Online STD Risk Assessments - would you use?

[Trojan Defense 15]

How would you feel about an online std risk assessment that quantifies sexual risk as the means of better managing it? My idea is for such an assessment that does so by summarizing results in terms of what I call an "x-factor" metric, which is the absolute maximum number of sex partners you may have, under a given set of conditions, before it is statistically inevitable that you have become infected.

 

So let's say the risk of you becoming infected is 1%, under a given set of conditions, and you have already had sex with 10 people under said conditions, then your "x-factor" would be 90. That is, the absolute maximum number of partners you could have based on the choices you have made, and continue to make, would be 90 before becoming infected would be statistically inevitable.

 

Using this "x-factor" metric you could more clearly see how certain choices impact your ability to swing safely, making trade-offs where needed as part of a safer sex strategy. Perhaps you don't care to use condoms, which would increase risk, but are willing to abstain from anal sex, which would decrease risk, or maybe you aren't willing to abstain from anal sex, but you insist all partners are tested first. Whatever the case is, you could then see how making one set of choices over another set affects your overall risk, thereby making yourself more able to effectively negotiate safer sex by knowing what is, and is not an acceptable risk, and why.

 

So back to my original question: How do you feel about online std risk assessments in general, and how do you feel about the idea for this one in particular? Would you use it?

[exploringRM 305]

How do you handle the variable of how many play parnters your play partner has had? You can't control or know that. We can play with a couple that has been monagamous for 20 years, low risk. Or we can play with a couple that has been with 10 other couples in the past year, higher risk. You can't depend or even expect the second couple to give you a complete sexual history of their encounters.

[VegasLee 1,486]

I think it would just make people freaky for no reason. There is no way that you can figure it out.

 

I know people that have had THOUSANDS of partners over the years and have not caught as much as a cold yet others that have stepped out once and caught an STD.

 

You can guess all you want but unless you tested everyone involved everyday there is now way of doing what your saying.

[Chicup 41]

It would be completely meaningless to the individual.

 

You don't get an STD from how you have sex, you get an STD from infected people.

 

HPV for example can't be prevented by a condom, you could have sex with 1000 people and never get it, or it could be your very first time.

 

So you can add all the risk factors you want, and even if 100% accurate it only at best applies to a large population.

[Trojan Defense 15]

I should probably preface my response by saying that my suggestion for such an assessment would naturally have some limitations, and therefore need to have some disclaimers. One is that using such a risk assessment is not a replacement for getting tested, or having a medical examination when it is needed. Two is that such a risk assessment can not guarantee your safety. No risk assessment can. No matter how safe you play it, all it takes to become infected is one person. However, such a risk assessment could give you an educated guess, or estimate as to what your risk is based upon all available data, and put things into perspective for you. What you do with this knowledge would be entirely up to you. Your choice to use, or not use it, would be at your own risk.

 

How do you handle the variable of how many play partners your play partner has had?

 

That variable would not be used in an individual risk assessment. Instead, the variable used would be how many partners have you had, and it would be assumed that there is an equal chance that any one of your partners may have been infected in absence of any data that suggests otherwise.

 

However, if you are part of a couple, or group, and your partner(s) want to take this risk assessment too, I see no reason why a feature could not created to allow you to link your individual risk assessments together so that everyone linked could have a more accurate risk assessment. So in that case, how many people your partner(s) have been with would be taken into account.

 

And even if your partners choose not to participate, you could still have a meaningful risk assessment for yourself so long as you answered enough questions.

 

I think it would just make people freaky for no reason. There is no way that you can figure it out.

 

Admittedly, a side effect of such a risk assessment is that it may make those who have overestimated the risk of stds to have more sex partners, but as a swinger yourself, can you really say that's a bad thing? On the flip side, those who have underestimated the risk of stds can come to terms with their behavior, and make changes where needed. Either way, I just don't see how that's a bad thing.

 

As for not being able to figure out what a person's risk is, if you can count it, measure it, or quantify it, then you can calculate its likelihood. While such a risk assessment may not be able to give a definitive answer to how many people a person may have sex with before becoming infected, under a given set of conditions, it can, however, provide an educated guess, or estimate of that number so that person knows that as they get closer to that number, they may need to retake the assessment to see how they can modify their behavior in such a way to make that number higher again.

 

And while it is important to keep in mind that, no matter how safe you play it, all it takes to become infected is just one person, there is an important distinction to be made between someone with an x-factor of 2, and someone with an x-factor of 1 million. If you have an x-factor of 2, then the odds that the next person you get with will infect you are comparable to that of heads coming up on a two-sided coin toss. If you have an x-factor of 1 million, then the odds that the next person you get with will infect you are comparable to that of winning the lottery. That's not to say that it couldn't happen, but that there's a significant difference in what is likely to happen in these two scenarios, and that one of the aims of such an assessment is to help the user make that distinction (in regard to sexual risks).

[VegasLee 1,486]

As I stated in my first post:

 

"I know people that have had THOUSANDS of partners over the years and have not caught as much as a cold yet others that have stepped out once and caught an STD."

 

I have been "playing" for 40 years of my life and I have never caught anything. I also know of 15 year olds that ended up with an STD the first time they played with someone. I also know a elderly couple that can attest that they have probably played with no less then 8000 people in their lifetyle and they have never had a STD of any type.

 

Due to just those FACTS alone pretty much all "educated" guesses go right out the window.

 

All the stats in the world is not going to give anyone any idea if they may or may not catch a STD. As you have stated and we all know, it only takes once.

 

Give people false information is more dangerous then anything I can think of. Telling people that since you have only played with one person in your life you can probably play with 90 more and still be safe. (just as an example)

 

Unless you have a very high powered crystal ball that knows all then there is no real way of doing what your stating here.

[exploringRM 305]

To the original question, I would find no benefit from an online risk assessment. I think the numbers would be meaningless, other than stay monagamous = no risk.

[Trojan Defense 15]

I have been "playing" for 40 years of my life and I have never caught anything. I also know of 15 year olds that ended up with an STD the first time they played with someone. I also know a elderly couple that can attest that they have probably played with no less then 8000 people in their lifetyle and they have never had a STD of any type.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that most people who catch stds do so sometime after their first partner, but before their 8,000th partner, (assuming they ever have that many partners to start with). So if I'm right, the people you describe, would be not be of the norm, but rather the exception to the rule. In statistics, we'd call these people outliers, (or an extreme deviation from the mean).

 

Outliers, by definition, when used to describe the members of a population, do not constitute a majority. So even though you may be right that there is a problem in cases where someone is infected from their very first partner, that outcome is not the most probable outcome for most people using such an assessment.

 

So we may disagree on the application of this information, but you do not have to look very far to find people who are concerned about their std risks, on the internet, and even on this website, that would like to know how they could better manage it, which would be the goal of such an assessment.

 

Give people false information is more dangerous then anything I can think of.

 

While I would agree with that statement in general, I would not agree that is what this risk assessment would do. If all the scientific data out there points to a particular outcome, or conclusion, and this is reflected in the risk assessment, and this is what one person tells another, then where is the dishonesty there? It is what it is (referring to the situation). At best, all you could say is that it might be misleading in how that information is presented because some people may mistakenly believe they can actually have the maximum number of partners and not catch anything, but there are ways to remedy that problem.

 

One way is to have disclaimers prominently attached to any risk assessments given. So if you take the risk assessment, when you get the results back, you are told that it is possible that your next partner could infect you, and you go ahead and have sex anyway, and get infected, then that's your fault. Nobody made you do anything. It was your choice, despite having been warned.

 

Unless you have a very high powered crystal ball that knows all then there is no real way of doing what your stating here.

 

Actually my idea of a very high powered crystal ball would be what is known as an epidemiological surveillance system, a system that becomes increasingly accurate at predicting risk as it collects more, and more data, correlating risk factors with outcomes, but enough about that. I am curious as to what is your crystal ball. How do you, or others, manage to have so many sex partners and never catch any stds? What is your secret? What is the alternative to the idea that I have presented?

[good times 991]

I agree with the others, what you propose would be totally meaningless. Statistics, as you have proposed here, would only work when dealing with a large group of people. Individually they would have no meaning, and be highly inaccurate and missleading.

 

Furthermore, Like Lee indicated, it would have the effect of giving folks a false sense of security, or an equally false sense of anxiety. The best analogy is the way most people view condoms. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that once they slip on that condom they are safe. When in reality, for the types of std's/sti's we are most likely to run into in the lifestyle, condom users are at best very marginally more safe with a condom than they would be without. For all of the std's/sti's that are contact spread, they are really almost useless. Yet, with all of the "safe sex" hype out there, many believe they are safe as long as they cover up.

 

With this, if widely used, we would have people with "good numbers" thinking that their risk is comfortably low. The reality is that on an individual level, it really does only take just one sexual partner to catch something. You can do all the research and crunch the numbers all you want, but what it boils down to in the end is, "do you feel lucky?"

[Trojan Defense 15]

Statistics, as you have proposed here, would only work when dealing with a large group of people.

 

That would be the idea.

 

Individually they would have no meaning, and be highly inaccurate and missleading.

 

The extent to which such a risk assessment would be inaccurate, its implications, and whether or not they could be rectified, would probably be a theoretical discussion best saved for an epidemiologist, or some other medical scientist who specializes in studying this kind of thing. The purpose of me posting my question on a swingers board wasn't really to go into the exact mechanics of that, but to see how some swingers would react to the idea, on the assumption that the details of it could be worked out. In other words, if it did work, would it even matter? If there was a "crystal ball" for avoiding stds, would you even care to use it?

 

Furthermore, Like Lee indicated, it would have the effect of giving folks a false sense of security, or an equally false sense of anxiety.

 

If the risk assessment was accurate enough, would the emotional reaction to it really be unjustified? Would it be a false sense of security, or anxiety if the numbers were actually correct?

 

for the types of std's/sti's we are most likely to run into in the lifestyle, condom users are at best very marginally more safe with a condom than they would be without.

 

Not to dispute your comment, but is your assessment of condom usage not based on the same fundamental principles of statistics and probability that I've been talking about, that is, what are the odds of something happening?

 

Yet, what I'm getting here is that we can not use the principles of statistics & probability to manage risk.

 

With this, if widely used, we would have people with "good numbers" thinking that their risk is comfortably low. The reality is that on an individual level, it really does only take just one sexual partner to catch something. You can do all the research and crunch the numbers all you want, but what it boils down to in the end is, "do you feel lucky?"

 

I would agree with that. Hence the point of having disclaimers.

[sweet_tna 680]

If you need all those disclaimers about how the data isn't completely reliable, then there really isn't a point to doing that risk assessment. That would be like trying to predict the odds of getting hit by bus while crossing the street. Yes, it could happen, so we all look both ways before crossing the street. Same goes for swinging.

 

=)

[Trojan Defense 15]

If you need all those disclaimers about how the data isn't completely reliable, then there really isn't a point to doing that risk assessment.

 

Well, based on the discussion or debate that we've been having so far, all we're really talking about is just one disclaimer for the most part, and that is the statistical concept of odds for those who are not well educated enough to already know. Otherwise, it'd be self explanatory.

 

As for it not being 100% reliable or accurate, neither is the weather forecast, but it doesn't stop people from using it.

 

That would be like trying to predict the odds of getting hit by bus while crossing the street. Yes, it could happen, so we all look both ways before crossing the street. Same goes for swinging.

 

Yes, and no. Yes, we are talking about the odds of a particular outcome happening, but to compare it to the odds of getting hit by a bus like you are may be bit of an oversimplification of the problem. If you are going to have sex with several people, avoiding stds isn't as necessarily simple as looking both ways before you cross the street.

[VegasLee 1,486]

It is simple really.

 

If you want a 100% guarantee of not getting an STD you only have sex with one person your whole life that has not and is not having sex with anyone else.

 

ANYTHING outside of what I just posted gives you some chance of catching an STD. You might get one the first time out, you might have sex with 10,000 others and never get one.

 

There is no magic formula that is going to tell you IF you are going to catch an STD.

 

You could use stats and say that in general that people that have sex with 50 people catch an STD. That would be very general and of no real use to anyone.

 

As stated before, I know 15 year olds with STD's. I also know people that are in their 50's, 60's, 70's and even 80's that have had sex with Hundreds if not Thousands of people that have not caught anything.

 

You can argue it all you want but there is no real way of saying you are going to catch a STD. No facts to back up the argument.

 

You can say that a certain percentage of all people will catch a STD at some point in their life by using stats from this country or around the world but you can not state because you have X number of partners you are going to catch something. Just does not work that way.

 

You could also state that by having more partners your chances are higher but no way of selecting the number of people.

 

Since you are new here I would be interested in knowing your experience in the Lifestyle along with your education or experience that would give you the knowledge to argue this matter?

[Trojan Defense 15]

VegasLee said:

It is simple really.

 

If you want a 100% guarantee of not getting an STD you only have sex with one person your whole life that has not and is not having sex with anyone else.

 

I would agree with that.

 

VegasLee said:

There is no magic formula that is going to tell you IF you are going to catch an STD.

 

I would agree with that as well, but that is not what I claim such an assessment would do. What I claim it would do is tell you how probable infection is based on available data.

 

VegasLee said:

You could use stats and say that in general that people that have sex with 50 people catch an STD. That would be very general and of no real use to anyone.

 

That is not what I suggest doing. What I suggest doing is looking at your personal situation, that is your demographics, sexual history, sexual preferences, medical condition, drug addictions, etc. and comparing that to people who are similar to you as the means of determining what is likely to happen. If you and others like you, have been doing what you do for a long time, and you really do not have any stds (as opposed to just thinking you don't), then you'd probably be okay doing things as you always have, even though that is not guaranteed, and that is what the risk assessment should reflect.

 

So the comparison being made wouldn't be an apples to oranges comparison as you make it sound. Your risk profile would not be compared to, say, a 15 year-old white girl living in the ghetto, who was infected by her first partner because her first partner was a 40 year old, bisexual, black male with hiv, that raped her, and didn't use protection. Those would be two totally different scenarios.

 

VegasLee said:

You can argue it all you want but there is no real way of saying you are going to catch a STD. No facts to back up the argument

 

That is not the argument that is being made.

 

VegasLee said:

You can say that a certain percentage of all people will catch a STD at some point in their life by using stats from this country or around the world but you can not state because you have X number of partners you are going to catch something. Just does not work that way.

 

You could also state that by having more partners your chances are higher but no way of selecting the number of people.

 

You are right, you can not conclusively state what will, or will not happen under a given set of conditions, but you can state what is likely to happen. That is what statistics, and probability is all about.

 

If we are able to determine the risk of infection for a person is 50% (and I'm just picking these numbers to keep the math simple), can a person do anything with that information? Can you have sex with 50% of a person? No, you can't, but what we can do with that statistic is state it in the form of odds - that is, the odds of infection are 1 in 2. Now, can you have sex with 1 or 2 people? Yes, you can, because now we are putting that statistic in terms of whole numbers, which is a form people can work with.

 

VegasLee said:

Since you are new here I would be interested in knowing your experience in the Lifestyle along with your education or experience that would give you the knowledge to argue this matter?

 

I am a psychology student, who coincidentally, has an interest in epidemiology. I do not see how my experience, or lack thereof, as a swinger is relevant to the discussion at hand.

[VegasLee 1,486]

Trojan Defense said:

I am a psychology student, who coincidentally, has an interest in epidemiology. I do not see how my experience, or lack thereof, as a swinger is relevant to the discussion at hand.

 

I do though.

 

I am mid 50's. Been in this "Lifestyle" since I was a teenager. Know people that have been in it even longer than I have.

 

So if we use facts. You can say that someone that has had sex for 40 years, 99.9% unprotected with 100's of people and has never caught anything can be the sample set. Since I did it, then everyone must be able to do it?

 

I think education is a great thing. In many ways wish I had more of it but instead I have lived well over a half century of life and used common sense to live my life by. Something they don't give degrees in.

 

I am not picking on you here. Just stating that facts and common sense say that no set of numbers can tell you if you are going to catch something no matter who you are.

 

That 15 year old girl came from a rich, clean, church going family in a high end neighborhood. To bad the 17 year old male she hooked up with has been out playing on the wrong side of the tracks!

 

Just the example you used shows that years of experience and common sense can some times make for a better argument then stereotyping of others.

 

Books and studies provide stats. Life and experience provides facts. When learned from and used they can be turned into common sense.

 

 

Edit: Useful information about using stats for sex. 15 year old girl. She died of AIDS. Now in reviewing AIDS stats she did not fit the profile in any form or manner. The guy that infected her did not fit the stats either. According to the stats she should not have caught a STD or Aids and she diffidently should not have died.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Making risk assessments requires assumptions. Assumptions always reflect the bias within the person making the assumptions. The reason for assumptions is because we don't know what actual risks are, because we don't know all the mechanics of infection. And each infection is different.

 

You haven't even mentioned what STD this risk assessment is for. Each STD requires a very different risk assessment. As someone mentioned, herpes and HPV are not as effectively prevented by condoms as is HIV. Herpes and HPV are much more common than HIV, by orders of magnitude.

 

What is the infection rate of HIV? Well it depends on the population you are studying. It depends on IV drug use. It depends on the frequency of anal sex. It depends on the number of partners. Assumptions for each of these factors have to be made to make a risk assessment. Once you've made more than one or two assumptions, the accuracy becomes nill because assumptions aren't knowledge.

[Trojan Defense 15]

Okay, maybe I didn't explain it well enough the first time. So here is a rough idea of how the process might go:

 

1) Purpose and Disclaimers Acknowledged. "You understand that this is an educational tool to help sexually active people better manage std risks. Furthermore, you understand that the most reliable way to prevent std's is to abstain from sex, and that by your refusal to do so, you may be putting yourself at risk; all it takes to become infected is just one person - just one bad choice."

 

2) Prevention Goals Defined. You indicate which std's are of concern to you (and, if you wish you may read up on some std's you didn't know about). Maybe you are not concerned about the most treatable of std's; maybe you're concerned about the viral std's, but not the bacterial std's. Maybe you're concerned about all std's. Maybe you're concerned about all std's except herpes, because you already have have herpes, and therefore are not concerned about the risk of catching something you already have. Whatever the case may be, your answer helps fine tune the risk analysis and make sure the results that are displayed back to you, are relevant to your particular situation.

 

3) Questions Presented. An extensive list of questions is systematically presented in the order of greatest significance to least significance. You answer as many questions as you are so inclined to, with the understanding the more questions you answer, the more accurate the assessment will be, and that at least some questions will be mandatory for a meaningful assessment. (Questions for which you skipped, or did not get to, the system would assume a worst case scenario as your answer, resulting in a more conservative risk assessment. The reason for that would be to err on the side of caution.)

4) Probability of Infection Calculated. After answering the questions, you might get this kind of feedback: "Based on the number of questions you answered, and the answers you gave, if you become infected, it is estimated that it would be somewhere between your 1st, and 1,000th partner, and we are 90% confident that our assessment is correct in your particular case." (Obviously, the higher the second number, which we'll call your partner limit, and the third number, the confidence interval, the better.)

5) Educated Guess of Outcome Made. Furthermore, we can make an educated guess as to what your outcome will be using the probability of infection, your life expectancy, and the rate at which you take on partners. Based on that, you might get feedback such as: "It is our educated guess, that at the rate you are going, you will eventually become infected if nothing changes."

 

6) What-If Scenarios Ran. Here you can see how your choices impact your ability to swing safely, and if you wish, how making one set of changes over the the other affects your probability of infection, and ultimately, your expected outcome. This can help give you a better idea of what is possible, and explain how the system reached the conclusion that it did.

 

7) Strategy Defined. If you are interested in risk reduction, you are presented with essentially three options. If you want to have sex with many people, it is to be more selective. If you don't want to be more selective, then it is to have fewer partners. And if the first two options do not offer enough risk reduction by themselves, then do both: have fewer partners AND be more selective.

 

What this suggests, is that there is a relationship between your quantitative risk factors (number of partners), and your qualitative risk factors (partner selection, etc.) Assuming all qualitative risk factors are held constant, and the only variable risk factor is number of partners, then the risk assessment is dynamic in that it changes when you do. If the probability of infection for you was 1 in 1,000 when you took the assessment, and since then, you had sex with 5 more people, all you have to do is add 5 to 1. Now your probability of infection is 6 in 1,000.

 

The end result of this process is that you have defined a personal strategy for safer sex, and you have the means to dynamically assess your own risk, as you take on more partners.

 

Now is it perfect? No, but that's not to say that I don't think the flaws in it can't be worked out to the point that it becomes good enough.

[Trojan Defense 15]

You haven't even mentioned what STD this risk assessment is for.

 

The risk assessment would be for all stds, but as you can see in step two of the process, you select which ones are of concern to you. So if you select stds x, y, and z, and the probability of infection for each of these was calculated as follows:

 

STD X 1 in 1,000

STD Y 1 in 500

STD Z 1 in 250

 

Then for all practical purposes we'd go with the probability of infection for STD Z.

[LikeMinds321 1,527]

I would not use an Online STD Risk Assessment for the reasons others have stated.

 

 

Trojan Defense said:

 

4.) Probability of Infection Calculated. After answering the questions, you might get this kind of feedback: "... it is estimated that it would be somewhere between your 1st, and 1,000th partner....

This sounds so funny to me because 1,000 partners is unfathomable to me, personally. I think it is for most swingers. We aren't as busy having sex with as many people as you must think.

 

 

Quote

7.) Strategy Defined. If you are interested in risk reduction, you are presented with essentially three options. If you want to have sex with many people, it is to be more selective. If you don't want to be more selective, then it is to have fewer partners. And if the first two options do not offer enough risk reduction by themselves, then do both: have fewer partners AND be more selective.

But I already know this. It's common sense. I think most people understand this.

 

 

Where else are you asking for opinions? Dating sites, health sites? I'm curious what other feedback you've received from the public.

[Trojan Defense 15]

This sounds so funny to me because 1,000 partners is unfathomable to me..."

 

Having 1,000 partners is unfathomable to me too, but that's not the point. The point is...

 

If your probability of infection was 1 in 1,000, that is not to suggest you should have that many partners. It is to suggest a reasonable limit based on your risk tolerance. If you wouldn't want the probability of infection to exceed 5% (or 50 in 1,000) then you'd limit the number of partners you could be with to 50 (under the conditions from which the probability was based off off). Remember, the stated goal would be to quantify risk as to better manage it, and this would be one way of doing that.

 

But I already know this. It's common sense. I think most people understand this."

 

Unfortunately, common sense reaches its limit when the knowledge you seek is anything but common. Knowing how to reduce your risks is simple. Knowing by how much is not. Without having some sort of special tool to do so, that depth of knowledge is reserved to those who study such things.

 

Where else are you asking for opinions? Dating sites, health sites? I'm curious what other feedback you've received from the public.

 

I've had many ideas for helping people better manage risk, some of which could maybe work together, and this is just one of them. Feedback that I've received has been mixed across the board. As for swingers, some, like those here, have been critical/dismissive of such ideas, but some from elsewhere have been encouraging. A few AIDs activists expressed optimism. A public health official told me that some of my ideas had been mentioned in one of his focus groups, and were already being considered. An epidemiologist that I contacted, thought my ideas sounded good in theory, even though we did not get to discussing them in depth. Some people that had become recently infected also expressed some support, as they wished they there was a better way to manage risk (than using what I guess you'd call common sense). And others have been dismissive as I lack formal research to backup my ideas. So like I said, feedback has been mixed.

 

Though that's not to say my critics don't make some valid points. It is true, with this particular idea, probabilities can not conclusively tell you if you will become infected, but they can tell you if you're likely to become infected. Furthermore, probabilities of infection that use 'number of partners' as a predictor variable do have their limitations. Such a probability can not really tell you how many people you can be with, but it can suggest how many you shouldn't be with according to your risk profile. So I don't think its entirely useless as some have said, particularly if it is taken into consideration within the context of other ideas that I have.

 

And I don't think Lascivious is completely wrong to suggest that with this particular idea, we just don't know enough about the mechanics of std infection, that the data is insufficient, but at the same time that's not to say that I don't think std data collection could be improved as to make it sufficient.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

We already have the data to suggest that most, more than 50%, of sexually active adults are infected with herpes and HPV. So all swingers and most adults should assume they are or will be infected with those STD's.

 

HIV is the big one. If none of your partners are not infected, then you cannont become infected through sex no matter how many partners you have. What you are really measuring is the risk of meeting an infected partner. That depends more on what group of people you fuck than the number. Do you have sex with IV drug users? Then your risk goes up. Is unprotected anal sex big in your group? Then your risk goes up.

 

What is the risk if you fuck an HIV infected partner? There are studies on this, and the ones I've seen suggest it takes far more than one fuck on average to infect. Studies suggest that it takes more than 10 fucks, and perhaps even a hundred, on average.

[slevin 1,374]

We already have the data to suggest that most, more than 50%, of sexually active adults are infected with herpes and HPV. So all swingers and most adults should assume they are or will be infected with those STD's.

 

Do we really have the data to suggest that? The popular data says 1 in 4 are infected with Herpes, but this is questionable. It's not commonly tested for unless specifically asked for. It's also not guaranteed to be detected accurately; in a blood test they test for whether you've been exposed to the virus, rather than if you have it. Unless they have a new blood test for it...

 

As for HPV, the stats there are difficult to be accurate since there is no test for HPV in men. Additionally, HPV will work its way out of your system, so someone with HPV today may not have it in a few years and shouldn't continue to be counted in statistics.

 

I think the high herpes and HPV rates are used as STD marketing to make sure people take wearing condoms and practicing safe sex seriously. Personal opinion there though.

[Trojan Defense 15]

We already have the data to suggest that most, more than 50%, of sexually active adults are infected with herpes and HPV. So all swingers and most adults should assume they are or will be infected with those STD's.

 

That is unfortunate, but perhaps such a tool could be of educational value in showing that if you choose to swing, and not screen your partners (of which last I checked there isn't really a good way to do that with HPV, and HSV), then that risk is just the price of admission you pay to get into the swinging lifestyle.

 

HIV is the big one. If none of your partners are not infected, then you can not become infected through sex no matter how many partners you have.

 

I do not disagree with this, though what you're saying applies to any std really. Obviously, you can't catch what's not there, but the trick is figuring out whether or not its there in the first place. Anything outside of getting tested is an educated guess at best, and even then we are still dealing with probabilities as a result of false positives, and false negatives.

 

What you are really measuring is the risk of meeting an infected partner.

 

That is correct. The primary risk factor is in whether or not the person you are having sex with is infected, (and secondary to that is how you are having sex with them.)

 

That depends more on what group of people you fuck than the number.

 

That is true, but how else are you to measure risk in a meaningful way than to use 'number of partners' as the metric? People don't think in terms of percentages when they have sex, which is how most statistics are presented, but in terms of whole numbers.

 

Do you have sex with IV drug users? Then your risk goes up. Is unprotected anal sex big in your group? Then your risk goes up.

 

Yes, that is true too, but the question here isn't really whether or not any one of those makes your risk go up. The question here is by how much does those things make your risk go up? What difference does any combination of those, and other risk factors make? I'd venture to say most people don't know the answer to that.

 

What is the risk if you fuck an HIV infected partner? There are studies on this, and the ones I've seen suggest it takes far more than one fuck on average to infect. Studies suggest that it takes more than 10 fucks, and perhaps even a hundred, on average.

 

I would agree with this as well, and have seen studies on this as well among serodiscordant couples (meaning couples where one partner is infected, and the other is not). Just because you have sex with someone that is infected, it does not necessarily mean that you will become infected (although the risk certainly is there). What it then comes down to is how infectious is the partner that is infected, and how susceptible is the partner that is not infected, which is why how you have sex then matters.

 

Since most people don't know about these things in great depth, having a special tool from which to effectively educate them about it might be a good idea. A number of folks that have gotten infected have told me that just had no idea about this stuff.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Trojan, the point you're not getting is that the answer to your questions is that we don't know. The number of partners you've had is by itself not an accurate measure of your risk. Much more goes into actual risk than that. Giving risk as a number per partner is not accurate and is misleading.

 

Trying to offer people a simple means to assess risk is a nice concept. But it doesn't work with our state of knowledge today. What you've proposed does not assess risk any more accurately than to say increasing partners increases risk.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Slevin, the data is on the CDC site. The last general population test for herpes found 58% of adults infected with HSV-1, and close to 20% with HSV-2. Both are herpes and both can infect either orally or genitally. Most quoted figures include only HSV-2, as if it is the only herpes. As I understand, herpes is a viral infection for life, like chickenpox/shingles, though for most the immune system holds the virus completely in check.

 

HPV, because there has been no test for males, is not assessable in the general population. The general consensus is that most sexually active adults are or have been infected. Some feel the body can get rid of the virus. Some feel it is like herpes, a lifetime infection that for most can be completely controlled by the immune system. The accurate answer is that we don't know. When we have an efficient test for men, we may learn more.

 

Condoms are not nearly as effective at preventing infection with herpes or HPV as they are with HIV. Some go so far as to say don't consider condoms as a preventative measure for herpes or HPV.

[Trojan Defense 15]

Trojan, the point you're not getting is that the answer to your questions is that we don't know.

 

That is why I'd suggest our collection of std data could be improved.

 

A part of my idea would entail creating a feedback loop between the system, and those served by it. When a person used the system they'd get a risk assessment, but in the process of getting that assessment, they'd be submitting data to the system. Whenever they returned, they would again be submitting data to the system, that would either support or go against the system's original assessment. So to whatever degree the system was originally off, it could self-correct and become progressively more accurate over time as more data became available, correlating risk factors with outcomes.

 

Giving risk as a number per partner is not accurate...

 

In many cases, I think you may be right. As I'd see it, this wouldn't be just a black and white issue, but one involving many shades of gray. For those of us who are at extremely high, or extremely low risk, I think we could have some confidence in the accuracy of such an assessment. Whereas those falling somewhere between those two extremes would be in a gray area, for which our level of confidence in such an assessment would be at it's weakest.

 

Giving risk as a number per partner is misleading...

 

I think whether or not an assessment is misleading depends on how it is presented. If the probability of infection is 1 in 50, and we tell people, that based on this, they can go out and have sex with 50 people, that would be misleading. However, if we instead say most people of a given risk profile do not make it beyond 50 partners, and use that as a basis for risk reduction, then I'm not sure it's quite as misleading then. In fact, that might be rather educational.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Despite all of this, I think one of the reasons a person might use this, is for the same reason that they may use the weather forecast to plan a trip - and that is because they rather have some sort of idea, than no idea at all, and they believe in the goals of the system, (which stated in somewhat different terms would be to take the collective knowledge of many as to empower the individual with greater decision-making capabilities).

[highlander 21]

VegasLee said:

I do though.

 

Edit: Useful information about using stats for sex. 15 year old girl. She died of AIDS. Now in reviewing AIDS stats she did not fit the profile in any form or manner. The guy that infected her did not fit the stats either. According to the stats she should not have caught a STD or Aids and she diffidently should not have died.

 

Actually, this is NOT true. HIV infection rates are higher for young people than old-even when you adjust for things like frequency of sexual activity. You need to look carefully at the statistics to understand some of this. HIV tends to piggyback on other STD's like HPV, HSV, gonorrhea and chlamydia. In the case of HSV and HPV, folks are much more likely to get and transmit HIV the first year or two after they have gotten those diseases than 2-4 years later. Having sex with someone that has gotten HSV in the last 2 years is 5-20 times more risky that having sex with someone that has had that infection for over 2 years(for both getting HIV or HSV itself).

 

That makes these diseases especially risky for the young folks starting their sexual careers. They have a whole different risk profile and immune system than someone that has already gotten HSV and/or HPV and has already gotten through their period of highest risk.

 

I saw one figure that was looking a rate of HIV infection for young gay men in parts of California of 5% for every 6 months--and this after all the various educational efforts and what not. That rate went _Way_ down for the same demographic 3-5 years later _even if we adjust for frequency of sexual activity_.

 

Also, younger guys are more likely to be having their first experiences with IV drugs--and 50% of all women that get HIV get it from a man whose risk was not promiscuity or bisexuality-but IV drug use-and some middle class communities are having a real upsurge of IV drug use in recent years.

 

Also, younger men are more likely to have not established a clearly heterosexual or homosexual identity. For example, in Robin Baker's Sperm Wars he points out that bisexual men are actually more likely to father children as teenagers than heterosexual men--but that changes dramatically as these men age.

 

Young folks REALLY do have extraordinary risks here-and tend to lack knowledge of their own mortality.

[highlander 21]

Lascivious L&L said:

What is the risk if you fuck an HIV infected partner? There are studies on this, and the ones I've seen suggest it takes far more than one fuck on average to infect. Studies suggest that it takes more than 10 fucks, and perhaps even a hundred, on average.

 

Actually, there is only one really good heterosexual study I have seen on this-and it was done in Africa by a guy from Johns Hopkins. You are right HIV appears to be generally hard to get. However, it VARIES a LOT by several factors

a) time after infection

b) presence of other STD's like HSV, HPV, gonorrhea and chlamydia-and

how recently those diseases were acquired.

 

One reason why so many MPH types are nervous about using testing as a means to prevent HIV spread:

 

when the AIDS epidemic first hit the tests that were available had a large window-they weren't very accurate for 6 months. We now have PCR test that are accurate 6-9 days after infection-but they aren't universally used.

 

Also, when you look at AIM's use of testing with porn actors, they were doing _monthly_ testing of a _variety_ of STD's.

 

This has taken the rate of STD's among porn actors to something below that of the general population. The thing is, when they do get an HIV infection, sometimes they will get 2-3 at once because HIV is more infectious right after initial infection.

 

I think we _could_ do something similar in the swinging community-and wouldn't take monthly testing(I think quarterly testing might help a lot).

[VegasLee 1,486]

highlander said:

Actually, this is NOT true. HIV infection rates are higher for young people than old-even when you adjust for things like frequency of sexual activity. You need to look carefully at the statistics to understand some of this. H

 

I am very good at stats and research.

 

HIV AGE STATS

 

Your argument does not hold up with CDC facts and stats.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

Unfortunately the CDC information does not contain the rate of infection per population category. Thus we don't know from those stats whether younger people have a higher or lower rate of infection, only the absolute number of cases. We need to know the population of each age group in order to figure the rate of infection per age group.

 

The cumulative number of infections is going to be greater in the age groups who were sexually active since the virus came to humans, which is somewhere in the fifties. That's my age group. So my age group and the next decade lower will have the highest cumulative numbers because we've been exposed to it longest.

 

One of the reasons I find Trojan's idea of risk assessment not beneficial is because we don't know well the mechanics of STD infections. Once you put a number on it, people will look to the number rather than the words used to put those numbers in perspective. The numbers become absolute without the finer points of perspective being remembered by most people.

[highlander 21]

VegasLee said:

I am very good at stats and research.

 

HIV AGE STATS

 

Your argument does not hold up with CDC facts and stats.

 

Wrong Lee. Your understanding of statistics is limited at best. Better stick with making money-which you are obviously good at-but don't let it go to your head.

 

 

First off, your data is for AIDS diagnosis, NOT infection.

 

A better figure would be HIV diagnosis.

 

That is _still_ a problem-because it doesn't control for things like frequency of testing among different groups-and the frequency of use of condoms and the actual rate of sexual activity. We'd also have to do more to really look at things like just how susceptible someone is per exposure at various ages.

(though it s clear that 18-34 year old folks are disproportionately unlikely to have health insurance in the US and are thus less likely to get annual checkups)

 

If we look at worldwide figures, we get something rather different.

 

Quote

World wide, most people that get HIV, do so by age 25.

Around half of the people who acquire HIV become infected before they turn 25, and AIDS is the second most common cause of death among 20-24 year olds.

 

Figures in the US are complicated because AIDS in the US is largely either

a) IV drug users

b) regular partners of IV drug users

c) men having sex with men

 

If we look at AIDS as a classical heterosexual STD, we might get a rather different picture in the US.

 

What also complicates this is the relative availability of public health/std services in various parts of the country--AIDS has been increasing greatly in parts of south with poor public health services and limited sex education. I'd also suggest that in many parts of the country a sexually active 13-15 year old might have limited effective access to STD diagnosis and treatment simply because they can't drive themselves to a STD clinic-and only the more enlightened family docs would really handle this issue well.

 

Early sexual debut is clearly established as a major risk factor in a variety of locales- including(the 15 year old you are talking about would be classed as clearly an early bloomer).

 

The article I saw that looked at a 6% rate of infection over 6 months among young (23-29) gay men.

 

I'd be REAL interested in seeing any citation that describes a higher infection rate among any identifiable group of folks.

 

The rates of Gonorrhea and Chlamydia are also both heavily concentrated in 15-24 year olds even in the US.

 

I haven't found a good breakdown on age of IV drug users that get AIDS. However, clearly IV drug use is initiated later than sexual activity. Also IV drug habits tend to last and worsen over time-so is a pretty good bet that HIV infections at a later age include more related to IV drug use.

 

The other thing I haven't seen a good breakdown on is how the difference between going HIV+ and getting full blown aids varies by age at infection.

[highlander 21]

The thing that I Think might make risk assessment useful:

if it relied purely on factors that folks can assess unequivocally. Factors like age, ethnicity, tested drug use, STD test results. Where I can see it useful is in telling folks stuff like just how often they need to test to be doing anything useful--and how testing for more than just HIV can help improve their odds.

 

Some of this is an open research problem. We clearly know that presence of recent HSV infection, Chlamydia or gonorrhea increase HIV transmission. This has been one reason suggested on why HIV spreads so much more heterosexually in Africa-because those diseases are common there(and often public health resources are minimal). Some African countries have had substantial results in decreasing rate of HIV infection by just getting serious about treating those STD's that can be treated.

[Lascivious L&L 866]

On the International AIDs site there is a study of the studies done on the relationship of age to infection. Of the six North American studies used, four found HIV infection more prevalent in youth, two did not.

 

Studies I looked at there talk about infection being related to age of first intercourse. The question is whether the infection is a result of the young age or the risky behaviors the younger people engaged in. For example when the number of partners was controlled for, the age relationship faded. So perhaps those infection rates reflect the more partners one would likely have because they have been sexually active longer.

 

There was a relationship between smoking and early sex, both risky behaviors. It may be that risk takers start younger and engage in more risky behaviors. Thus it may be the behaviors not the age that is the factor.

 

The bottom line is there is much not known about HIV infection, rates, and which behaviors affect those rates by how much. Since lying is such a factor in sexual history taking, how accurate are the risky behavior analyses? I've never been convinced that such behavior self reporting is anything but a rough guess.

[highlander 21]

Well, we know that young folks are at higher risk for Chlamydia-and women with Chlamydia are 5 times as likely to get HIV as the general population.

 

Gonorrhea is also linked to spread of HIV. When I did the math a while back, I calculated that 40% of the HIV cases are related to presence of some other STD (i.e. HPV, HSV,Chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis). That is especially important because 35% are either directly related to IV drug use or health care related. That suggests that if we could eradicate all STD's, the rate of sexual infection from HIV would be down 61%. (one statistician friend of mine told me that is why Gardisil got fast tracked BTW)

 

One big question is why doesn't HIV mimic the distribution of other STD's in terms of geography and age? One simple reason is that HIV is largely a blood born disease that is spread especially well by sharing needles or specific sex acts like anal intercourse.

 

Anyhow, just the concentration of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea among the young is enough to suggest a special risk for sexual HIV infection among them. The thing about those diseases, they are both highly contagious, can cause sterility-and their symptoms aren't always real obvious.

[Trojan Defense 15]

The thing that I Think might make risk assessment useful:

if it relied purely on factors that folks can assess unequivocally. Factors like age, ethnicity, tested drug use, STD test results. Where I can see it useful is in telling folks stuff like just how often they need to test to be doing anything useful--and how testing for more than just HIV can help improve their odds.

 

I would agree with that, and had planned on getting to the topic of testing.

 

Some of this is an open research problem. We clearly know that presence of recent HSV infection, Chlamydia or gonorrhea increase HIV transmission. This has been one reason suggested on why HIV spreads so much more heterosexually in Africa-because those diseases are common there(and often public health resources are minimal). Some African countries have had substantial results in decreasing rate of HIV infection by just getting serious about treating those STD's that can be treated.

 

I would agree with that as well. Aside from providing a public health service, this would be something intended to aid epidemiological research.

[Trojan Defense 15]

The bottom line is there is much not known about HIV infection, rates, and which behaviors affect those rates by how much. Since lying is such a factor in sexual history taking, how accurate are the risky behavior analyses? I've never been convinced that such behavior self reporting is anything but a rough guess.

 

What I believe this comes down to is who are you asking, what are you asking, and how are you asking. If great care was taken in designing the system, I think we could get some useful data from it. As for lying, aside from some psychological profiling, measures could be put in place for data validation.

 

Compulsive liars often slip up sooner or later as it eventually becomes difficult to keep all of their stories straight. The system could take advantage of this fact, by periodically sneaking in questions to which it already knows the answers to. Upon finding any inconsistencies in the truth, the system could then discredit a dataset. Furthermore, if one thing a person says is not plausible, (ex: a person claims to have been with a million partners), then that would put into question the validity of the remaining data they contributed, of which we would have to throw out.

[Trojan Defense 15]

I think Lascivious most succinctly sums up the opposing side's argument on this topic with...

One of the reasons I find Trojan's idea of risk assessment not beneficial is because we don't know well the mechanics of STD infections. Once you put a number on it, people will look to the number rather than the words used to put those numbers in perspective. The numbers become absolute without the finer points of perspective being remembered by most people.

 

However, I do not believe these problems are beyond fixing.

 

The problem with data collection could be resolved by following Highlander's suggestion to use risk factors that can be assessed unequivocally. And even the risk factors that we can not unequivocally assess, are not necessarily useless. We may have to leave such factors out of the risk assessments, but collecting such data may help epidemiologists better understand stds by showing correlations between how a large number of people answer a question, and what their outcomes are.

 

As for people forgetting the finer points of perspective, and taking the numbers as being absolute, that is not necessarily a bad thing if we can leverage that to our advantage. Instead of telling people how many partners we think they could have before infection was statistically inevitable, we could tell them how many they could have before they should get tested, and never get close to the danger zone. For example, we may have a guideline that says a person in a particular situation should retest no later than 4 months a part, or 10 partners a part (which ever comes first). So in the event they hit their partner limit first, it puts them on an accelerated testing schedule. The benefit of this would then be that a person's level of risk reduction then becomes proportionate to their level of sexual activity.

[highlander 21]

I will attest that Trojan defense is right such a system could in fact be developed. I have worked on commercial systems in the financial arena that do things very similar to what he's asking(i.e. if you use credit cards, your transactions run through I system I did some of the early work on).

 

When public health folks say stuff like:

have fewer partners

know your partners serostatus

be monogamous

 

They are essentially constructing a "rules based system".

 

The thing is:

if you do a closer examination:

a fairly small portion of the population are really at high risk. There are genetic, lifestyle and health history factors that tend to predispose certain people towards specific diseases at specific times in their lives.

 

This kind of system hasn't been created yet-but I'm convinced it could be created.

[slevin 1,374]

highlander said:

I will attest that Trojan defense is right such a system could in fact be developed. I have worked on commercial systems in the financial arena that do things very similar to what he's asking(i.e. if you use credit cards, your transactions run through I system I did some of the early work on).

 

When public health folks say stuff like:

have fewer partners

know your partners serostatus

be monogamous

 

They are essentially constructing a "rules based system".

 

The thing is:

if you do a closer examination:

a fairly small portion of the population are really at high risk. There are genetic, lifestyle and health history factors that tend to predispose certain people towards specific diseases at specific times in their lives.

 

This kind of system hasn't been created yet-but I'm convinced it could be created.

 

I think the point many are trying to make is that even though such a system could be developed the viability of the system itself is in question. For things like assessing credit, predicting market trends and things of the nature you described the downfall of being wrong in some cases isn't such a big deal. So you extend a few thousand in credit to someone who defaults. It sucks, but it isn't the end of the world; especially if you're able to reduce that number quite a bit. For something like this with STDs the impetus of being wrong is far greater (to the individual). Additionally, the financial systems are being used by people with a fair bit of expertise in that area. They have experience, knowledge and it is their job to keep up with the details of what they are working on. People using this STD tool will generally be uneducated, uninterested in learning more and looking for a quick shortcut to putting much thought into risk analysis.

 

I don't think anyone is challenging that it could be developed, just how useful it would end up being. I still haven't seen much detail on how it would work. Anyone who poses questions doesn't seem to get actual answers.

[highlander 21]

The thing to keep in mind here:

with an STD risk assessment, having a recent, clean bill of health overrides a lot of the past--but perhaps not all of the past.

 

For most folks, a collection of higher risk factors would mean they would have to test more frequently to overcome their increase risk. For some, it might mean some time out(i.e. someone that just got diagnosed with HSV2 is rather infectious for 1-2 year years and vulnerable to HIV infection during that period). I can also imaging folks that have recently been out of country(i.e. on a vacation to Bangkok) might find themselves at a high risk until they go their next valid test. Now, there are going to be some folks that need to go in for treatment. Others may find they have incurable diseases like HSV2-but a lot of folks are in that boat-and it really isn't the end of the world. The only life threatening STD's out there are HIV and HepC(which is barely an STD)

 

I think if such a system were created, and a few people started using it as an aid to selecting partners, in time it would snowball. Right now, it is hard to make the case that what swingers do is any worse than what the rest of the public does from a public health standpoint. It looks like it is plausible that a subset of swingers might be able to make a case that what they do is safer than what the general public does(even with celibates thrown into the mix on the side of the general public!).

[slevin 1,374]

The thing to keep in mind here:

with an STD risk assessment, having a recent, clean bill of health overrides a lot of the past--but perhaps not all of the past.

 

For most folks, a collection of higher risk factors would mean they would have to test more frequently to overcome their increase risk. For some, it might mean some time out(i.e. someone that just got diagnosed with HSV2 is rather infectious for 1-2 year years and vulnerable to HIV infection during that period). I can also imaging folks that have recently been out of country(i.e. on a vacation to Bangkok) might find themselves at a high risk until they go their next valid test. Now, there are going to be some folks that need to go in for treatment. Others may find they have incurable diseases like HSV2-but a lot of folks are in that boat-and it really isn't the end of the world. The only life threatening STD's out there are HIV and HepC(which is barely an STD)

 

I think if such a system were created, and a few people started using it as an aid to selecting partners, in time it would snowball. Right now, it is hard to make the case that what swingers do is any worse than what the rest of the public does from a public health standpoint. It looks like it is plausible that a subset of swingers might be able to make a case that what they do is safer than what the general public does(even with celibates thrown into the mix on the side of the general public!).

 

I have yet to hear how any of those important factors would be able to be captured by the system in a reliable fashion. Relying on people to tell the truth just isn't feasible. Unlike credit scores there is no automated way for things like my travel details or recent test results to be posted to my online STD risk profile unless I volunteer them. That just won't happen.

[highlander 21]

STFree.com has worked out a way to get clinics to report confidential results without disclosing identity. basically you ask your results to be sent to that service using their forms. AIM Healthcare foundation records your photoid number on your test results-which are hosted on their site. Neither are completely automated-but they both provide reasonable authentication for anyone that doesn't have an identical twin. Stuff like travel records are on your passport(although there are people with multiple passports).

 

You are right-these are the sorts of things that can't be used as part of an assessment unless you want them be. The point is if you want an accurate, 3rd party validated assessment of your risk that didn't disclose your identity, that is a solvable problem.

 

who might want that? Well, someone that may have superficial trappings of being risky, but really isn't(and wants partners to understand just how low risk they really are).

 

Now once a few folks start doing this sort of thing, having an accurate assessment of low risk becomes a competitive advantage for some folks-and others start to look at what they might do to become competitive.

[Trojan Defense 15]

I think the point many are trying to make is that even though such a system could be developed the viability of the system itself is in question.

 

What this is building up to is an advanced form of serosorting that is facilitated through information technology. When viewed in the right context, the viability of such ideas starts to become more clear, as the success of such ideas is not necessarily dependent on how well they work by themselves, but how well do they work as part of a greater system.

[Trojan Defense 15]

You are right-these are the sorts of things that can't be used as part of an assessment unless you want them be. The point is if you want an accurate, 3rd party validated assessment of your risk that didn't disclose your identity, that is a solvable problem.

 

Highlander is right. What I propose is not a mandate, but a tool. If you don't want it, you don't have to use it, but if you do, its there.

 

who might want that? Well, someone that may have superficial trappings of being risky, but really isn't(and wants partners to understand just how low risk they really are).

 

Now once a few folks start doing this sort of thing, having an accurate assessment of low risk becomes a competitive advantage for some folks-and others start to look at what they might do to become competitive

 

Highlander makes another valid point. Many of the people who choose not to swing do so because they are afraid of stds. If such a system adequately addressed their concerns, then that may lead to a large influx of new swingers that are being very careful. So what I suspect successful implementation of these ideas would lead to over time is an exponential increase of new swingers, and a less dramatic, but steady increase of veteran swingers into the system as momentum picked up.

[highlander 21]

I'm not sure how big the niche for swinging would be even if STD's were absolutely zero concern. I suspect that even STD's were gone tomorrow, lots of people would find other reasons not to swing. That said, I think there _would_ be an influx into swinging broadly defined if there was an aspect of swinging that was clearly much safer than today.

 

I think the bigger aspect of the whole serosorting thing is it takes folks into a more intentional mindset on relationships in general-as opposed to a "spontaneous" mindset. There are a lot of folks that are real up tight about doing anything that smack of looking for a relationship or sex.

[Trojan Defense 15]

I'm not sure how big the niche for swinging would be even if STD's were absolutely zero concern. I suspect that even STD's were gone tomorrow, lots of people would find other reasons not to swing. That said, I think there _would_ be an influx into swinging broadly defined if there was an aspect of swinging that was clearly much safer than today.

 

Unless I'm overlooking something, I would think the reasons people choose not to swing, or engage in any illicit sexual activity could fall into one of two broad categories: moral/religious convictions/social norms, and health concerns. Once health concerns were addressed, then that theoretically eliminates the group who's sole objection to swinging was based on health concerns. That said, I would agree that it is unclear exactly what the numbers are on that, and that my statement is more a matter of opinion than fact, but even if we were just talking about 1% of the US population, or not even that much, maybe 1/2% of the US Population, that would fit within my definition of "many" since we are talking about a population that is on such a large scale.

 

I think the bigger aspect of the whole serosorting thing is it takes folks into a more intential mindset on relationships in general-as opposed to a "spontaenous" mindset. There are a lot of folks that are real up tight about doing anything that smack of looking for a relationship or sex.

 

I suppose I could see that. Sort of like social anxiety disorder, except we might replace the word social here with sexual, in which case maybe a third miscellaneous category as to why people don't swing might be described as being for psychological reasons/hang-ups.

[highlander 21]

I think that swinging isn't for everybody. Lots of people that try it don't stick with it.

 

Boyond the moral/religious objections-and just whether people like it:

it is a question of what someone's goals are-and how swinging really fits into them. Now, the STD issue obscures some of that.

 

That said:

I think that a lot of folks don't undertanding well just how swinging might be a positive thing for them

[Trojan Defense 15]

Boyond the moral/religious objections-and just whether people like it:

it is a question of what someone's goals are-and how swinging really fits into them. Now, the STD issue obscures some of that.

 

That it does, or at the very least, complicates things.

[Trojan Defense 15]

Since it is not exactly a black and white issue, perhaps a better way of me saying it is, to whatever extent health concerns are an impediment to swinging, is the extent to which swinging would be viewed as a relatively safe activity once those health concerns had been addressed.