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" Late yesterday afternoon, beneath a headline that, as we wrote about, reads, &amp;quot;Bad news: you probably have herpes and don&amp;#039;t know it,&amp;quot; Vox.com added a completely new opening paragraph that doubled down on their misinformation, on their desire to scare people into reading. Worse, had you not read the article earlier in the day, you would not know it was new. They left it unmarked, except at the bottom, where they added this: &amp;quot;Update: I added information about how the majority of Americans are infected with herpes viruses.&amp;quot; Yes, that is a correction that outwardly admits that Vox initially\u2014blatantly\u2014did not prove a scaremongering claim that they boasted in a headline, in a story that they let lead their website for an entire day. Such is the life of a young news site, with little to no idea of how to admit when it&amp;#039;s wrong. In the lead-up to its launch, Vox positioned itself as a news-paced Wikipedia that would embrace the limitlessness of the Internet to inform people in a way that all other media could not. The big word\u2014their definition, really\u2014is &amp;quot;context&amp;quot;. As one of their founders, Ezra Klein, told New York before the site launched: &amp;quot;We want to think really hard about how to connect not just new information, but to bring it together with important contextual information to create a more thorough source and place to understand the world.&amp;quot; Which, as they predicted would happen, they failed to do with the article about the prevalence of herpes. Because, with that piece, they have now already published an article that in its very text admits that they failed to back up a sensationalized headline\u2014for an article about life-changing disease, no less\u2014and it did so just a day after publishing (by the same author) an article that instructs people how to spot bogus science articles. The very first alarm on that list? &amp;quot;Sensationalized headlines.&amp;quot; The word for the gap between those two articles is not &amp;quot;context&amp;quot;. It&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;hypocrisy&amp;quot;. Actually, it&amp;#039;s worse, because instead of providing context, the updated version creates a conflation that only makes the stigma against herpes more malignant. Its new paragraph now includes a link to a study from that says that, as the article writes, &amp;quot;about 70% of Americans age 14 to 49 have herpes, that is either the HSV-1 or HSV-2 versions. These viruses used to be clearly demarcated as oral and genital herpes, but these days it&amp;#039;s clear that both can cause both types of infections.&amp;quot; The way the author gets to that 70% number is by adding the much more prevalent type of two different herpes viruses (bare with us; we&amp;#039;ll explain very soon): HSV-1 (57.7%) to the much less prevalent HSV-2 (17%). That is, they got to 70% by sloppily combining two different things. They forced data to fit their claim, one that was and is, again, intended to make you scared enough to read. When you read the word &amp;quot;herpes&amp;quot; in the headline, you&amp;#039;re probably thinking about genital herpes, which will probably frighten you. That&amp;#039;s the one with the worst stigma, that people fear getting (that&amp;#039;s why they ask &amp;quot;Still scared?&amp;quot; to conclude the article). &amp;quot;Typically,&amp;quot; in the words of the authors of the very study Vox cites, HSV-2 is genital herpes. Meaning genital herpes is the far, far less prevalent one, at 17%. That means, again, despite what their headline intentionally made you think: You do not &amp;quot;probably have [genital] herpes&amp;quot;. Now, as for HSV-1: It is, according to the very first paragraphs in that very study, &amp;quot;typically&amp;quot; oral herpes. Most commonly called cold sores. If you have HSV-1, you &amp;quot;typically&amp;quot; got it as a kid, say, from sharing a water bottle with another kid who already had it\u2014or you got it from your mother when you were a baby. Here&amp;#039;s the thing about this type of herpes: It is normal. The majority of Americans between 14 and 49 have it. And while I know people who&amp;#039;ve cried when telling their doctors that they have it, most doctors will tell you to calm down. That you&amp;#039;re fine. That, in a way, it&amp;#039;s more or less like having a cold that will show up from time to time. But that you should know a few other things, too. Doctors will also tell you that oral herpes can be transferred onto your partner&amp;#039;s\u2014or your\u2014genitalia. So if you have a cold sore in your mouth, you shouldn&amp;#039;t perform oral sex; you shouldn&amp;#039;t kiss someone then receive oral sex; you shouldn&amp;#039;t touch your cold sore and then immediately, without washing your hands, touch yours or someone else&amp;#039;s genitalia. You should not do those things, unless you want to risk giving yourself or someone else genital herpes\u2014a stigma, while unfair and generally misinformed, that you may not consider a burden worth carrying. Here&amp;#039;s context that Vox doesn&amp;#039;t provide about genital herpes, for the sake of fear: If you have it, you&amp;#039;ll in all likelihood be fine, too. (As we said yesterday, everyone should read this essay, &amp;quot;The Perks of Herpes.&amp;quot;) But men who have genital herpes\u2014or are having sex with someone who has genital herpes\u2014should always be wearing a condom. Always. That caution and consideration is crucial to being a man. And that is the disgrace of the Vox article: It doesn&amp;#039;t say anything about what to do about herpes. It just raises a (false) scare, then lets it rattle. It&amp;#039;s astounding and shameful. Especially when put in the context of how they did not prove their claim initially, then slimily slid in an unmarked new\u2014and misleading\u2014passage. It shows an lack of inherent morality and an inability to admit when they were wrong. But forget about them\u2014at least until they have time to rethink and improve. Just know that if you do have the commonplace oral herpes, you&amp;#039;re like most other Americans. And if you do have genital herpes, then you&amp;#039;ll also in all likelihood be fine, if you are cautious. Everyone should just be conscious\u2014but not scared\u2014of who they&amp;#039;re having sex with. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/sex/news/a28409/still-do-not-have-genital-herpes/>