October 19, 2023 • 22 mins
Why do we all know so little about the Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), despite the fact that herpes infections are common and chronic? First, we get some Herpes 101 from researcher Anna Wald. Then, we speak with Ella Dawson, a sex and culture critic who is one of the billions of people living with HSV–1.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is incubation on today's show Herpes.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, I became the Herpes Girl for a while, which
I didn't expect, and there's some pros and cons to that.
I was really delighted by how excited people were to
have this conversation, but it was also very strange and
like I would go back to my college campus around
that time and people would be like, it's the herpes girl.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'd be like, Hi, you've.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Heard Ella Dawson writes about sex and culture and she's
also one of the billions of people billions with a
bee living with herpes. We'll hear a lot more from
Ella later on, but first let's do a little herpes
one on one For this part of the show, I
called up a herpes authority on a wault. Is it
(00:57):
true that you're the Queen of Herpes?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yes, that's my less formal title. Let's just say I
was introduced like that about now twenty years ago, and
I decided to adopt that namucher and I've been doing
herpes work now for thirty years. There are not a
lot of experts in this field, and I've stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
In addition to being Herpe's royalty. Anna is also a
professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, and today
we're turning to Anna to explain five key things to
know about herpes. By the way, Anna talks about the
two types of herpes that we usually hear about, which
are known as HSV one and HSV two. So thing
(01:41):
number one to know about herpes, most people have it.
How many people in the world are infected with herpes.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Well, it depends if you're talking about HSV one or
HSV two. HSV one about two thirds of people in
the world have HSV one infection and most of its oral,
but not all. Some of it is genital, and about
fourteen percent or so have genital HSV two infection.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Wow, So that's thing number one to know about herpes.
Thing number two, it's really common to have herpes and
not even know it.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Only about twenty percent of people who have HSV two infection,
which is the main cause of genital herpes, at least
historically know that they have genital herpes.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Next thing to know. Part of the reason so many
people don't know they have herpes is that testing is
notoriously unreliable.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
The problem is that many of these essays that are
now commercially available, they're not that accurate. And what's happened
because the frequency of herpes has gone down, but the
frequency of testing has gone up, the proportion that's actually
diagnosed incorrectly has increased.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So there are a lot of false positive A lot
of people get herpes tests that say they have herpes
when in fact they do not.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Right, Because we have people who got tested for whatever
reason for HSV two. They had a new partner, they
were anxious about it, and the test came back positive
for HSV two. I had somebody who didn't believe that
they have it and the gynecologists tell them to go
to therapy to accept it. She was subsequently tested with
(03:25):
an accurate test and the geynecologist was wrong. Right, So
we're giving people a false diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You and your colleagues have developed a better test than
the common test.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My colleague who was here actually before me, did develop
a better test that is still available through University of Washington,
but it's only available here. It's what's called the Western blot,
which means that we look at the ability of the
immune system to respond to a very wide range of
proteins of not just one or two like the commercial assays.
(04:04):
So I get to tell a fair number of people
that I cured their herpes because they thought they have
it by the commercial assay, and then it turns out
that they don't.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The fact number four, Herpes is incurable. With lots of
other viral infections, the body figures out how to eliminate
the virus from the body entirely, but herpes isn't like that.
Herpes has evolved to have this really clever trick that
allows it to evade the human immune system.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Herpies hides in the cells of the nervous system, and
the nervous system is what's called immuneprivileged site. Is that
there's not a lot of immune cells there, so it
is able to hide in a form that's inactive. It's
called latent. It infects bundles of nerves that are along
(04:53):
your spinal accord, and at that point it doesn't elicit
much of an immune response.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And there are just kind of hangs out, not eliciting
an immune response, and then comes out of hiding at
some point later.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
It elicits fair little immune response when it's there, and
then in response to triggers that are not very well defined,
it will come out and make its journey back inside
the nerve all the way down to the either genital
area or to the oral area, depending on whether you're
(05:26):
talking about oral or genital herpes.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, now we come to the fifth and final key
herpes fact. HSV one, which has historically caused oral herpes,
has in the past few decades been causing more and
more cases of genital herpes.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And so they are susceptible to acquiring HSV one in
an area that probably before was not susceptible because they
were already infected at a different site. So now they
initiate sexual activity and they could acquire a genital h's view,
the other reason that people say is that people now
(06:06):
have more oral sex. But it's very hard for me
to believe that this generation invented oral sex. So I
am more a believer in the fact that people are
growing up without HSV one as an explanation.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Thanks to doctor Anna Wald, Queen of Herpes, when we return,
we'll hear more from Ella Dawson about what it was
like learning that she had herpes and what it's been
like living with it. Ever since that's in just a minute.
(06:53):
Ella Dawson is a writer. She writes a lot about
sex and culture, and she has also written a fair
bit about having her which turns out to be a
subject that has a lot to do with both sex
and culture.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So I woke up at the end of my junior
year of college. I remember it was supposed to be
the day of the big Spring Fling concert, uh, and
I just felt peculiar.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I had some uncomfortable symptoms.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I would say I had a smattering of raised sores
that were quite painful to touch around my genitals. And
I think my immediate thought.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Was, are these ingrown hairs? Is this some kind of rash?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Like I wanted desperately for it to be something normal
and easily treatable.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
But when you google, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Raised red sores herpes is pretty much the first thing
that you'll see. And so, yeah, it was not fun.
Herpees outbreaks, particularly your first outbreak, tend to be painful.
It's not my favorite experience in the world. And like
any panicked twenty year old, I went to Google and
kind of typed in what I was feeling, and the
(08:05):
Internet immediately told me I was going to die. So
I classic, and so I called the student health clinic
on campus, and thankfully the nurse who I saw there
was incredibly kind and gracious and took one look at
the symptoms I was expressing and said, you know, this
looks like genital herpes. We see this all the time,
(08:28):
particularly among female students. And that was very comforting.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
As well as very terrible.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
It was not a fun day, I would say, but
I got incredible medical care. And yeah, I would give
it two out of five stars. I would say it's
an experience.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I mean, it could be worse, given that it's a
diagnosis of a disease. Any more than zero stars is okay.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So the nurse, as you probably havees a rare case,
perhaps of a healthcare professional confirming a Google diagnosis. Do
you have a test? Is that it?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
What?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Then?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So she took a culture directly from a sore, and
that tends to be, from my understanding, the most reliable
form of herpes testing. If you are not expressing symptoms,
you can take a blood test for herpes, but those
tend to be unreliable and expensive. So it was kind
of lucky that I immediately went in on day one
(09:33):
and had a culture taken because I was able to
get a very clear diagnosis within a few days when
the labs came back and I tested positive for genital
HSV one, which is usually associated with oral herpes, but
it's quite common these days for people to have genital
herpes from HSV one because of oral sex.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
So you get the labs, they confirm that you in
fact have her bees, and then what.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I had a lot of uncomfortable conversations. Called my mom
and I said, you know, I have some bad news,
and she immediately asked, are you pregnant. I was like, no, no, no, no, no,
I have herpes, and she goes, oh, that's fine. She was.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It was really nice.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was so terrified and I was worried, so I
appreciate that she was just unflappable and she just wanted
to know that I was okay.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
My parents were great.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
The more difficult conversations I had to have were I
had to tell the person I was dating, who was
not the nicest person already and was a big jerk
about it. I think his immediate concern was for himself,
which is totally fair.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I also called.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Some exes just to say you know, Hey, I got
diagnosed with this. I don't know if you've been tested.
I don't know if you know your history. But for
the most part, people were really surprised, but gracious and
understanding that this is not something that anyone does maliciously.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Viruses happen.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Did What did you know about herpes when you got
diagnosed or just before you got diagnosed?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Next to nothing. I think herpes in particular is a
strange virus because everyone knows that herpes is a skin
condition that you can get and that is incurable, and
it's actually transmitted, but very few people know what the
symptoms actually are, how it's actually transmitted, how to prevent it,
what the testing looks like. I thought I knew a
lot about it, and then I very quickly realized, oh,
(11:34):
I am very ignorant. And I had absorbed a lot
of stigmatizing messages about it from pop culture, from sex education,
from the Hangover. And there's an infamous line in the
Hangover of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas except
for herpes, that shit'll come back with you. So like,
that was what I knew of herpes before this, and
(11:58):
so I was really baffled as I learned more about
how the virus functions in the body, Like, when you
have herpes, you are not having symptoms the vast majority
of the time. I've had herpes for ten years now,
and I've maybe had active herpee symptoms outbreaks for four
weeks of those ten years. It's had a minimal impact
(12:20):
in my life. And that is not what I expected.
When I was diagnosed with herpes. I was like, am
I going to have an outbreak forever? Am I going
to be in this pain forever?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And no.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Viruses are weird and they don't behave the way you expect.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So at some point you go from talking about having
herpes with your friends and former partners and your family
to talking about herpes in public and writing and speaking.
How do you make that leap?
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean in a nutshell.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
What happened was I graduated college, I started writing a blog.
I started writing a little bit about having herpes on
that blog, and then a friend of a friend worked
for women's health and said, would you like to write
an article about this for SGI Awareness Month which is April?
And I said sure. That was called I think it
was why I love telling people, I have herpes, which
(13:13):
is a very clicky title, and then that went extremely
viral online. I was twenty two. I was completely unprepared
for that. I thought maybe a few hundred people would
read it. I got thousands of emails and Facebook messages
from people. It was aggregated all over the internet because
it was very unusual to see someone willingly say, Hey,
(13:36):
I have herpes and let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So you write this article it goes viral. What is
life after that immediate moment as a person who is
sort of internet famous for having herpes.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, I became the herpes Girl for a while, which
I didn't expect, and there's some pros and cons to that.
I was really delighted by how excited people were to
have this commonversation and to hear from other folks who
had herpes who read my work and felt very seen
and understood.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
But it was also very strange.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
To have that suddenly become what Google suggests when you
type in my name, it adds herpes at the end,
And like I would go back to my college campus
around that time and people be like, it's the herpes Girl.
I'd be like, Hi, you've heard.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So I want to talk more broadly about herpes in
popular culture, and in particular, there is this Time magazine
story from all the way back in nineteen eighty two
that people still talk about when they talk about herpes.
And I know you've written about this particular story, so
just to kind of give a flavor of it, I
(14:50):
want to read a line from that story from that
article here. It is also known as the Scourge, the
New Scarlet Letter, the VD of the Ivy League. It's
like they're introducing a boxer, the VD of the Ivy
League and Jerry Folwell's Revenge. Herpes has emerged from relative
obscurity and exploded into a full fledged epidemic.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
It's giving chaos. It's giving panic.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Tell me about that story and the sort of broader
role it played in the public imagination of herpes.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That Time magazine story and cover are so iconic that
it's got like this woman in eighty shoulder pads and
a big scarlet H on it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The H is like a New Scarlet Letter. It's an
allusion to the Scarlet Letter, right.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think that's even the title of the article. That
article is the most Banana's hysterical science writing I've ever read,
and they interview all these people who say crazy things
about how herpes has impacted their life. Some people claim
that they're willfully infecting hundreds of people because they feel
bitter and they want revenge upon society.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Like it is.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It's like a Jerry Springer episode that's off the rail
on it. I shouldn't even insult the late Jerry Springer
like that. He would not talk about herpes like this.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
It is just it's vile.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And a lot of folks point to that article as
being kind of this pivot where herpes went from being
something fairly normal and common to something that was incredibly
stigmatized because it was it was so bombastic and like
a cover of Time magazine that really impacts culture, especially
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Like in the eighties, it was a huge deal. It's
hard to think of now what would be like Taylor
Swift would have to like give a speech about it
or something, right like, it's hard to think of something
that's as big of a deal now as that would
have been then.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And even if you didn't read the article, even if
you didn't pick it up, just seeing that cover, that
big scarlet h stays in people's minds, And I love
the framing of it being like Scourge of the Ivy League,
Like there's so much in there about class and like
and about race, Like it's basically saying, hey, even affluent
white people, you can get this, and you should be
(17:11):
you should be afraid, like and again like Jerry Folwell's Revenge,
it's saying like, this is a consequence of us having
more liberal sexual feelings and values. This is this is punishment,
and that is still very cemented in the way we
think about STIs of this is a consequence. This is
a reflection of your value as a person. You have
messed up, and now you are ruined forever. It's like, actually, no,
(17:35):
this is a very normal thing. And viruses have nothing
to do with your character or your choices. They're just
a viruses.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Besides the hangover, do you have a like second least
favorite pop culture reference to herpes, or, for that matter,
any pop culture references surphees that you think are actually
helpful or good.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Herpies pops up all of the time in pop culture.
I think s A Saturday Night Live is an interesting,
interesting source text to put my academic hat on for
attitudes about herpes because SNL has had some horrible herpes
jokes and some great ones, even just in the last
(18:15):
few years.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So wait, what's a great herpes joke?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Herpes is like a lot of taboo topics. You can
make a funny joke about them if you do it
in a way that is humanizing and informed. For example,
SNL did an amazing sketch about COVID nineteen. It was
about a family of the COVID virus in their home
and other viruses coming to visit, and like the herpes
(18:43):
virus lived next door, and there were just really funny
little bits in it that were not making fun of
people who have the virus, but just making fun of
the virus and how it functions.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Now, who is that?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's your neighbors. We just wanted to out of nowhere
and say hello, well this is.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
A surprise, honey.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Have you met the herpes?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I haven't, actually, even though statistically I probably should have.
I'm oral, and this is my wife genital, please please
call me jen.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I just howled laughing at it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It was like Bo and Yang with like a big
herpes virus contraption on his head, and that made me
very happy.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
It's ten years later. Now, are you still the herpes girl?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I would like to think I am no longer the
herpes girl. My career has taken me in different directions.
I think the thing about herpes is that you run
out of things to say about it. There are other
people who have more interesting stories to tell. Black women
are far more likely to be impacted by herpes and
to face different challenges when getting the treatment they need.
It can lead to or exacerbate abusive relationships. You might
(19:55):
be kind of vulnerable to being taken advantage of because
you think that your damaged goods. So that's where I
write a lot these days, is in that kind of area.
But yeah, I'm not embarrassed to be the herpes girl.
I just there are more herpes girls out there who
deserve their day in the sun.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Ella.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
It's great to talk with you, and truly interesting, really interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
It's very fun to have a conversation about herpes.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's not just like.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
How did you get it?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Sad is.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Your life over herpes is fascinating, and I think if
we bring curiosity to these conversations as opposed to judgment,
we can learn so much. Thank you, so much, Thank
you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Ella Dawson's debut novel will be published in twenty twenty four.
It's called But How Are You Really? Thanks to my
guest today, Ella Dawson and Anna Wald. Next week on
our final episode of the season, a twist Viruses that
actually help human beings. I'm talking about phages, bacterial phages.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Life is evolved in a soup of viruses, and most
of those viruses are phages. And if a kind of
alien life form was to just pluck a random bit
of the Earth and look for life, they would probably
find phages and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Incubation is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby
Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang, Ariela Markowitz,
and Amy Gaines McQuaid. Our editors are Julia Barton and
Karen Schakerjie Mastering by Anne Pope, fact checking by Joseph Fridman.
Our executive producers are Katherine Girodeau and Matt Romano. I'm
(21:47):
Jacob Goldstein. Thanks for listening.
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is incubation on today's show Herpes.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, I became the Herpes Girl for a while, which
I didn't expect, and there's some pros and cons to that.
I was really delighted by how excited people were to
have this conversation, but it was also very strange and
like I would go back to my college campus around
that time and people would be like, it's the herpes girl.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'd be like, Hi, you've.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Heard Ella Dawson writes about sex and culture and she's
also one of the billions of people billions with a
bee living with herpes. We'll hear a lot more from
Ella later on, but first let's do a little herpes
one on one For this part of the show, I
called up a herpes authority on a wault. Is it
(00:57):
true that you're the Queen of Herpes?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yes, that's my less formal title. Let's just say I
was introduced like that about now twenty years ago, and
I decided to adopt that namucher and I've been doing
herpes work now for thirty years. There are not a
lot of experts in this field, and I've stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
In addition to being Herpe's royalty. Anna is also a
professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, and today
we're turning to Anna to explain five key things to
know about herpes. By the way, Anna talks about the
two types of herpes that we usually hear about, which
are known as HSV one and HSV two. So thing
(01:41):
number one to know about herpes, most people have it.
How many people in the world are infected with herpes.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Well, it depends if you're talking about HSV one or
HSV two. HSV one about two thirds of people in
the world have HSV one infection and most of its oral,
but not all. Some of it is genital, and about
fourteen percent or so have genital HSV two infection.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Wow, So that's thing number one to know about herpes.
Thing number two, it's really common to have herpes and
not even know it.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Only about twenty percent of people who have HSV two infection,
which is the main cause of genital herpes, at least
historically know that they have genital herpes.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Next thing to know. Part of the reason so many
people don't know they have herpes is that testing is
notoriously unreliable.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
The problem is that many of these essays that are
now commercially available, they're not that accurate. And what's happened
because the frequency of herpes has gone down, but the
frequency of testing has gone up, the proportion that's actually
diagnosed incorrectly has increased.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So there are a lot of false positive A lot
of people get herpes tests that say they have herpes
when in fact they do not.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Right, Because we have people who got tested for whatever
reason for HSV two. They had a new partner, they
were anxious about it, and the test came back positive
for HSV two. I had somebody who didn't believe that
they have it and the gynecologists tell them to go
to therapy to accept it. She was subsequently tested with
(03:25):
an accurate test and the geynecologist was wrong. Right, So
we're giving people a false diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You and your colleagues have developed a better test than
the common test.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My colleague who was here actually before me, did develop
a better test that is still available through University of Washington,
but it's only available here. It's what's called the Western blot,
which means that we look at the ability of the
immune system to respond to a very wide range of
proteins of not just one or two like the commercial assays.
(04:04):
So I get to tell a fair number of people
that I cured their herpes because they thought they have
it by the commercial assay, and then it turns out
that they don't.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The fact number four, Herpes is incurable. With lots of
other viral infections, the body figures out how to eliminate
the virus from the body entirely, but herpes isn't like that.
Herpes has evolved to have this really clever trick that
allows it to evade the human immune system.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Herpies hides in the cells of the nervous system, and
the nervous system is what's called immuneprivileged site. Is that
there's not a lot of immune cells there, so it
is able to hide in a form that's inactive. It's
called latent. It infects bundles of nerves that are along
(04:53):
your spinal accord, and at that point it doesn't elicit
much of an immune response.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And there are just kind of hangs out, not eliciting
an immune response, and then comes out of hiding at
some point later.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
It elicits fair little immune response when it's there, and
then in response to triggers that are not very well defined,
it will come out and make its journey back inside
the nerve all the way down to the either genital
area or to the oral area, depending on whether you're
(05:26):
talking about oral or genital herpes.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, now we come to the fifth and final key
herpes fact. HSV one, which has historically caused oral herpes,
has in the past few decades been causing more and
more cases of genital herpes.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And so they are susceptible to acquiring HSV one in
an area that probably before was not susceptible because they
were already infected at a different site. So now they
initiate sexual activity and they could acquire a genital h's view,
the other reason that people say is that people now
(06:06):
have more oral sex. But it's very hard for me
to believe that this generation invented oral sex. So I
am more a believer in the fact that people are
growing up without HSV one as an explanation.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Thanks to doctor Anna Wald, Queen of Herpes, when we return,
we'll hear more from Ella Dawson about what it was
like learning that she had herpes and what it's been
like living with it. Ever since that's in just a minute.
(06:53):
Ella Dawson is a writer. She writes a lot about
sex and culture, and she has also written a fair
bit about having her which turns out to be a
subject that has a lot to do with both sex
and culture.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So I woke up at the end of my junior
year of college. I remember it was supposed to be
the day of the big Spring Fling concert, uh, and
I just felt peculiar.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I had some uncomfortable symptoms.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I would say I had a smattering of raised sores
that were quite painful to touch around my genitals. And
I think my immediate thought.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Was, are these ingrown hairs? Is this some kind of rash?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Like I wanted desperately for it to be something normal
and easily treatable.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
But when you google, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Raised red sores herpes is pretty much the first thing
that you'll see. And so, yeah, it was not fun.
Herpees outbreaks, particularly your first outbreak, tend to be painful.
It's not my favorite experience in the world. And like
any panicked twenty year old, I went to Google and
kind of typed in what I was feeling, and the
(08:05):
Internet immediately told me I was going to die. So
I classic, and so I called the student health clinic
on campus, and thankfully the nurse who I saw there
was incredibly kind and gracious and took one look at
the symptoms I was expressing and said, you know, this
looks like genital herpes. We see this all the time,
(08:28):
particularly among female students. And that was very comforting.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
As well as very terrible.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
It was not a fun day, I would say, but
I got incredible medical care. And yeah, I would give
it two out of five stars. I would say it's
an experience.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I mean, it could be worse, given that it's a
diagnosis of a disease. Any more than zero stars is okay.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So the nurse, as you probably havees a rare case,
perhaps of a healthcare professional confirming a Google diagnosis. Do
you have a test? Is that it?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
What?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Then?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So she took a culture directly from a sore, and
that tends to be, from my understanding, the most reliable
form of herpes testing. If you are not expressing symptoms,
you can take a blood test for herpes, but those
tend to be unreliable and expensive. So it was kind
of lucky that I immediately went in on day one
(09:33):
and had a culture taken because I was able to
get a very clear diagnosis within a few days when
the labs came back and I tested positive for genital
HSV one, which is usually associated with oral herpes, but
it's quite common these days for people to have genital
herpes from HSV one because of oral sex.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
So you get the labs, they confirm that you in
fact have her bees, and then what.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I had a lot of uncomfortable conversations. Called my mom
and I said, you know, I have some bad news,
and she immediately asked, are you pregnant. I was like, no, no, no, no, no,
I have herpes, and she goes, oh, that's fine. She was.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It was really nice.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was so terrified and I was worried, so I
appreciate that she was just unflappable and she just wanted
to know that I was okay.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
My parents were great.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
The more difficult conversations I had to have were I
had to tell the person I was dating, who was
not the nicest person already and was a big jerk
about it. I think his immediate concern was for himself,
which is totally fair.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I also called.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Some exes just to say you know, Hey, I got
diagnosed with this. I don't know if you've been tested.
I don't know if you know your history. But for
the most part, people were really surprised, but gracious and
understanding that this is not something that anyone does maliciously.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Viruses happen.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Did What did you know about herpes when you got
diagnosed or just before you got diagnosed?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Next to nothing. I think herpes in particular is a
strange virus because everyone knows that herpes is a skin
condition that you can get and that is incurable, and
it's actually transmitted, but very few people know what the
symptoms actually are, how it's actually transmitted, how to prevent it,
what the testing looks like. I thought I knew a
lot about it, and then I very quickly realized, oh,
(11:34):
I am very ignorant. And I had absorbed a lot
of stigmatizing messages about it from pop culture, from sex education,
from the Hangover. And there's an infamous line in the
Hangover of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas except
for herpes, that shit'll come back with you. So like,
that was what I knew of herpes before this, and
(11:58):
so I was really baffled as I learned more about
how the virus functions in the body, Like, when you
have herpes, you are not having symptoms the vast majority
of the time. I've had herpes for ten years now,
and I've maybe had active herpee symptoms outbreaks for four
weeks of those ten years. It's had a minimal impact
(12:20):
in my life. And that is not what I expected.
When I was diagnosed with herpes. I was like, am
I going to have an outbreak forever? Am I going
to be in this pain forever?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And no.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Viruses are weird and they don't behave the way you expect.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So at some point you go from talking about having
herpes with your friends and former partners and your family
to talking about herpes in public and writing and speaking.
How do you make that leap?
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean in a nutshell.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
What happened was I graduated college, I started writing a blog.
I started writing a little bit about having herpes on
that blog, and then a friend of a friend worked
for women's health and said, would you like to write
an article about this for SGI Awareness Month which is April?
And I said sure. That was called I think it
was why I love telling people, I have herpes, which
(13:13):
is a very clicky title, and then that went extremely
viral online. I was twenty two. I was completely unprepared
for that. I thought maybe a few hundred people would
read it. I got thousands of emails and Facebook messages
from people. It was aggregated all over the internet because
it was very unusual to see someone willingly say, Hey,
(13:36):
I have herpes and let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So you write this article it goes viral. What is
life after that immediate moment as a person who is
sort of internet famous for having herpes.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, I became the herpes Girl for a while, which
I didn't expect, and there's some pros and cons to that.
I was really delighted by how excited people were to
have this commonversation and to hear from other folks who
had herpes who read my work and felt very seen
and understood.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
But it was also very strange.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
To have that suddenly become what Google suggests when you
type in my name, it adds herpes at the end,
And like I would go back to my college campus
around that time and people be like, it's the herpes Girl.
I'd be like, Hi, you've heard.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So I want to talk more broadly about herpes in
popular culture, and in particular, there is this Time magazine
story from all the way back in nineteen eighty two
that people still talk about when they talk about herpes.
And I know you've written about this particular story, so
just to kind of give a flavor of it, I
(14:50):
want to read a line from that story from that
article here. It is also known as the Scourge, the
New Scarlet Letter, the VD of the Ivy League. It's
like they're introducing a boxer, the VD of the Ivy
League and Jerry Folwell's Revenge. Herpes has emerged from relative
obscurity and exploded into a full fledged epidemic.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
It's giving chaos. It's giving panic.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Tell me about that story and the sort of broader
role it played in the public imagination of herpes.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That Time magazine story and cover are so iconic that
it's got like this woman in eighty shoulder pads and
a big scarlet H on it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The H is like a New Scarlet Letter. It's an
allusion to the Scarlet Letter, right.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think that's even the title of the article. That
article is the most Banana's hysterical science writing I've ever read,
and they interview all these people who say crazy things
about how herpes has impacted their life. Some people claim
that they're willfully infecting hundreds of people because they feel
bitter and they want revenge upon society.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Like it is.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It's like a Jerry Springer episode that's off the rail
on it. I shouldn't even insult the late Jerry Springer
like that. He would not talk about herpes like this.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
It is just it's vile.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And a lot of folks point to that article as
being kind of this pivot where herpes went from being
something fairly normal and common to something that was incredibly
stigmatized because it was it was so bombastic and like
a cover of Time magazine that really impacts culture, especially
in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Like in the eighties, it was a huge deal. It's
hard to think of now what would be like Taylor
Swift would have to like give a speech about it
or something, right like, it's hard to think of something
that's as big of a deal now as that would
have been then.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And even if you didn't read the article, even if
you didn't pick it up, just seeing that cover, that
big scarlet h stays in people's minds, And I love
the framing of it being like Scourge of the Ivy League,
Like there's so much in there about class and like
and about race, Like it's basically saying, hey, even affluent
white people, you can get this, and you should be
(17:11):
you should be afraid, like and again like Jerry Folwell's Revenge,
it's saying like, this is a consequence of us having
more liberal sexual feelings and values. This is this is punishment,
and that is still very cemented in the way we
think about STIs of this is a consequence. This is
a reflection of your value as a person. You have
messed up, and now you are ruined forever. It's like, actually, no,
(17:35):
this is a very normal thing. And viruses have nothing
to do with your character or your choices. They're just
a viruses.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Besides the hangover, do you have a like second least
favorite pop culture reference to herpes, or, for that matter,
any pop culture references surphees that you think are actually
helpful or good.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Herpies pops up all of the time in pop culture.
I think s A Saturday Night Live is an interesting,
interesting source text to put my academic hat on for
attitudes about herpes because SNL has had some horrible herpes
jokes and some great ones, even just in the last
(18:15):
few years.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So wait, what's a great herpes joke?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Herpes is like a lot of taboo topics. You can
make a funny joke about them if you do it
in a way that is humanizing and informed. For example,
SNL did an amazing sketch about COVID nineteen. It was
about a family of the COVID virus in their home
and other viruses coming to visit, and like the herpes
(18:43):
virus lived next door, and there were just really funny
little bits in it that were not making fun of
people who have the virus, but just making fun of
the virus and how it functions.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Now, who is that?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's your neighbors. We just wanted to out of nowhere
and say hello, well this is.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
A surprise, honey.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Have you met the herpes?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I haven't, actually, even though statistically I probably should have.
I'm oral, and this is my wife genital, please please
call me jen.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I just howled laughing at it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It was like Bo and Yang with like a big
herpes virus contraption on his head, and that made me
very happy.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
It's ten years later. Now, are you still the herpes girl?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I would like to think I am no longer the
herpes girl. My career has taken me in different directions.
I think the thing about herpes is that you run
out of things to say about it. There are other
people who have more interesting stories to tell. Black women
are far more likely to be impacted by herpes and
to face different challenges when getting the treatment they need.
It can lead to or exacerbate abusive relationships. You might
(19:55):
be kind of vulnerable to being taken advantage of because
you think that your damaged goods. So that's where I
write a lot these days, is in that kind of area.
But yeah, I'm not embarrassed to be the herpes girl.
I just there are more herpes girls out there who
deserve their day in the sun.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Ella.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
It's great to talk with you, and truly interesting, really interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
It's very fun to have a conversation about herpes.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's not just like.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
How did you get it?
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Sad is.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Your life over herpes is fascinating, and I think if
we bring curiosity to these conversations as opposed to judgment,
we can learn so much. Thank you, so much, Thank
you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Ella Dawson's debut novel will be published in twenty twenty four.
It's called But How Are You Really? Thanks to my
guest today, Ella Dawson and Anna Wald. Next week on
our final episode of the season, a twist Viruses that
actually help human beings. I'm talking about phages, bacterial phages.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Life is evolved in a soup of viruses, and most
of those viruses are phages. And if a kind of
alien life form was to just pluck a random bit
of the Earth and look for life, they would probably
find phages and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Incubation is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby
Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang, Ariela Markowitz,
and Amy Gaines McQuaid. Our editors are Julia Barton and
Karen Schakerjie Mastering by Anne Pope, fact checking by Joseph Fridman.
Our executive producers are Katherine Girodeau and Matt Romano. I'm
(21:47):
Jacob Goldstein. Thanks for listening.
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