved. You cannot outrun these.

~~~
barry-cotter
You absolutely can. If the U.K. made extramarital sex illegal and enforced it
syphilis cases would fall. There are plenty of other less drastic measures
that would have the same directional effect.

Evolution isn’t magic. The USA used to have malaria. Now it doesn’t.

~~~
neinrand
Because that certainly worked for the past 2,000 years. Must be why nobody
ever had syphilis when extramarital sex actually was illegal. Oh wait.

~~~
barry-cotter
I suggest you learn to read more carefully. I did not suggest syphilis would
be eliminated by making extramarital sex illegal. I said its incidence would
be reduced. If you make something more expensive people do less of it. Fewer
people smoke marijuana now than will once it’s legal because part of the cost
is the possibility of a criminal record and all that entails.

