Some people have more outbreaks and more painful outbreaks than others. It’s helpful to take an antiviral that suppresses the outbreaks. When there are no outbreaks, chances of transfer are low but not zero. It’s tends to be higher risk for the penetrated party rather than the one doing the penetrating. Since she never had an outbreak and the penetrated party is less likely to transfer, this may be why.
Frankly, though, like all viruses, long-term effects can be kind of scary, like the evidence of a correlation with higher rates of alzheimers and dementia in patients HSV-I/HSV-II. Viruses do a lot of things to the body long-term that may not be readily obvious or related directly to the virus itself, much like human papillomavirus is correlated with higher instances of cervical cancer and throat cancer. Long-COVID is another example.
While transfer probability is low, it’s still valuable to try to stop transmission by using prophylactics.
I had a partner with genital HSV-1. YMMV, but in general:
Some people have more outbreaks and more painful outbreaks than others. It’s helpful to take an antiviral that suppresses the outbreaks. When there are no outbreaks, chances of transfer are low but not zero. It’s tends to be higher risk for the penetrated party rather than the one doing the penetrating. Since she never had an outbreak and the penetrated party is less likely to transfer, this may be why.
Frankly, though, like all viruses, long-term effects can be kind of scary, like the evidence of a correlation with higher rates of alzheimers and dementia in patients HSV-I/HSV-II. Viruses do a lot of things to the body long-term that may not be readily obvious or related directly to the virus itself, much like human papillomavirus is correlated with higher instances of cervical cancer and throat cancer. Long-COVID is another example.
While transfer probability is low, it’s still valuable to try to stop transmission by using prophylactics.
Thank you. I’ve been flashing back to high school sex and feeling a little gross about myself, but your comment is really comforting.