The STD numbers are rocketing we discovered yesterday. in 2022 there were 392,453 diagnoses of new STIs among England residents, an increase of 23.8% compared to 2021. Cue howls of anguish from all corners but – as Pride month kicks off there is one matter nobody in trhe media dared to mention.
As 2021 was a lockdown year when fewer folks, other than lockdown supremo Professor Neil Fergusson, shagged about and as fewer folks with itchy private parts got a test, the numbers may deceive a bit. However numbers are also up on 2019, a pre lockdown year so the trend is clear. The gonorrhoea number (82,592) was the largest since records began, the syphilis number (8,700) the worst since 1948.
Predictable calls of despair went out. Folks like Peter Hitchens will see this as a sign of the descent into Sodom & Gomorrah which started with the permissive society in the 1960s. “we have never spent so much on sex education and never had more venereal diseases” scream the conservative right. On the left, this is all down to the evil fucking Tories not handing out enough condoms, teaching kids about “safe sex” etc.
But there is an elephant in the room nobody dares to mention.
Something else happening right now is Pride Month which will see retailers selling a range of rainbow coloured goods, skittles going all white, and all sorts of woke corporates and charities going overboard to say how LGBTQ friendly they are. It is a thoroughly wholesome and laudable event but it also features numerous parades where scantily clad men hook up with complete strangers for sex.
This may be part of the “gay culture” so I am not allowed to point out that this has consequences. The last census suggests that just over 2% of the British Population are gay men or bisexual men. The Government STI report which caused such outrage lumps gay men and bisexual men in with Men who have sex with Men (MSM) who in my day would be called gays but, apparently, now, one can have sex with other men and still identify as straight. So we have a category GBMSM.
Of the syphilis cases 6,003 (of 8,700) were among GBMSM. Of the gonorrhoea cases 38,923 of the 82,592 were among GBMSM. You can do the maths, those numbers should, ceteris paribus, be just 174 and 1600 respectively. And the rate of increases for GBMSM were at 41.3% (gonorrhoea) and 9.4% (syphilis) far greater than among the population as a whole.
One reason why GBMSM chaps are picking up so many STIs is, as I predicted HERE way back in 2016, the NHS spending a fortune handing out very expensive free PrEP pills to gay men. Take that pill and your chances of catching HIV from unprotected sex fall by 92%. But you still have an 8% chance of catching Aids and PrEP does nothing to stop the spread of other STIs. And so as I warned would happen, more GBMSM would have unprotected sex with the consequences you can now see today.
This, as well as those PrEP pills, is costing the NHS a fortune. It is something that should be discussed as Britain faces its highest tax take in 70 years. But, of course, it is not. Let’s all celebrate Pride Month (30 of the 107 days a year days appropriated by sub3% of the population*) by inviting another drag artist in to perform at the local Primary school and adding a rainbow to our twitter account.
*The 107 days does not include the new lesbian visibility week in late May so that is now 114 of 365, 31.2% of all days appropriated by sub 3% of the population.