Genital herpes

Towels, toilet seats, swimming pools

I know the answer is supposed to be no. I would still like to hear it from people who live with this rather than from a leaflet.

short_wave 4 months ago

NoteMember experience, not medical advice. Symptoms overlap between infections and only a test can tell them apart.

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still_water 4 months ago

No, realistically. The virus is fragile outside the body and does not survive well on surfaces. Transmission needs direct skin to skin contact.

Nobody in the literature is catching genital herpes from a toilet seat or a swimming pool, and three years in I have stopped worrying about it entirely.

first_frost 4 months ago

Sharing a towel immediately after someone with an active outbreak is the one scenario that gets raised, and even that is considered very unlikely. It is not a reason to run a separate laundry system.

greytide 4 months ago

The reason it matters to say this clearly is that the fear of household transmission makes people treat themselves as contaminated at home. That does far more damage than the actual risk, which is negligible.

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