| ▲ | phkahler 8 hours ago |
| >> HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives. 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. |
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| ▲ | stared 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| But this misunderstands how HPV works. First, there are many strains. Typical tests for oncogenic variants measure around 30 types. The vaccine I received (Gardasil-9, which I took as a male at age 35) protects against nine specific strains. 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! |
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| ▲ | hammock 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Does the vaccine guarantee immunity, by contrast? | | |
| ▲ | timr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Parent is overstating the case. Neither infection nor vaccination provides sterilizing immunity [1], but the general reasons to prefer vaccination are (in order of descending quality of evidence & reasoning): 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! | | |
| ▲ | peab 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | What if you're married? Does it still make sense, if you know you won't ever be sleeping with a new partner? | | |
| ▲ | timr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A question for your doctor and your partner (and of course, you can read the data in the link I posted above and use that to influence your conversation and decision!) 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. | | |
| ▲ | rawgabbit 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I usually am pro vaccine. But the HPV vaccine discussion seems politicized to me. As someone who is monogamous and over fifty, I had trouble following the risk vs reward discussion. The CDC says it is only recommended for young adults so I interpret that for my case the answer is negative. | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | All vaccination is now heavily politicized in the US. HPV vaccination was an obvious focal point initially because of why we'd do it when we do. 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. | |
| ▲ | electriclove 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Same, what is the risk/reward for someone who is and plans to be monogamous. Young or old. Cost not a concern. Give me the info and let me decide for myself, my kids, my parents. | | |
| ▲ | daveungerer 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Same, what is the risk/reward for someone who is and plans to be monogamous. Young or old. Cost not a concern. Give me the info and let me decide for myself, my kids, my parents. 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? |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Of course if you're monogamous sure. But I'm also 50 and very polyamorous so for me it was a no brainer getting it. |
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| ▲ | Moto7451 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You get to make your own health choices here, but as someone who got the vaccine in my 30s, I am glad as I didn’t know about my future divorce when I got vaccinated. | | |
| ▲ | electriclove 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Couldn’t you have gotten the vaccine after your divorce if you wanted? | | |
| ▲ | scarecrowbob 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Consider that it's possible that the person's partner may have exposed them to their then-unknown extra partners, creating one of the conditions for the divorce. | |
| ▲ | fn-mote 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Think about your future health while your mind is clear. After the trauma of divorce is not the time. 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. | |
| ▲ | Ensorceled 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You are presuming that people are monogamous up until their divorce when infidelity is one of the top reasons for divorce. |
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| ▲ | chollida1 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ha, we had this conversation with our doctor and they said not to worry about the vaccine if you are married and monogamous. It would likely have zero benefit to us at that point in time. Now maybe that changes if you get divorced and get a new sexual partner. |
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| ▲ | tialaramex 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's never a guarantee in practice, the CDC says "More than 98% of recipients develop an antibody response to HPV types included in the respective vaccines 1 month after completing a full vaccination series" |
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| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine 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. |
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| ▲ | bboygravity 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The reason it's not recommended for all ages is money. Not safety concerns. Same reason you can't get Shingrix under a certain age. | | |
| ▲ | prirun 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the main reason it isn't recommended for all ages is that it wears off. If you get it before 50, when your immune system starts declining, you might end up getting shingles when you're 60 or 70. 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... | | |
| ▲ | jghn 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | My PCP actually recommended holding off until later in the 50s for this reason. There's not currently a booster so his suggestion was to play the odds & delay a bit in order to get longer protection in my elderly years. |
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| ▲ | CydeWeys 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Beg for forgiveness, don't ask permission. I got Shingrix when I was under the age of 40, and at no cost to myself even, simply by scheduling a Shingrix vaccine at CVS. It wasn't until I went back for the booster shot months later that the nurse was like "Wait, aren't you too young for this?", but they nevertheless gave me the second dose to complete the vaccine course. You can just so things. | | |
| ▲ | loeg 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was unable to get a first dose just by asking the pharmacy -- they were happy to enforce the arbitrary 50 year age rule. But my PCP was happy to just prescribe it off-label. Do it; shingles is terrible and there's no reason to suffer it under 50. |
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| ▲ | lotsofpulp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I would happily pay for Shingrix. | | |
| ▲ | anjel 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Prepare your happy for a very profit-laden high three-figure bill. | | |
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| ▲ | anderber an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | They also did it by gender in the US when I was in college. Boys could not get it. At the same time that Europe was vaccinating everyone. |
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| ▲ | TuringNYC 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >>>>> HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives.
>> 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. 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. |
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| ▲ | stared 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > 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/ |
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| ▲ | loeg 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I mostly hear this from healthcare-fatalists arguing against people in their 40s+ getting the vaccine later in life. |
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| ▲ | hammock 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What about the people who know they have 16 or 18? Should they still get it? |
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| ▲ | michaelrpeskin 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yeah, I only read the abstract and looked at the plots, but this is what I hate about public health papers: 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. |
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| ▲ | okaram 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is one research paper reporting on particular results. 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... ) | |
| ▲ | gizmo686 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Research papers are not literature reviews. This paper reports on the results of this study. And that study only investigated what it investigated. 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. | |
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | wat10000 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can’t talk about the whole picture unless you have all the parts. There’s no reason all of those parts have to come from the same study. 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. |
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