Just because it's statistically improbable doesn't make it trivial

I have a kind of personal confession to make. There's something in my sexual history that's apparently rather unusual. Some of you may have guessed this by now - I have alluded to before - but I've never stated it outright until now because I do prefer to be rather circumspect about my private life. But to make the point I want to make today, I'm going to have to just come out and say it bluntly:

I am 26 years old. I am not a virgin. I have never been married. And I have never, not once in my life, had an STD or even an STD scare.

I know, I didn't think it was that wild either. But apparently this is highly statistically unlikely, and epidemiology doesn't think or doesn't care that I exist.

That's why articles like this piss me off. So much of the discourse surrounding the HPV vaccine focuses on who is statistically likely to have had HPV, to the extent of ignoring people who haven't had it despite their demographics, and even being dismissive of the desire to avoid it even if you are statistically likely to have had it.

"The vast majority of those who have had skin-to-skin contact in a sexual experience, heterosexual, lesbians, whatever, have already had it, cleared it and gone on with their lives," says Abby Lippman, an epidemiologist at McGill University and chair of the Canadian Women's Health Network.

So maybe they have had it, treated it, and gotten on with their lives. Maybe it really isn't a big deal and can in fact be spoken of so dismissively. But I wouldn't know because I haven't had it, and I'd like very much to stay that way. The fact that the majority of people in my demographic group have had it doesn't mean that I should have to accept it as inevitable. Just because everyone in the office has a cold doesn't mean that I shouldn't keep washing my hands. Just because my fertility is statistically likely to have peaked doesn't mean that I shouldn't keep abreast of new developments in birth control. And just because I'm statistically likely to have had HPV doesn't mean that my desire to avoid it is trivial.

One of my standards for safe sex is that all parties must have full STD testing before any sex occurs. Thing is, HPV is the big hole in this line of defence. HPV doesn't show up in a blood test. The only way to tell if you have it is if you have genital warts. However, people can carry it and even transmit it without showing any symptoms whatsoever. So it's quite possible to do everything right, get every test humanly possible, and still not know that you're carrying HPV. But by making me immune to HPV, Gardasil fills the vast majority of that hole in my defences. For me, this is huge! It might not be statistically significant in the world as a whole, but to me it represents probably the most major breakthrough possible in terms of my sexual health.

So please, stop trivializing it, and stop trying to change policy to make it harder for us to get the vaccine. For those of us who've never had it, it is a major thing.