Gents, life is aleatoric, i.e. a crapshoot; nothing's guaranteed. Here is how the numbers work out on catching an STD.
You take the probability that your potential partner has a particular STD, multiply that by the probability that it will be transmitted to you in the sex act you contemplate and multiply that by the harm that can occur to you if you catch that STD (very high for HIV, low for getting a hickey from a blowjob). Now sum that formula over all potential STDs and don't forget to include some factor for unknown diseases. After all, HIV was not known until 1984 and who knows what else lurks out there waiting to escape from some obscure Asian or African mammal into the human population? That is your "expected harm" from any single encounter and you can try to make a judgement about whether the risk exceeds the reward. Obviously, the more encounters you have the higher your total expected harm becomes.
This is pretty abstract but think of it in terms of playing Russian Roulette. The number of encounters you have is analogous to the number of times you pull the trigger. The ratio of the number of bullets to cylinders in the revolver is analogous to the probability of an infected partner times the probability of transmission. I suppose that harm could be modeled by playing RR and pointing the gun at various body parts, not just your head.
Now I am not proposing that cruisers carry pocket calculators around with them to calculate the odds but there is an important lesson to be learned by looking at the formula. Your expected harm can be reduced in a number of ways, by not pulling the trigger, by removing bullets from the cylinders and by not pointing the gun at your head. All are equally effective (but estimating the probability of transmission is surer than estimating the probability of an infected partner since you have more control over it). If you want to be really safe you do all three. So I think that avoiding statistical populations of infected people is a reasonable part of a sexual hygiene program but certainly not the only or most important part.
Based on several postings on CFS and reports of a local syphilis epidemic being traced to a single bathhouse I was not surprised to read the results presented in the Southern Voice article and thought that others might benefit. In my effort to reduce my expected harm I am always interested in learning more information about where the risks are. Any time anyone has epidemiological information please feel free to post the link.
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