Mapping Your Sexual Safety

Science really is a marvel. Thanks to science we have satellite TV, we’ve got flavored lubricants, we’ve got iTunes and a whole host of really impressive sex dolls that are creepily real. Go science! But apart from snazzy inventions, folks occasionally use a bit of science to just blow our minds with knowledge. A smattering of sociology, some geography, some immunology and before you know it you have a disease-laden mapquest of insanity.

In order to be helpful to the good people of Toronto, the newspaper The Star decided to map some communicable disease clusters for everyone to enjoy. You can have a look at the results here . Indeed, across Toronto, Canada’s largest city with a population in the metro area of over 5.6 million and a city population of 2.5 million (making it North America’s 5th largest city) you’ll notice a delightful spread of things like Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV infections.

Toronto prides itself on being North America’s most multicultural city, meaning you’ve got this continent’s most diverse heritage all in one spot, all at ground zero for disease spread according to those maps. And what could all of this potentially mean for you? Plenty.

Toronto, diverse hub that it is, is a great example in this case of why caution pays off. The maps show the great range of reported cases of STD’s throughout the city. Some areas have no HIV but a high range of gonorrhea. Some have 1 case in 1,000 of HIV but 88 in 1,000 of Chlamydia. It’s random and it’s widespread and it goes to show there’s no “bad” part of town, no safe zones and nowhere that you can get away with being unsafe.

Arguably every other city in North America is going to look just like this if someone took the time to delve into the stats on the subject. You may think you’re safe in some places, but judging by the spread of things like Chlamydia and gonorrhea especially, not everyone is using protection all the time. It’s great to see something like HIV coming up at the low end of the spectrum with relatively few cases reported, but all of these conditions are serious and, as hobbyists, we need to be on our toes.

Basically it’s a simple numbers game. STD’s, interestingly enough, get passed around via sex. Someone who has sex for as living is therefore automatically at a greater risk for contracting and transmitting these diseases. Try as you might, you can’t always be 100% sure that the provider you’re seeing is careful all the time. So the onus is on you to cover your ass. And your willy. Probably the willy coverage is more important.

It’s also worth noting this info was parsed from the Ministry of Health, meaning it can only give info on people who took the time to be treated and identify themselves. If there was no way to track respondents they weren’t included in the mapping, meaning the potential spread is going to be larger than what is documented in turn meaning you really need to keep on your toes. You can have a lot of fun out there but it’s always best to be safe, lest you find yourself leaking mystery fluids and in need of penicillin shots.