So we are always taught that STDs come from sexual contact with a person that has been infected.
But how does the infected person get infected in the first place?
There has to be a primary way where someone get infected (not through sex) and then transmits that to others through sex right?
I would imagine that bec we do have treatments for STDs they would go extinct if the only way of getting and STD was through sex. But that isn’t the case.
In: Biology
Yes and no. STI’s are a broad category – many different afflictions fall under it. They can all spread through other means, *but* some of them are *almost* exclusive to sex.
Your assumption about the diseases dying out if they only spread through sex is just not based in reality. The way diseases work is by jumping from person to person, and the fact that the process is sex doesn’t really change that. People have been shagging since the dawn of humanity, and just like with almost any disease the germs we deal with today are just the descendants of the germs dealt with by our ancestors.
Back to it, other possible ways of spreading just depend a *lot* on the disease. Herpes, for instance, spreads through contact. It is most common to have on the face, but the infection can be passed to another’s genitals through oral sex. HIV can spread through poor hygiene while using needles. Crabs can be transmitted through shared clothing.
If someone gives birth naturally with an STD they are able to pass it onto their child if their STD is in its contagious stage.
They might get extinct if everybody actually got tested before having unprotected sex, and got treated for the STD if they had one. A lot of people get tested and refuses to have sex without condoms, but sometimes accidents happen, a condom rips or something, or someone lies about being tested, if they didn’t wear protection after starting treatment etc. kind of like Covid, if the whole world had bunkered down inside, not leaving at all, it would have probably gone extinct now. It’s still there because people don’t take the necessary precautions or because they can’t. In a lot of countries you can’t really get tested and condoms are hard to get. So STD’s will keep on existing.
Stay safe, use condoms, and get checked regularly. If you have a partner, get tested before you skip the condom, wait to get tested until at least 3 weeks have passed (incubation time) since you had unprotected sex the last time. Get checked once a year maybe.
You have to remember with diseases is that microorganisms have existed for billions of years and have evolved with us. Its like how neither bees nor flowers have always existed, yet they evolved to rely on each other. So whatever it is that made it so a disease is only transmitted through sex likely happened before humans existed.
We can’t say for sure how it happened, but we know what probably happened: Many diseases can spread through multiple ways. STDs simply spread through mucous membranes. Most of these can also be transferred through blood contact, which also happens during sex a lot. Usually not in an amount you can see, but microscopic tears are all that a virus or bacteria needs.
Over time some of these diseases evolved to only spread through a specific set of mucous membranes. Other diseases came from other animals, since some diseases can jump from one species to another if they are similar enough. Eating raw meat is enough to do this, since your mouth is made of mucous membranes.
Again though, as I said above, it is impossible to know if what I described is how it actually happened. I just described methods that could have worked. Trying to trace the origins of microorganisms is extremely difficult to do, even over just a few hundred years. And this stuff would’ve happened over millions of years.
I know noone answered your question well, because I too looked for the same answer years ago. There’s almost nothing on their origin. The best I could find when I went digging was some are found in dirt. The ground. And if the right conditions are met, a toilet seat is viable (not for all), I don’t care who tells you otherwise.
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