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
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.
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