- HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives. Unless you plan to remain completely celibate, you are likely to contract a strain.
- Sooner is better, but vaccination can be done at any age. Guidelines often lag behind, but vaccination makes sense even if you are currently HPV-positive. While it won't clear an existing infection, it protects against different strains and reinfection (typically body removed HPV in 1-2 years). See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/
- HPV16 is responsible for a large number of throat cancers (around 50% in smokers and 80% in non-smokers!). This affects both men and women. Vaccinating men is important for their own safety and to reduce transmission to their partners.
You can get HPV without sex too.
https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.ht...
"HPV is most commonly spread during vaginal or anal sex. It also spreads through close skin-to-skin touching during sex"
This focuses on sex, but any virus that can be found on skin, also has a chance to be transmitted without sex just as well. Admittedly the chance here for HPV infection is much higher with regard to sex, but not non-zero otherwise. The HeLa cells also contain a HPV virus in the genome, though this was probably transmitted via sex:
"The cells are characterized to contain human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18)"
HPV-18. I think HPV-18 may in general be more prevalent than HPV-16.
This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine - they figure they've already had it at some point. The biggest problem with that logic is that not all strains are as dangerous and they probably have not contracted 16 or 18 specifically. The other problem is there's still a good number of people who have never had it and shouldn't assume they have because its common.
Second, the body normally clears HPV naturally after 1-2 years. However, natural infection often does not provide immunity, so reinfection can easily occur (even from the same partner or a different part of your own body).
People often assume that HPV is either a lifetime infection or that recovery guarantees immunity - neither is the case!
1) you probably haven't had all N strains yet.
2a) you likely haven't been infected with the ones that cause cancer, because they're relatively rare.
2b) ...that is especially true if you're young and not sexually active.
2) being infected with one strain does not provide sterilizing cross-immunity against the other strains.
3) even if you've been infected with a strain, some of the vaccines have been shown to prevent reinfection and reactivation better than natural infection alone.
4) in general, the vaccination-mediated immunity might last longer or be "stronger" than the natural version, since the vaccines are pretty immunogenic, and the viruses are not.
But for point 4, it's well-known that vaccine efficacy is lower for people who have already seroconverted (cf [1]), so there's clearly some amount of practical immunity provided by infection.
[1] The vaccines are roughly 90% effective for the major cancer-causing strains, but it's not a simple answer, and varies a lot by how you frame the question. See table 2 here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/
Also be sure to see table 4 if you're a man. The data for biological men and women are surprisingly different!
I'm not being avoidant here -- medical decisions are always subjective and multi-factor, and I can't begin to tell you what you should do. (But I also sincerely believe that propagandists try to reduce nuanced data to talking points, which is equally wrong.)
Please note the caveat about gender that I just added. The data for biological men and women are very different. Also, I haven't discussed risks at all, which is the other side of the ledger -- these vaccines are pretty darned safe, but everything comes with risk, and only you can decide what level of risk is appropriate for your life.
The initial data says you should vaccinate somewhere around 12-14 year old girls because most of them will be HPV naive but if you wait longer they won't be any more. But too many US parents cannot imagine their little girl ever having sex and if they never have sex they almost certainly won't contract HPV so, why are we vaccinating them? Are you trying to make my daughter a slut?
If you've been a teenage American this should strike you as very silly, and doubly so if you understand biology. Teenage girls are not, in fact, celibate by default, so some of them will get horny. And if you understand biology the viral infections aren't caused by the same mechanism as pregnancy "sexual activity" is a shorthand, you can easily get infected while steering clear of anything that would get somebody knocked up. A peck on grandma's cheek is unlikely to work, but if you're sucking face for most of a Stranger Things episode that's definitely enough that you might contract HPV.
Did I read this correctly? You are going to decide for your children based on their plans to be monogamous?
And you’re also going to decide for your parents? I can only assume you’re in the unfortunate situation where your parents are no longer capable of making decisions?
Also, I think these questions are in bad faith.
It is actually hard to get people to change any behavior. The public health benefits should be a primary concern. Avoid vaccination if there is a downside to you personally, but that isn’t what I’m hearing from your comments.
Now maybe that changes if you get divorced and get a new sexual partner.
The FDA itself restricted access to the vaccine on the basis of age. Given that virions aren't even involved in the production process, its safety should have been deemed good enough for the entire population early on.
Same reason you can't get Shingrix under a certain age.
Insurance companies used to only pay for the vaccine at 60. They've reduced it to 50 now because people (like me) were getting it in their 50's. I got it in my left eye and because my immune system is kinda shit, I still have it, though it doesn't give me too much grief now. But it did trash my cornea in that eye, so it's messed my vision up pretty good. And since there's still an active infection (after 8 years), I can't get a cornea transplant.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/two-dose-shin...
https://www.boots.com/online/pharmacy-services/shingles-vacc...
> Price per dose:£230
> Full course (2 doses):£460
As people cite these statistics, it would be useful to distinguish exposure to HPV causing foot warts, etc from the much more dangerous variants. I rarely see any statistics do this sort of segmentation.
There are multiple publications. THe easiest way to find is Gemini 3 Pro or ChatGPT Thinking + find for publications (go to link, not just rely on summary).
They differ by population and methodology. For example, here is "Age-specific and genotype-specific carcinogenic human papillomavirus prevalence in a country with a high cervical cancer burden: results of a cross-sectional study in Estonia", 2023, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10255022/
They say the prevalence of virus is down. They don't say that the cancer rate is down (granted too early to tell), nor do they talk about any adverse events or all cause mortality differences (again, probably too early to tell)
The only thing they can conclude is that the treatment given to stop the virus, stops the virus. But they don't mention any tradeoffs.
Not trying to be an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, but good science needs to talk about the whole picture.
It is DEFINITELY not too early to tell. Cervical cancer rates in Australia, which adopted the vaccine widely and early have decreased, and it has been widely reported ( https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/cervical-can... )
In the case of public health, there are a bunch of organizations that keep on top of the research and maintain a more comprehensive view of their perception of the current consensus.
For day to day guidance, individuals should be referring to either those sources, or healthcare professionals.
If people are looking at individual studies like this to make decisions, something has gone very wrong.
The first thing on your list of complaints is something that by your own admission cannot yet be determined. If you’re not trying to be an anti-vaxxer, you’re doing a bad job of it.
- HPV causes genital warts, HPV is permanent, doctors won't test you for HPV unless you demand it, and the tests aren't reliable, which is why they literally won't diagnose you unless you already have genital warts.
- Once you are confirmed HPV positive (again, you won't be confirmed without getting genital warts), you need to inform your partners, as it causes cancer in both men and women (but mostly women).
1) not every strain of HPV causes cancer (iirc, the bad ones are rare).
2) many people (in fact, most people) who are active in the world have been infected with at least one strain of HPV.
3) it’s common to have asymptomatic HPV infections. you probably have one now.
one more:
4) the vaccines likely have little effect on anything unless you were vaccinated as a child (and are a biological woman).
Overall, it’s a situation where you’re asking that sexual partners “disclose” something that the partner probably already has, if they bothered to be tested for it to begin with. Moreover, nobody does these tests (in men, at least), because there’s no point to doing them, other than creating anxiety.
I will leave the nuances of bioethics to other people, but it’s not as clear a situation as you’re making it out to be.
One final thing: these infections aren’t “permanent”. They generally clear naturally in a few years.
On Permanence: 10-20% of HPV infections either don't go away, or go dormant and recur throughout your lifetime. These strains are the ones likely to cause cancer. Low-risk ones cause genital warts that continue causing warts throughout your lifetime. High-risk ones may cause cancer.
The vaccine is available up until 45 years old. Worst case it does nothing, best case it prevents genital warts and cancer.
This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women. Also just because you were infected with one strain, that doesn't mean you can't contract another, possibly oncogenic one. Get vaccinated, it protects against the most common cancer-causing strains. I did, why would I want to unknowingly give someone cancer?
> This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women.
Yeah, it was fucking like pulling teeth getting my HPV vaccine as an adult male. "It's for teenage girls" comments from multiple health care professionals.
I only took the first fucking dose in the regime, and none of my health care providers now offer low cost or covered options. I had to spend Covid money when I had it. I still need the rest of the regime.
Thank you thread for the reminder.
I wish more people would get vaccinated.
Gardasil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil
https://www.google.com/search?q=gardasil+shot+cost
https://www.goodrx.com/gardasil-9/how-much-is-gardasil-witho... :
> When you have your first shot is the main factor that determines whether you will need 2 doses or 3 doses
> Without insurance, the average price of 1 dose of Gardasil is $368.82. But you could pay as little as $169.50 with a GoodRx coupon at certain pharmacies
A prescription is only required for insurance reimbursement fwiu
Deregulating medical systems regarding patient choice and access to drugs is good, but you'll eventually get some bootlicker claiming that "we can't do that because SOMEONE WITH A VIRUS MIGHT USE AN ANTIBIOTIC INCORRECTLY" while ignoring the mass consumption of antibiotics by farm animals as a vector for super bugs.
Also, are farms actually the major vector for antibiotic resistance in the human population? I was under the impression that the majority of antibiotic resistant infections occur in places like hospitals rather than among farm workers, which would seem to indicate farm animals are not the main problem (I 100% support banning the practice anyway).
The dangerous thing about antibiotic immunity is that it can transfer also between bacteria species.
Why is this different? Why is pestering a doctor to give me a medicine they don't recommend a good idea?
Doctors are not all knowing, infallible oracles. They are human beings you can have a conversation with about your health. If you think something makes sense for you, you can run it past them. No one is suggesting randomly asking doctors to prescribe random shit.
Doctors/medical associations don't agree with each other on much, even at the very highest levels. For example, the USA and EU have totally different recommendations related to digital rectal exams for aging men. One believes that finding cancer in old men is important, the other claims it's bad because most of those cancers are benign and sticking a finger up an old mans butt often causes its own complications.
1) if you've ever been exposed to HPV already, then the vaccine is useless
2) there is no test to determine if a male has been exposed, although there is one for females
so they just push the ages up by probability, over time. As the probability of a man being with an older and therefore unvaccinated woman decreases - since with women is the most probable - the age can rise
This is patently incorrect. The vaccine protects against 9 variants. Having been exposed to all 9 before vaccination sounds like really bad luck.
> 2) there is no test to determine if a male has been exposed, although there is one for females
The female HPV tests, as I understand, only test for the presence of HPV in the cervix. It can be present in many other areas. No one is testing women for the presence of HPV on their hands or in their throats.
Most places now offer HPV vaccines to young boys as well. People over 40 more or less missed the boat, but they can still get vaccinated. How useful it is depends entirely on their personal circumstances and risk profiles.
It is incorrect. I had it tested multiple times. It is done less routinely, usually under assumption that since it is women who are mostly at risk, why bother testing men. Which is horrible mindset in anything related to epidemiology.
See:
- https://www.droracle.ai/articles/607248/what-methods-are-use...
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256477/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2024.2...
> 1) if you've ever been exposed to HPV already, then the vaccine is useless
Also no. See other comments.
No. The general reason that people don't do the test for men is that DNA testing is extremely sensitive, and produces a lot of false positives for a virus that is widespread.
It's also not actionable. You can't treat an asymptomatic infection, and a positive leads to the same outcome they would give anyway: use physical barriers and abstinence.
(Edit: hilariously, your first link says exactly what I just wrote, at the very top of the page. Did you read it?)
Sure, test from penis has lower specificity and sensitivity that for cervix, but it is not binary "works or not" (as side note, just measuring from urethra is rarely enough [1]). Life is probability, and it is a huge fallacy to believe that things work 100% or 0%, nothing in between (rarely the case in medicine).
Results are actionable on many ways. Most important, screening for female partners, informed risk for partners or your on safety for ones partners (condoms BTW reduce infection rates, but do not fully protect, as HPV can be on other parts of skin).
[1]
> The overall prevalence of HPV was 65.4%. HPV detection was highest at the penile shaft (49.9% for the full cohort and 47.9% for the subcohort of men with complete sampling), followed by the glans penis/coronal sulcus (35.8% and 32.8%) and scrotum (34.2% and 32.8%). Detection was lowest in urethra (10.1% and 10.2%) and semen (5.3% and 4.8%) samples. Exclusion of urethra, semen, and either perianal, scrotal, or anal samples resulted in a <5% reduction in prevalence.
You keep saying things in these sub threads that are factually incorrect in some important way that hides nuance, or otherwise seems calculated to provoke outrage. This was another example, which I why I replied here.
and even if it is reliable, its utility is limited
all leads to focusing solely on probability of exposure(s)
I think the most insightful thing is that there are 9 HPV variants some of which someone wouldn't have exposure to so its worthwhile to get the vaccine anyway
but other than that, the situation is the same. for men's age the utility of the vaccine is based on probability alone, as its a waste of resources to even attempt checking for prior/current exposure
Here is what I know (which may be limited, I’m not a biologist) and also what I’m assuming:
1) The body apparently doesn’t eliminate the virus on its own when it picks up the virus unvaccinated. I’m assuming that this is because it isn’t registered by the immune system as being harmful, for whatever reason.
2) The attenuated virus in the vaccine would not produce an immune response without the adjuvant, because even viruses that are registered as harmful are not reliably registered as harmful when attenuated. This is where the adjuvant packaged with the attenuated virus comes in - it is registered by the body as harmful, and in its confusion the immune system also adds the virus to the registry.
So, naively, if the immune system previously didn’t register the natural infection as harmful, and if it does register the virus in the vaccine as harmful, why doesn’t the registry entry for the vaccine also get applied to the natural infection, the same way as it does for a person who wasn’t previously infected?
Is there some kind of specificity hierarchy, along with a “not harmful” registry alongside the “harmful” registry, such that the natural infection continues to get its previous classification of “not harmful” because the “not harmful” registry entry is more specific than the “harmful” registry entry? That’s the only explanation I can (naively) think of.
And if that’s the case, could we first wipe out the registry by infecting the person with measles, and then give them the HPV vaccine? Just kidding about this part!
I heard 1 shots already conveys a lot of protection so I'm wondering whether to take the third. I'm a bit late with it too
Here in Spain that's a lot of money.
The benefits may be statistically lower, since you may have been infected by some of the variants already, older males may have fewer sexual partners in the future, and cancer takes a while to develop.
In the USA, it is recommended by default for adults up to 26 and kinda for 27-45.
The study you've quoted here is not definitive evidence of the claim you're making, and that claim is...let's just say that it's controversial. Conventional wisdom is that you're unlikely to benefit from HPV vaccination unless you have not already seroconverted for at least one of the 9 strains (6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, 58) in the current vaccine.
There's not much hard evidence to suggest that vaccination for HPV has strong ability to protect you from a strain after you've already been infected with that strain [1], as the best available data shows a substantial decline in efficacy for women over age 26 and for women of any age who had prior documented infection [2]. This study is small, unrandomized, and the measured primary outcome (anti-HPV IgG) doesn't really tell you anything about relative effectiveness at clearing an infection. The only real evidence they advance for this claim is:
> Persistent HPV infection after vaccination was significantly less frequent in the nine-valent vaccinated group (23.5%) compared to the control group (88.9%; p < 0.001).
...but again, this is a small, unrandomized trial. We don't know how these 60 people differ from the typical HPV-positive case. You can't rely on this kind of observational data to claim causality.
Vaccination is great, but let's not exaggerate or spread inaccurate claims in a fit of pro-vaccine exuberance. The HPV vaccine has age range recommendations [3] for a reason.
[1] For the somewhat obvious reason that your immune system has already seen the virus.
[2] See tables 2 and 3 here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/
It's also worth calling out table 4, which shows the (IMO bad) efficacy data for biological men, which is why I only talk about women, above, and why anyone who recommends vaccination without mentioning this factor is not being entirely forthright. Few people are rushing to give older men the HPV vaccine because it's not really supported by data!
[3] I believe the current guideline is under age 45 in the USA.
However, the vaccination is expensive (~1k) and it is difficult to find doctors who will do non-recommended vaccinations for self-payers.
YCMV
Depends entirely on where you are and what your healthcare situation is. Mine cost me ~100eur.
(even for rest-of-the-world topics)
I am currently getting the HPV series and I only had to pay my copay for the first appointment have nothing for the second one (I am assuming it will be the same for the third)
Uh, monogamy of both partners is also an option, not just celibacy. Not common in these times, I know, but you don't have to completely abstain from sex to be safe.
So I get the theory of this thing. But has anyone actually tried this? Finally I got OneMedical to prescribe it for me for some $1.2k at which point I decided I’ll just get it abroad during some planned travel.
I decided years ago I’d do this because I was going to have girls and I wanted to minimize my daughters’ risk of cancer.
Over a decade ago I tried getting the HPV vaccine in my early 20s, but the doctor told me it wasn't recommended for men and that insurance won't cover it. I was young and didn't have the money to pay out of pocket.
I went to Planned Parenthood and got the vaccine last year. At some point they changed the recommendation to men under 45 now and I got all 3 shots free.
Honestly, though I'm glad to have finally got the vaccine it's been a pretty frustrating experience.
For more context, I have Anthem Blue Cross health insurance. The cost might depend on your insurance.
If you want to read more: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF
While we have some anivaxxers here in DK, most people (90%, I believe) are sane and follow the recommendations.
The vaccinations start while the children are small and continue while they grow up .. the last one is when they are 12.5 years old.
The notifications are delivered in eboks or by mail if you don't want to use eboks. Everything from the state is delivered like this. There is nothing special about how the information is delivered. The SMS/e-mail notifications are just about hwo sent you something and not about what it is. At least for me.
I don't see how the use of eboks makes this work better. It would work just as well without eboks. People listen to doctors and the MAGA like shitheads we do have don't have a lot of influence.
What makes it work is the public registers.
e-boks is like gmail (and others) in that it keeps your old mail. So you can easily find old stuff, a great improvement on paper mail.
I don't even check my physical mailbox once a week.
Denmark is one of the very most digital countries. Physical mail is very much on the way out. We no longer has mailboxes to send mail, you have to go to a shop to send letters, which now cost at last $6 per letter due to the low amount of mail sent.
It is only a matter of less than 10 years before letters will be fully gone.
Which is bad, we definitely should have them. Referral data appears to be managed through Healthlink, which may just be a privatised not always used medical record system.
HealthLink is a messaging system and stores no EHRs at all. eHealth is the National EHR programme aiming to roll out EHRs by 2030 nationwide.
It will be a no-opt-out centralised EHR and combined social care record.
In the 1960s, more than 900 people were diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, corresponding to more than 40 cases per 100,000 Danes.
Today, that number is below 10 per 100,000 nationwide – and among women aged 20 to 29, only 3 out of 100,000 are affected. This is below the WHO’s threshold for elimination of the disease.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/
Want to boost the economy massively at next to no cost? HPV vaccinations are incredible.
My reading of the following is that the cost of each additional quality adjusted life year would be over $100,000, rather than that each vaccination prompts $100k in economic value
> Including preadolescent boys in a routine vaccination programme for preadolescent girls resulted in higher costs and benefits and generally had cost effectiveness ratios that exceeded $100 000 per QALY across a range of HPV related outcomes, scenarios for cervical cancer screening, and assumptions of vaccine efficacy and duration
Hmm. Compared to what measurement? Most viruses are actually not oncogenic.
From cancer causes, oncogenic viruses are thought to be responsible for about 12% of human cancers worldwide:
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/14/7/797
From what I remember, most viruses are not oncogenic in nature, so I am unsure whether the statement made is correct.
E.g. EBV is strongly associated with several lymphomas.
There are other significant clinical associations for HPV, HBV, HCV, HTLV-1, HHV-8, and many others.
I'm a proponent of EHRs, but the key value is at patient-level, not population level where other approaches perform equally well.
"Since HPV vaccination was implemented in the Danish childhood vaccination programme in 2009, we have received 2,320 reports of suspected adverse reactions from HPV vaccines up to and including 2016. 1,023 of the reported adverse reactions have been categorised as serious. In the same period, 1,724,916 vaccine doses were sold. The reports related to HPV vaccination that we have classified as serious include reports of the condition Postural Orthostatic Tachycardi Syndrome (POTS), fainting, neurological symptoms and a number of diffuse symptoms, such as long-term headache, fatigue and stomach ache."
"The risk of cervical changes at an early stage was reduced by 73% among women born in 1993 and 1994, who had been vaccinated with the HPV vaccine compared with those who had not been vaccinated."
"The Danish Health Authority recommends that all girls are vaccinated against HPV at the age of 12. The Danish Health Authori- ty still estimates that the benefits of vaccination by far outweigh any possible adverse reactions from the vaccine."
https://laegemiddelstyrelsen.dk/en/sideeffects/side-effects-...
Those are basic bits of knowledge that apply to most vaccinations.
The problem is that the quacks diminish the positive effects, exaggerate the negatives and engage in a campaign of fear mongering that costs some people (and in some cases lots of people, see COVID) their lives. They are not only clueless, they are malicious.
From Gwyneth Paltrow, JFK Jr, all the way to Donald Trump and a whole raft of others the damage is immense. I have a close family member who now is fully convinced of the healing power of crystals and there isn't a thing you can do to reason with people that have fallen into a trap like that.
My medical insurance will pay for several literally fake/quack treatments because of this crap. If you want to wage war against Quackery I better see you going after "big Chiropractor" first.
This has nothing to do with vaccines. There is a very good reason that misinformation is, and should remain legal. This simply allows the person or group who gets to define what is or is not misinformation to arbitrarily imprison anyone doing publishing they don’t like.
You really need to think through the implications and consequences of censorship laws before advocating for them.
Maybe I did?
It is possible that we just disagree on this. Clearly misinformation about medical stuff is so damaging that many places have found it necessary to have laws on the books. I'm just elevating this from a misdemeanor to an actual crime based on the outcomes.
That scientific consensus you are alluding to is not what you claim it was.
Finally, we're talking about celebrities without any qualification whatsoever spreading utter nonsense causing real harm, you can look at that in isolation and compare it to you making that statement out of an abundance of caution regarding something where there is no downside. The two simply are not equivalent. Free speech absolutists always pull the same trick, aiming to refuse an obvious wrong in order to defend their bastion while forgetting that there isn't a black-or-white at all, you can have some reasonable limits on what people can and can not do and in the age of 'influencers' with global reach the danger is much more prevalent than it used to be.
Free speech is a great good, but it is not the greatest good.
Also, you have already admitted there is a Ministry of Truth equivalent, as such a thing is necessary to prosecute people for telling lies.
So I'm fine with it being flagged and decline to vouch for it.
For the HPV section specifically, there were at least two major omissions.
First, in his table showing autoimmune adverse effects, he has chosen to crop out the next column in the table containing the control conditions - which show very similar rates of adverse effects to the vaccine condition.
Secondly, when discussing negative efficacy in the case of existing persistent infection, he only quotes the data from one of three studies that the linked report covers. The linked report indeed covers the negative efficacy in study 013 as an area of concern. However, study 015 (which had roughly twice the number of total participants as study 013) showed no real evidence of negative efficacy. When all 3 studies are pooled together, the point estimate still says negative efficacy, (at ~-12%), however the error bars are quite wide.
Why this is tragic, is because these two omissions do actually point to failures in public communication about the vaccine. For example, the control condition in the Merck trials were a mix of saline injections (this is the traditional placebo), as well as injections with just the adjuvant (AAHS). This is less standard, and raises legitimate questions about why Merck used an adjuvant as the control, instead of just saline. There a cynical/conspiratorial angle to this question, which I think would be directionally correct.
The second omission is because I think there is a reasonable question of "are there extra risks associated with getting the HPV vaccine while having an active persistence infection", even when taking into account the different and larger study populations within the original trial data. Once again, I think the idea that both companies and public health agencies don't want to deal with a vaccine that requires testing before hand is true. I also believe that on a population level, even if there was a modest increase in risk in that specific subgroup, it makes sense to implement broad vaccination campaigns.
That said, I think the unwillingness of public health agencies to engage with this tricky area of communication and education creates these types of opening for anti-vaccine messaging. If you want a sense of "conspiracy" - here's a random review study - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/
Notice that when reporting results, the groupings for HPV status at enrollment time are "naive" and "irrespective" - the "test positive" grouping isn't broken out.
EDIT: The article that we're discussing is https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating...
In this house we believe Love is love Black Lives Matter Science is real Feminism is for everyone No human is illegal Kindness is everything
Signaling your alignment to the public-facing opinions of your social betters is the modern ersatz religion for atheists. The television is the temple, the pundits the priests. Apostates and heretics are not welcome here. Now, my child, you would not want your words to inadvertently cause the faithful to stray. Would you? Just think of what the late night comedians would say if they could hear you cast doubt on their sponsor Pfizer? Perhaps you would rather join our hate session on the pagans in flyover country?
I wonder if we'll those non-vaccine strains will eventually become the most prevalent.
Hope we'll develop vaccines against those too.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm...
Also on my soapbox it's an absolute absurdity that we still do not have any HPV test for men.
HPV vaccination leads to massive reduction in nasopharyngeal, penile and rectal cancer in men.
The focus of messaging around HPV vaccination on ovarian cancer, female fertility and the age limitations for recommendations / free vaccination in some places are nothing short of a massive public health failure and almost scandal.
Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.
Every male above the age of 26 is locked out of the vaccine unless you pay out of pocket, which will be €300-€500 (or even higher).
It's led to this really weird situation, where HPV vaccination for men is now recommended up to 40s but only covered up to 26yr old, and that recommendation upgrade happened relatively recently. Which means there's a whole generation of men who are told they should get the vaccine, who would have had covered access to the vaccine in the past, but are now expected to go out of pocket.
For younger people it's three shots (second after two months, third after 6 months of the first one), now for older (over 30s or 40s, I can't remember exactly) it's recommended to get two shots (second after six months).
Moral crusades have zero place in public health and are actively harmful.
HPV spreads through oral sex as well by the way.
It is a simple fact that unprotected sex with large numbers of people is very risky. We should have learnt that lesson in the eighties.
The biggest barrier to disease transmission reduction, at least here in the US, is uncritical abstinence promoters like yourself. It works, at best, for a small fraction of the population, and leaves the rest woefully unprepared for the biological realities. The best solution to STDs is education. Which, yes, should emphasize that not having sex is an option, but cannot stop there.
People don't want to hear this obviously. But it is a fact STI transmission has skyrocketed since the so called sexual revolution of the late sixties. Within fifteen years, we has an AIDS epidemic.
It’s the opposite of a fact. Gonorrhoea rates as an example rose significantly in the 1960s, but are now lower than in the 1940s and 1950s. This is thanks to good public health measures.
Start by making sure you’re accurately informed.
Statistically nobody even knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off. Serious HPV problems for men are not even common enough to be viable urban legend. You have less to back up your DARE messaging than DARE did. It's just not gonna work. The nanosecond someone who took your bait shows up to be interviewed by some Youtube talking head about side effects the already severely damaged (compared to, IDK a decade ago) credibility of the medical establishment will go up in flames.
You need to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and let people make their own decisions. People don't "trust the experts" anymore at the scale you need for stuff like vaccination campaigns so you have to operate based on that reality.
If nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who had penile cancer, that's probably because people are very bad about talking about genital health. I'm sure some of the men in my life have issues with erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates, hemmorrhoids, etc. But no one is talking about those issues.
Got a source?
So maybe 70% of throat cancer victims have HPV, and like 70% smoked - and if those were independent facts you'd expect that about 49% both smoked and had HPV, but it's actually more than half 'cos it turns out that if you have HPV then smoking is even worse. So that's nice.
[0] https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/clinical-topics/head-an...
I didn't say it wasn't a significant source of cancer. I said that nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off or some other extreme outcome. Without enough of that to back up your messaging it just won't work. You need to be honest with people, not try and scare them like you're trying to keep school kids from smoking weed in 1990.
The public messaging you're trying to engage in could perhaps have skated by in a less critical time but in the current environment it will be counterproductive.
I don't want my kid or my grandkid to get measles or some other "of immediate consequence" disease because they go to school with a bunch of unvaccinated kids because you people sullied the reputation of public health via "just push the truth a little, it'll make them take the vaccine" type endeavors.
JFC. I'm checking out of this conversation.
Is the idea that you're married and have a single partner and the risk factor has dropped below a certain percentage of the population where there's little reason to recommend getting it if the likelihood is that you've already acquired HPV in your lifetime thus far?
Every other vaccination appears to be straightforward, besides HPV, and I don't know why. I've also never heard a clear answer from a physician.
Is it just that our vaccination schedules are out of date in the United States? This seems to be the most likely culprit to me.
The justification for 27-45 year olds heavily references a meeting. Based on time, author and title, I think either https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/ should be a fair summary of the meeting (I hope...).
I don't really have time to read it all, but the basic idea is as you said - the cost-benefit ratio is off. Basically expanding from something like the current case, to vaccinating up to 45 year old will avert an extra 21k cases of cancer (compared to the base case of 1.4 million) - so about an extra 1.5% cases averted, while the direct vaccination costs are estimated to increase from 44 billion to 57 billion (+29%).
The current guidance says "do not recommend" plus "consult your doctor". You should read that as "blanket vaccination as public policy is cost inefficient in that age range" not "you as a 45 year old should not get the vaccine categorically".