“Condom Desert”

Downtown

P-D:

St. Louis is still the sexually transmitted disease capital of the U.S.

Okay, that’s just the headline.  I bet that at some point in this article, we’ll read the same argument we read when St. Louis is at or near the top of violent crime rankings:  ZOMG WE CAN’T ANNEX IT’S AN UNFAIR COMPARISON LOL~!!!!1, or some variant thereof.

St. Louis again takes the title for the country’s highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, in a year of record high numbers nationwide.

Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis reached about 2 million reported cases nationwide in 2015, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I thought Chlamydia, Gonorrhea and Syphilis were the names of DOR clerks.

St. Louis city topped the list for chlamydia and gonorrhea cases per capita. The rankings are skewed partly because the city is mostly compared with counties in the data. If the entire metropolitan area is included, the St. Louis region ranks eighth for gonorrhea and 17th for chlamydia.

There it goes.  It only took to the third paragraph.

“While it is disheartening that we are still number one, I’m encouraged by efforts to pull together a regional response group,” said Dr. Bradley Stoner, infectious disease specialist at Washington University. “We need greater access to widespread STD testing.”

Why bother with that? We were just told that the stats are illusory and deceptive because zomg 1876.

“Unfortunately our state doesn’t fund comprehensive sex education in a way that we should,” he said. “We have to ensure people have the education and primary preventative health care followed by access to testing and treatment.”

And because of that, people don’t understand the correlation between sex, especially promiscuous sex, and STDs, they have no way of finding out otherwise, as they’re not walking around with almost 100% of all information humanity has ever curated at the ready at their demand in their pockets.

A few new campaigns were offered in the last year, including 4,000 safe-sex kits from Planned Parenthood that were passed out in bars the night before Thanksgiving, a popular social occasion for young adults.

The night before Thanksgiving is a big jiggy night?  I was a young adult, once, a long time ago, and I don’t remember that.  And now that I’m no longer that young, the night before Thanksgiving is now for Puggg and I our Backstoppers night, (and look at the calendar, we’re barely more than a month away), and then off to Joanie’s in Soulard afterward, because that’s where Knockout Martin Luther King victim Matt Quain works.

In September, the St. Louis city and county health departments held a free STD testing event that included raffles for free tickets to a Beyoncé concert.

This so wants a punchline that it’s too early in the morning for me to come up with.  Damn it, man.

St. Louis qualifies as a “condom desert” according to a recent study from St. Louis University. There are fewer stores that sell condoms in the city compared with other areas, and more barriers that make them difficult to get.

Condoms are more likely to be behind the counter or locked up, and they are often sold individually, making them more expensive at about $1.25 each.

Condoms should be made more accessible by selling them in larger packages and placing them on shelves to reduce embarrassment, wrote author Enbal Shacham, associate professor of behavioral science and health education.

Condom desert.  There’s a new one on me.  Which means we’ll probably hear it over and over again.  The irony is that a research study done at a Jesuit/Catholic university informs us that the city it’s in is a “desert” for a type of contraceptive.  As far as this bit about behind the counter and locked up, isn’t that what we are told to do with adult items?  Firearms, pseudoephederine cold pills, porn magazines, cigarettes.

It’s a factually challenged argument anyway — The racial demographic in this town almost entirely responsible for the city’s high STD rate is the same one that seems to be allergic to contraceptives, prophylactics and birth control.