“We’re #1”: Yet Another Ignominious All-Time Record High Is Established In The Late, Great United States…

Whenever it seems like this country can’t possibly sink any lower, we always seem to find a way to top ourselves.  According to a report that was just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in the United States reached the highest level ever recorded in 2019.  Thanks to the popularity of Internet “dating apps”, there has been a boom in casual sex in recent years, and this has resulted in a tsunami of STD cases that is absolutely unprecedented in our history.  Needless to say, this is not a sign of a healthy society.

Of course things were not always this bad.  In fact, if you go back to the early days of the Bush administration, syphilis had almost been entirely wiped out, and cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea were at very low levels…

Of course things were not always this bad.  In fact, if you go back to the early days of the Bush administration, syphilis had almost been entirely wiped out, and cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea were at very low levels…

“Less than 20 years ago, gonorrhea rates in the U.S. were at historic lows, syphilis was close to elimination, and advances in chlamydia diagnostics made it easier to detect infections,” said Raul Romaguera, DMD, MPH, acting director for CDC’s Division of STD Prevention in a written statement.

“That progress has since unraveled.”

Unfortunately, the landscape has completely changed since that time.  Just check out these numbers…

Data showed 1.8 million cases of chlamydia, 616,000 cases gonorrhea and 129,000 cases of syphilis.

Comparatively, in 2000, there were 709,000 cases of chlamydia, 363,000 cases gonorrhea and 31,000 cases of syphilis.

There are a lot of things that we want America to be great at, but spreading sexually-transmitted diseases is not one of them.

And the numbers tell us that cases have been rising at a particularly frightening pace since 2015…

For 2019, health departments across the U.S. reported 1.8 million cases of chlamydia, an almost 20% increase since 2015; 616,392 cases of gonorrhea, more than 50% higher than 2015, and 129,813 cases of all stages of syphilis, a whopping 70% increase, the CDC said.

So why is this happening?

Well, an NPR article on this subject is pointing out that dating apps have made finding casual sex easier than ordering a pizza…

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In the gay community in San Francisco, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date “faster than getting pizza delivered to your home,” says Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men’s health.

These dating apps are particularly popular among young people and in the gay community, and this is clearly showing up in the case numbers…

Additionally, gay and bisexual men and younger people also faced an increased burden. According to the report, gay and bisexual men made up nearly half of all 2019 primary and secondary syphilis cases and had gonorrhea rates that were 42 times higher than heterosexual men in some areas, whereas people aged 15 to 24 years accounted for 61% of chlamydia cases and 42% of gonorrhea cases.

It is important to keep in mind that chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are just three pieces of a much larger puzzle.

According to the CDC, there are dozens of STDs currently spreading in the United States.  Approximately 20 million new STD infections occur in the U.S. every single year, and at any moment in time approximately 110 million Americans are dealing with a sexually-transmitted disease…

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have long been a formidable challenge for public health. CDC estimates that approximately 20 million new STD infections occur in the United States each year, and that more than 110 million total (new and existing) people are infected at any given time. These infections also are an economic drain on the U.S. healthcare system. Data suggest the direct cost of treating STDs in the United States is nearly $16 billion annually. Even more concerning, some STDs are becoming increasingly resistant to antimicrobials used to treat them.

According to Google, the current population of the United States is 328 million.

So if you have casual sex with some random person, there is a more than one in three chance that person will be infected.