Data Point - Gonorr - Granite Grok

Data Point – Gonorr

The Concord Monitor had this little piece on the rise of gonorrhea in NH.  Now, this was posted by their resident “geek”, David Brooks, and he had a bit of narrative along with his conclusion.

NH Gonorrhea cases 2012-2016

And he’s wrong. No, not about the chart – I’ll take that as a given – but his reasoning doesn’t stand up (reformatted, emphasis mine).

Let me change up the order of what he wrote:

The number of cases of gonorrhea in New Hampshire has increased by two-thirds this year compared with 2015….The Division of Public Health Services’ Bureau of Infectious Disease Control released a medical alert Monday, saying it received 206 reports of patients with gonorrhea through July 31. “This is a 67 percent increase compared with the same timeframe in 2015,” the report said.

OK, I can go with that – numbers are numbers. If you engage in risky behavior (re: sleeping around), you run the risk of getting a disease particular to that behavior. Now, he makes his conclusion right from the get-go but let me put that aside for the moment. However, he tries to buttress his argument with an observation that is, well, irrelevant:

Part of the issue, it said, is that the bacteria which causes gonorrhea is increasingly resistant to the antibiotic azithromycin, long the treatment of choice. The alert urges healthcare providers to treat the disease with a shot of the antibiotic ceftriaxone as well as azithromycin taken orally. The alert also says that screening for gonorrhea should be increased among a variety of population groups. Further, it says, “For all your patients, take a thorough sexual history to determine patient risk and need for (sexually transmitted disease) screening.”

OK, that’s nice, but that’s a proscription for what needs to happen AFTER a case has been reported – the treatment with medications along with simple, rudimentary epidemiological advice.  Nothing new in either one – we’ve known for years that STDs have been growing more and more resistant to medications.  Heck, a lot of other diseases are as well.

Nothing in what he has said so far gives any reasonable guesstimate as to why the number of cases are up but he does make that jump off the logic cliff and into the illogical chasm.  So, back to his beginning:

“The number of cases of gonorrhea in New Hampshire has increased by two-thirds this year compared with 2015, apparently due to a strain of the sexually transmitted disease that resists treatment by antibiotics.

Sloppy reporting and an even sloppier conclusion.  Sorry, if more people are coming in to be treated, it should mean that more people are having more sex.  More sex with more people who are infected will create more cases.

Sure, if someone is infected, gets treatment, but it doesn’t fix the disease, and has relations with one or more other people, their original case still stands but has added one or more. That would make the graph slope upward – not that the bacteria can’t get knocked off.

Look, two things can make that slope go the other way:

  1. Stop sleeping around, or
  2. Monogamy

Oh, you are such an old fashioned thinker, Skip!  Abstaining??? That doesn’t take into account “human nature”!  Hormones, urges, drives – no one can do that!  And you are too moralistic (and judgemental, you old, white, Christian male!).

Sidenote – ” old, white, Christian male”.  Hmm, generally when the SJW folks that have become too judgemental in their own words add the word “rich” as well.  Hey, make your down-the-nose dreams come true (and mine, too!) – donate a whole lotta money to the Grok, will ya, because I’m certainly not living up to that state of being right now.

 How DARE you impugn that sleeping with one or more “partners” is wrong and sinful.  You’re days are OVER – this nation is going post-Christian and who are you to judge me / us? Well, I already gamed out that outburst- all I’m pointing out is participating that participating in such behavior run that risk. That isn’t victim-shamming but it IS a possible consequence of that behavior.  And I don’t care if you like my remedy or not from your Political Correctness – we’re seeing this play out in real time.  Results count, not blithering about something that isn’t logical from point A to point B.

There are only two ways to keep from getting STDs – don’t sleep with other people or only sleep with only one person.  IMHO, preferably your spouse.  Do that and your chances are just about nil that you’ll get an STD.  Frankly, I have higher expectations – that that trot out the “Hormones, urges, drives – no one can do that!” and throw it out because “HUMAN NATURE!”.

That’s nothing less than the bigotry of low expectations.   That’s making the premise that we have no self-control. That’s stating that emotions rule our human condition. That’s the reasoning that says we are on the same level as rutting animals.

That we can’t rise out of the gutter.  Well, maybe for the Left who seem to have to “feel” any and everything in life – the mind is secondary (if even that).

And not that gonorrhea is becoming drug resistant.  Again, Brooks draws the wrong conclusion by not bringing up the only two states of being that would lower that chart.

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His original:

“The number of cases of gonorrhea in New Hampshire has increased by two-thirds this year compared with 2015, apparently due to a strain of the sexually transmitted disease that resists treatment by antibiotics.  The Division of Public Health Services’ Bureau of Infectious Disease Control released a medical alert Monday, saying it received 206 reports of patients with gonorrhea through July 31. “This is a 67 percent increase compared with the same timeframe in 2015,” the report said.

Part of the issue, it said, is that the bacteria which causes gonorrhea is increasingly resistant to the antibiotic azithromycin, long the treatment of choice. The alert urges healthcare providers to treat the disease with a shot of the antibiotic ceftriaxone as well as azithromycin taken orally.

The alert also says that screening for gonorrhea should be increased among a variety of population groups. Further, it says, “For all your patients, take a thorough sexual history to determine patient risk and need for (sexually transmitted disease) screening.”

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