Chinese dating and STDs: Something you should know

Since I mentioned the drug resistant form of gonorrhea in my blog post, “Showers Before Sex”, I thought I would say a little more about it. Although it is primarily appearing in Southeast Asia, it is not a particular problem in online Chinese dating, since for now it is largely limited to the sex worker population.

But researchers agree it is only a matter of time before it crosses over into the mainstream and into the West. And this is where not only those doing Chinese dating need to be concerned. Indeed, the possible impact of this is being compared to the AIDS epidemic, except that it will pretty much affect homosexuals and heterosexuals equally.

Although in the face of AIDS we tend to dismiss everything else as trivial, the reports of this new drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea is not to be taken lightly. The New Yorker ran a recent feature article on it, and it got me thinking about how this applies to the world of Chinese dating. Here’s why.

Granted, if you limit yourself to online Chinese dating, there is not a problem. On the other hand, if you limit yourself to online Chinese dating, it is not a lot of fun. So let’s assume you are going to get past the online stage.

The main concern has to do with the drug-resistant nature of this strain. It is not merely that this new strain of gonorrhea is not able to be treated by the last available antibiotic to effectively treat gonorrhea. It is that there is no ongoing research right now to bring a drug to the market to effectively combat this strain. Nothing.Nada. Given the time it takes to develop a decent drug, we are probably looking a decade of a form of gonorrhea that is resistant to treatment rampaging through the population.

The main means of transmission of this new strain seems to be in unprotected oral sex, fellatio to be precise (for some reason cunninglingus does not spread the disease). The danger is that there is an assumption that oral sex is safer and so the prevalence of unprotected oral sex has greatly increased. Seeing an opportunity, the new strain of gonorrhea stepped in and found its perfect mode of transmission.

This strain grows in the throat, allowing easy transmission. Indeed, the transmission rates are most frightening. A woman who has unprotected sex with an H.I.V. infected man has a roughly one-in-one-thousand chance of contracting the virus. The transmission rate among gay men having anal sex is one in a hundred. By contrast, with gonorrhea a man has a 25% chance of contracting the disease from an infected partner, while women have a 66% chance.

For the foreseeable future, the best hope for stopping this epidemic does not lie in the development of drugs but in changing behavior, in particular, in persuading people to wear condoms during oral sex, or to forego the pleasure entirely. Since oral sex with a condom does not in truth sound all that pleasurable, it more or less amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it.

In any case, you have been warned, so be careful. Although this new strain in in its current incarnation will not kill you, the long term health effects of a drug resistant form of gonorrhea rampaging through your body are not pleasant.

Peter Vernezze blogs on various topics about Chinese dating,Chinese women and things Chinese. For trusted Chinese dating services and for beautiful Chinese Women join http://www.ChinaLoveMatch.net