Welcome to home testing for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/stds/107407
We have home pregnancy tests, home HIV tests…….and now they want you to test for STI’s at home as well.
The article attempts to scare you with an “explosion of cases” in 2021 with 710,000 and 1.2 million cases of these 2 STI’s. When you put into perspective that we have 330 MILLION people in our country, those are statistically low numbers.
Here are the concerns with this home testing. It is yet another way to get you into a medical database, another way to obtain DNA information from you (mucosal vaginal cells from the swab), and it removes anonymity from the testing protocol. As it stands right now, you can go to the health department and be screened for STI’s, for free, and you can choose to remain anonymous if you wish. They will ask for names/numbers of recent sex partners if you do not want to call them yourself should you pop up positive. If you are testing at home, your name and details all go into a database. I trust those databases zero. What and who are going to do what with that data and when? Also, remember that STI’s must be reported to your county health department anyways, so if you went in to test and gave a fake name or anonymous, the stats are entered as such. If you use this online testing program, they are going to report your real name and details to your county health department.
If you think you have an STI, PLEASE GET TESTED. But think long and hard about the at home testing and where your information is going. Also note, they will connect you to a “healthcare provider’ to give you antibiotics which is a separate charge I am guessing. At the health department it is not.
I don't care how secure the database is supposed to be, it can and will be compromised at some point. I am an unabashed Cold Warrior. I dedicated myself to that conflict. Buy the way, we won. Anyway, my duties entailed knowing things that shouldn't be bandied about. The Air Force bestowed ever increasingly dire levels of access on me. We were all told that whatever came up in those background investigations would NEVER see the light of day. Then the Clinton Administration took over. Soon after the first inauguration everyone who had a security clearance received a letter telling us that somehow (gee, I wonder how) our Security Clearance files AND the reports of our background checks to include the interviews with everyone from our spouses to our 3rd grade teachers had fallen into the hands of both the Russians and Chinese. This happened 3 more times before Bill left office. Like clockwork. Then things settled down. I left the Air Force and became a civil servant. Again, my job required a Security Clearance. Not 2 months after Obama was sworn in I received the familiar FYI letter telling me that the Russians and Chinese now had every detail of my Security Clearance. No blackmail potential there! All told I have 11 of those letters. The last 2 came during this administration. Notice a pattern?
The take away is that you should keep your information off as many databases as possible. If the Feds can't help but compromise data that directly effects national security then what chance do you have with a dodgy private company and the local County Health Department?
When I was growing up they preached safe sex or abstinence. Today they offer free monkey pox shots and they are shocked by the exploding cases of STDs. It isn’t scary if you act appropriately.