Comment by Traubenfuchs
8 hours ago
Everyone already knows!
HPV vaccination leads to massive reduction in nasopharyngeal, penile and rectal cancer in men.
The focus of messaging around HPV vaccination on ovarian cancer, female fertility and the age limitations for recommendations / free vaccination in some places are nothing short of a massive public health failure and almost scandal.
Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.
> Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.
Every male above the age of 26 is locked out of the vaccine unless you pay out of pocket, which will be €300-€500 (or even higher).
It's led to this really weird situation, where HPV vaccination for men is now recommended up to 40s but only covered up to 26yr old, and that recommendation upgrade happened relatively recently. Which means there's a whole generation of men who are told they should get the vaccine, who would have had covered access to the vaccine in the past, but are now expected to go out of pocket.
Yep, I paid for mine. male/43/Spain. Almost €400. Two shots of the nonavalent vaccine, ~€190 each.
For younger people it's three shots (second after two months, third after 6 months of the first one), now for older (over 30s or 40s, I can't remember exactly) it's recommended to get two shots (second after six months).
This seems to be changing in some areas. I am in the US, in my 30's, Male and I only had my $30 copay for the first visit (nothing for my second shot)
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That's not what they are saying. Read it again.
That’s exactly what they are saying. Read the last part.
Promiscuity is not a healthy lifestyle and we need to stop presenting it as one. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s should have been enough of a warning. If people don't sleep around then HPV's spread will be much reduced and they will be much less likely to catch other STIs.
If people stopped driving, we would have zero car crashes.
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This adds nothing. It has been repeatedly shown that stupid abstinence-driven approaches to public health do not work. It’s equivalent to saying “maybe the obesity crisis would be solved if we all just ate less”.
Moral crusades have zero place in public health and are actively harmful.
This isn't an abstinence driven approach it is a marry 'young' and then only that one partener for life.
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You could probably have gotten away with it a decade ago but that is a very poor plan in the far more critical of public health world of today.
Statistically nobody even knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off. Serious HPV problems for men are not even common enough to be viable urban legend. You have less to back up your DARE messaging than DARE did. It's just not gonna work. The nanosecond someone who took your bait shows up to be interviewed by some Youtube talking head about side effects the already severely damaged (compared to, IDK a decade ago) credibility of the medical establishment will go up in flames.
You need to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and let people make their own decisions. People don't "trust the experts" anymore at the scale you need for stuff like vaccination campaigns so you have to operate based on that reality.
Apparently HPV is responsible for some ~70% of throat cancers and ~30% of penile cancers in men. Seems pretty significant to me.
If nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who had penile cancer, that's probably because people are very bad about talking about genital health. I'm sure some of the men in my life have issues with erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates, hemmorrhoids, etc. But no one is talking about those issues.
70% of throat cancers? In a world with cigarettes and chewing tobacco? I find that a very surprising number - so surprising it's almost unbelievable.
Got a source?
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And how many men get throat and penile cancers vs other cancers and health issues? There's a reason old men crack jokes about prostate health, erectile dysfunction and incontinence rather than their dicks falling off and are way more worried about colon cancer than rectal cancer.
I didn't say it wasn't a significant source of cancer. I said that nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off or some other extreme outcome. Without enough of that to back up your messaging it just won't work. You need to be honest with people, not try and scare them like you're trying to keep school kids from smoking weed in 1990.
The public messaging you're trying to engage in could perhaps have skated by in a less critical time but in the current environment it will be counterproductive.
I don't want my kid or my grandkid to get measles or some other "of immediate consequence" disease because they go to school with a bunch of unvaccinated kids because you people sullied the reputation of public health via "just push the truth a little, it'll make them take the vaccine" type endeavors.
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HPV is also responsible for very unsightly genital warts. I'd think people would want to avoid that if possible.