Super gonorrhea has infected people in the United States for the first known time. This week, Massachusetts public health officials announced the discovery of two gonorrhea cases appearing to display increased resistance to all known antibiotic classes that can be used against it. These cases were thankfully still curable, but it's the latest reminder that this common sexually transmitted infection is becoming a more serious threat.
Gonorrhea, caused by the namesake bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is the second most commonly reported STI in the U.S., with 677,769 cases documented in 2020. Many infected people don't experience illness, but initial symptoms can include a discolored discharge from the genitals, painful or burning urination, and rectal bleeding if caught from anal sex. When gonorrhea is left untreated, it raises the risk of more serious complications, like damage to the reproductive tract in women and swollen testicles in men, both of which can lead to infertility. And when it's passed down from mother to child, the infection can be fatal or cause blindness in newborns.
[...] These cases are likely only a warning of what's to come. Some of the important genetic markers seen in this novel strain have been spotted in pan-resistant cases from Europe and Asia, which shows that these mutations are continuing to spread around the world. Gonorrhea rates in general have increased year after year in the U.S. And perhaps most worryingly, no clear connection between the two Massachusetts cases has been found, indicating that these strains may already be circulating past the point where they could be easily contained.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @01:11PM (12 children)
Don't fuck indiscriminately. As a bonus, this also ends the need for the vast majority of abortions (baby killings).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 24 2023, @02:40PM (5 children)
Or just use condoms, how about that?
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @03:44PM (4 children)
No thanks. I prefer not to have sex with disease-ridden people.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 24 2023, @06:16PM (2 children)
Ya know, it's a bit like why you wear those masks when riding the bus: You don't really see it at first glance whether they're infectious. If you could instantly spot a disease on someone, the flu would have died out before recorded time because somewhere between inventing fire and cave painting, Homo Erectus would have figured out to club the sneezer to death.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @10:15PM
Do you really fuck people as casually as sitting near someone on the bus?!? I guess if I behaved so recklessly I'd be more concerned about picking up diseases.
And, I don't wear masks (since I'm not concerned with virtue signalling), and I don't ride on buses (since I'm not a loser).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @10:19PM
Regarding wearing masks... you should really read the warning label on the box of masks. It clearly states that the mask doesn't protect against COVID-13.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @04:15AM
You don't mean all the liberals, do you?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @02:55PM (4 children)
More advice from Captain Oblivious. Got any diet tips for us today, Capt?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @03:46PM (3 children)
If it were obvious, there wouldn't be a super-gonorrhea problem in the first place.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday January 24 2023, @05:04PM (1 child)
Just because a solution is obvious, doesn't mean that people will do what you expect or want them to do. I mean, really, looking back at everything. Are you actually surprised that people have sex with random strangers? Sure, with the education we have, it should be a no-brainer. Don't have sex with random people. Otherwise, you're just rolling the dice every time you do. Eventually, you will lose. Whether that's having to pay child support to 10 different women or that's getting one or many STDs. Just because you had sex with one random stranger, doesn't mean you can't get multiple STDs from them.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by legont on Wednesday January 25 2023, @04:06AM
The thing is, chances of getting bad STD is low. It was said, for example, that risk/reward ratio of unprotected female prostitution is better than say coal mining. Girls know it. Furthermore, the dangers of straight male sex are yet an order of magnitude lower. Hence a miner fucks anything female that moves with no condoms nor regrets. It's a rational decision.
Yes, it is bad for society, but our culture says fuck it - everybody for themselves.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @08:18PM
Whoosh - that's the sarc-o-meter flying away in tatters.
So ok, got it. Ignore biological imperatives no. 1 and no. 2. That'll be right as rain.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:47AM
Even if Person A only has sex with their long-term monogamous partner, that doesn't prevent the partner from screwing around behind his/her back and transmitting it to them.
Pregnancy can happen regardless of whether the woman's having sex with random guys or a long-term partner; how often she's having sex and whether they're using protection correctly are the major factors there.
Oh, and 93% of abortions take place in the first trimester (51% early within it), significantly before the embryo or fetus could be reasonably confused with a "baby" outside of unscientific religious beliefs.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @01:26PM (1 child)
Super Gonorrhea, is that what Spiderman got when the spider bit him? Or is this what makes Superman a super man?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @01:48PM
It's one step to feeling like Al Capone in prison.
(Score: 3, Informative) by anotherblackhat on Tuesday January 24 2023, @09:45PM (4 children)
A good first step towards fighting the problem; decriminalize prostitution [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2023, @09:57PM (1 child)
It's the only work most people will be able to get in 10 or 20 years.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:23AM
A society cannot prosper if most people are not involved in material production or the things that support material production (sales, design, management, etc.) A nation of prostitutes would starve in poverty.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @12:40AM (1 child)
It needs to be done carefully, if at all. Nevada's organized brothels are a problematic model--women are shunned in the community at large, basically confined to compounds, and still exploited.
IMHO, they should only make it legal if all the prostitutes are independent contractors, with nobody skimming their pay. They should also make sure that any loophole in that is closed tightly--a motel could ban sex workers, but it couldn't charge them more if it allowed them because that would be tantamount to a brothel and then we're back to square-1. Also, harsh penalties for anybody inducing somebody in to prostitution for any reason. Really, it's the pimps and traffickers that make it so much more awful than it already is. I'm quite certain that some of this is happening in in my neighborhood, because some Johns came up here looking for a house one time. They were every bit as unsavory as you'd expect a guy who has to pay for sex to be.
BTW, in our case it seems to tie in to the whole Indian casino thing. I don't know what the best way is to right the wrongs there, but casinos bring a vice mentality to the vicinity. The tramps are generally not obvious in the casino itself too often, but I really have to wonder how things would be if we had come up with some better alternative, like, I dunno... eco tourism, a community college, light manufacturing incentives, or all of the above.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:01AM
Come on - cops and politicians aren't the only people who frequent prostitutes.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday January 24 2023, @11:56PM
2023 was getting jealous of previous years. Covid (2019 ongoing), Murder Hornets (2020), Floods in many places (2021), Delta variant (2022), etc. Even the Ukraine war hasn't resulted in nuclear holocaust, yet. So:
Now for 2023 we have super gonorrhea!