A credit score for having sex?

[highlander]

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

4. I assume that all swingers would have a poor score. Every single risk determinate list I have seen, non-monogamous relationships and the number of partners ranks at or near the top of the list. Many of the other factors are in direct corollary, such as skin to skin contact, alcohol use and as mentioned in another post smoking. So yes, I maintain this to be an accurate assumption. Would the number be as low for this group as say, IV drug users, no, but it would be much worse than the general population as a whole.

Over 60% of the risk for HIV infection in the US associated with presence of HSV2, HPV, Chlamydia or gonorrhea. The last two are especially contagious.
What that means is that presence of those diseases is fairly highly correlated with number of partners _for any particular pool of partners we want to talk about_. One _huge_ question for HIV:
if we factor out the treatable STD's--and say HSV2 in its most acute phase just how big a risk are multiple heterosexual partners for HIV infection?
What happens when we adjust this for age?

Why is this relevant:
partner pools have _wildly_ different risks of treatable STD's associated with them. Someone that has had 30 partners and has never had chlamydia or gonorrhea may have a VERY different risk profile than someone who
has had 10 partners and had those diseases on multiple occasions.

the model of "more partners->more risk" is tricky. it works _much_ better with highly contagious STDs. With HIV, most of the risk to heterosexual women at times has come from IV drug users. It isn't that HIV can't spread sexually-it just takes some specific conditions that are relatively rare outside of places like africa and some of the poorer communities in the US.

[Coupleerotic22]

highlander - would you agree that swingers, based on the fact they have multiple partners are at a higher risk for treatable STI's? Especially considering some STI test do not automatically test for all STI's, so STI's that are rarely tested for would be spread more easily due to the lack of knowledge.

Would you agree that comparatively, swingers risk score would be higher than the general public as a whole, based on multiple partners, and the fact that IV drug users are statistically such a small portion of the overall general public?

Would you agree that swinging is a fairly closed community, meaning we tend to communicate known dangers such as IV drug users, those know to have STI's?

If you believe that to be true would it not also be true that swingers would have generally similar scores on a risk factor score card, with a few anomalies here and there?

I think most swingers believe the medical community would place us in a higher risk category because of non-monogamy and multiple partners. I also believe most swingers think we are not as high a risk as the medical community might believe because we tend to take more precautions and ask more questions of our sex partners than the vanilla world.

That said I do not think the risk factor fluctuate wildly among long term swingers. Medically speaking we are a higher risk group. Functionally speaking we are more active in the prevention. Regardless, from the medical community stand point I think swingers would generally be classified as a high risk group.

[highlander]

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

highlander - would you agree that swingers, based on the fact they have multiple partners are at a higher risk for treatable STI's? Especially considering some STI test do not automatically test for all STI's, so STI's that are rarely tested for would be spread more easily due to the lack of knowledge.

Swingers tend to be an older population(say median age in the 30-40's). Chlamydia and gonorrhea tend to be concentrated among younger people(late teens early 20's). Those diseases are pretty common on some college campuses for example. There is some evidence that younger women are more biologically vulnerable to those diseases.

That Dutch study claimed that 10.4% of the swingers visiting Dutch STI clinics had and STI compared to 10% of the general public. That corresponds roughly to what the general public have in the UK according to this article.

I know the basic model we are taught on STI's says more partners-> more risk. That doesn't clearly fit the data above. It may be that swingers are more likely to just get treatment when they have a problem(or they just get treated more frequently)-or those that are most vulnerable/unlucky just drop out of swinging.

Would you agree that comparatively, swingers risk score would be higher than the general public as a whole, based on multiple partners, and the fact that IV drug users are statistically such a small portion of the overall general public?

The figures plumley used for his model of HIV was something like 1.7% for white men and 4.7% for black men for IV drug use.
It isn't obvious to me what the level of IV drug use among swingers is-and equally important how that relates to IV drug use since their last test.

That is a small group-but it is huge portion of the risk to a heterosexual woman.

Would you agree that swinging is a fairly closed community, meaning we tend to communicate known dangers such as IV drug users, those know to have STI's?

There is a BIG variation there between folks that are in stable couples and go to house parties vs. people that go more to larger settings. I think you are right that in the house party/small club setting the communication level is pretty high.

If you believe that to be true would it not also be true that swingers would have generally similar scores on a risk factor score card, with a few anomalies here and there?

I think you'd probably find that with an honest scoring mechanism, a fairly small group-like 5-10% would represent 80% of the risk due to genetic and lifestyle factors that have little directly to do with swinging(as I previously mentioned, alcohol use, tobacco use, meth/cocaine use all have huge effect on how vulnerable someone is to HIV-and nobody has really studied their interaction with each other and with other known cofactors like other STI')

One major source of variation is just how frequent folks test. I know a few folks that test quarterly-but once a year is more usual-and there are folks running around that simply never test.

If we are doing a risk factor score, someone with 5 years of clean tests has a whole different profile than someone that has never been tested.

I think most swingers believe the medical community would place us in a higher risk category because of non-monogamy and multiple partners. I also believe most swingers think we are not as high a risk as the medical community might believe because we tend to take more precautions and ask more questions of our sex partners than the vanilla world.

The thing is:I don't think the epidemiology of swingers has been studied well enough to tell us much. The real important question is what kinds of approaches make specific sense for the swinger community vs. the general public. I tend to think that because swingers are more matter of fact about these issues there is potential to reduce the rate of STD's in the swinger population well below that of the general public.

That said I do not think the risk factor fluctuate wildly among long term swingers. Medically speaking we are a higher risk group. Functionally speaking we are more active in the prevention. Regardless, from the medical community stand point I think swingers would generally be classified as a high risk group.

The conventional medical wisdom is that swingers ought to be a high risk group. The data suggests swingers are about the same as the general population. What we know from the AIM experience with frequent testing, is that it is possible to take a VERY sexually active and higher risk group to a frequency of 20% that of the general public. AIM does that with monthly testing. I think quarterly testing would have a similar effect among swingers if there was an identifiable community of swingers that got serious about sharing test results with good authentication, periodic testing and automatic partner notification.

[Trojan Defense]

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

You say I make wrong assumptions.

Wrong assumptions:
1. How the system works. Possibly true, but all I can do is make assumptions. I clearly pointed out and asked exactly how the system would work. And still no answers have been given.

My reply was that it is a work in progress. What part of "work in progress" is unclear?

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

2. I assume that people will use it as a substitute for doing their own leg work. Absolutely, it is human nature. If people can have an easy substitute for doing time consuming and complex activities they will choose the easier route almost every time. Your analogy of a credit score is a perfect example... more often than not, all the loan officer looks at is the score...

That is the point. If your credit score is below a certain level, there is no need for the loan officer to do any additional legwork (unless he just wants to waste his time); however, if your credit score is acceptable, then he needs to do some additional fact checking to make sure everything adds up. Same goes for this idea. It functions as a time saver.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

3. I assume that we would be reduced to a number.

That depends on what they were looking to get out of the interaction, and just what kind of risk do you represent. Were they really looking for friendship, or were they just looking for a sex partner? If you really want to be friends with someone, you don't need to have sex with them. If they were just looking for a sex partner, and didn't want to catch an std, then who could blame them for that? I wouldn't either, but that only applies if you are an unacceptable health risk. If you are an acceptable health risk, what's stopping them from getting to know you better, and becoming friends? Another point of interest here is even if your credit score wasn't good, who's to say it couldn't change in time? Being rude to people isn't exactly a winning strategy, regardless of what you're looking for. It is quite possible you will cross paths with these people again whether you have sex or not.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

4. I assume that all swingers would have a poor score.

I think Highlander already addressed that one.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

5. You say a well designed system would account for the "idiots" that look at their own good score and become a greater risk to others... I work with systems everyday, I cannot count the times I have been told we the system accounts for this or that, and the system did not.

Your personal life experiences are not neccessarily applicable to what we are talking about.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

6. Your role as the inventor of the sex risk airplane. Yes, people scoffed at the airplane, particularly early on, because technology and knowledge did not exist for centuries after the concept of flight was proposed to make it happen. When the technology did exist, a number of inventors were racing against the clock to be the first to achieve powered flight. Maybe the technology to overcome the flaws in this proposal exist, if so then address it. Again I asked and there has been no answer.

As stated earlier, I said it was a work in progress. I may have to go back to the drawing board a few times to work out some flaws before finally getting it right, but that's not an uncommon thing in innovation.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

One more thing, Wilbur and Orville did not run around telling people how great flight would be and trying to convince them it was possible, they simply went out and did it.

The Wright brothers also didn't have internet forums back in their day. If they did, they might have used it as a means of exchanging, and building upon ideas. Technology can be a wonderful thing when put to good use.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

Is there a tone if frustration in my post? Definitely.

Your frustration? What about my frustration? I'm trying to make things better, and people are telling me that I can not.

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

Since you have, at least indirectly, compared yourself to the Wright brothers, maybe it is time for you to roll up your sleeves and make it work and be less concerned that I, and many others, don't think it will... just go out and make the system work and prove us all wrong.

I might just do that.

[Trojan Defense]

Originally Posted by Alura

Well, the vote seems to be 23 "Nos" to 7 "Yesses," Trojan Defense.

I wouldn't put too much stock in any poll taken here. Though if I did, I don't think those are neccessarily bad numbers. Even small percentages count for something when put on large enough of a scale.

Originally Posted by Alura

But a more telling statistic is that almost all who disagree with you have been labeled by yourself as making "an incorrect assumption."

The only one that I have said is making incorrect assumptions is CoupleErotic22.

Originally Posted by Alura

Also, to compare yourself favorably with "the inventor[s] (there were at least two) of the airplane is quite laughable.

What will be laughable is the day these ideas do work, and I think back to the time that so many people told me they couldn't.

Originally Posted by Alura

Do you have interest in any issue besides STDs?

Sure, I have other interests, but what else am I going to talk about in forum that is for stds, and safer sex?

[Trojan Defense]

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

I have to add. I have yet to see anyone say they would not be interested in a system that gave them real and solid information, that was reliable, was not intrusive and was simple to use.

Well, among those that have posted, that might be interested in such a system, I've yet to see anyone (except for Highlander), suggest how it might work. All I've seen is how a bunch of critics think it could never work - not how it might work. Attacking ideas that are still in their infancy is not exactly the most constructive criticism I've ever received.

[Alura]

Originally Posted by Trojan Defense

My reply was that it is a work in progress. What part of "work in progress" is unclear?

The "progress" part.

Alura

[Trojan Defense]

Originally Posted by Alura

The "progress" part.

Progress would be any improvement over the current way of doing things, albeit it be imperfect.

[Trojan Defense]

Another thing I forgot to add under...

Originally Posted by Coupleerotic22

2. I assume that people will use it as a substitute for doing their own leg work.

What if the couple you're talking to has an std, and through the use of this credit score, they decline to get with you because you don't? Maybe they wanted to get with someone who had the same std that they had so they wouldn't be spreading anything. In that case, you should be appreciative of the fact that they took your health in consideration when getting with you. That is unless you just want to get with people that have stds. Then I guess that would be a different story, but at least they saved themselves the possible embarrassment of having it known that they had an std, and can more effectively serosort as a result of it.

[Suburbia]

I don't like the idea because it pigeon holes couples into a group. I find labels are nearly always bad in this part of my life.

Just because my wife and I are wild in July doesn't mean we will feel wild in September but try us again in December.

[Coupleerotic22]

Trojan Defense - Suffice to say we are not seeing eye to eye, and probably will not.

Like Alura said, "progress". A "work in progress" generally connotes that some logistical, functional or systematic hurdles have been overcome. This proposal seems to have not even made it past the idea stage to the drawing board, let alone resolved obvious problems in its concept. If it has we have seen no evidence of it, even though it has been requested time and again. So we make assumptions and work off of them. Give us something concrete and maybe we can critique that, until then, assumptions are the best we have.

Your arguments are all over the place. When I said "I trust my own judgment and investigation over a systems like this," I was speaking specifically to STFREE.com, which was held up as an example of how this MIGHT work. You said, "One incorrect assumption that you make is that this is necessarily a substitute for getting to know someone." You made an assumption about what I said in that case.

I wouldn't substitute this, or any other system for getting to know someone. But to be fair to you, yes I assume many would. And you seem to agree. "If your credit score is below a certain level, there is no need for the loan officer to do any additional legwork (unless he just wants to waste his time)"

This is a contradiction. Which is it? Did I make the wrong assumption that people would not take the time get to know other or is it a waste of time to do so?

Before you respond, I took into account what you said about intent of friends vs. sex. Many of us make friends within the community that we have no intent on have sex with. The conversations, between making friends and ascertaining sexual compatibility are very different. Detailed sexual information, such as STI status, is not normally part of "just friends" conversation. And I do believe that for those who put stock in this system, the conversation would never evolve from "friends" to the "sexual compatibility" in some cases, because, as you said, that would be a waste of time.

AS for swingers having a poor score. Yes, highlander did address that. He used a number of statistics, but failed to supply links for most of his assertions. But two of the links, he did provide, seem to support what I was say about swingers having higher risk score. The third, a link to a portion of a study, seemed to deal primarily with homosexuality, bi-sexuality and IV drug use in relations to contracting HIV/AIDS and death from that disease. In fact, when it came to heterosexual males, they state that they adjusted to their formula based on the assumption that the female partner "must be an IV drug user". Bisexuals were identified as higher risk and are a known bridge for HIV to heterosexual communities. Bi-sexuality is common in the swinger community, so again I don't see how that contradicts my assumption.

My personal experience is very much applicable. I have seen hundreds if not thousands of systems over the years. I have yet to see one that is perfect. But my comment was not so much about systems, it was about the blanket statement, "A well designed system would account for this." System designers like to think they have everything covered, they rarely do. That statement is one that usually triggers my request to show me that it works. More times than not, the system failed the testing.

Wright brothers and the internet. LOL! It is well documented that the Wright brothers went out of their way to keep what they were doing a secret. As is the case with most inventors, by the way.

You are frustrated because people tell you it "can't work". That is the life of an inventor. I heard Dr. DeBakey speak in the early 2000's, and he echoed the same sentiment. Trail blazers catch grief, the good ones answer with success not by being critical of people’s opinions.

If you don't put stock in polls, why did you create this one?

This forum is not about STD's and Safe Sex. It is about the swinging lifestyle. STD/Safe sex is but one of a couple of dozen topics that are covered. I think what Alura is pointing out is that you only post on this topic. As swingers we are all interested in this topic, but it seems to be the only one you are interested in. This leads me to believe you are not in the lifestyle, but are here to glean some knowledge on the subject. That is fine, but it might behoove you to be answer criticisms of the proposal rather than telling people their opinions are "wrong assumptions"

By the way, you never have addressed any of the hurdles that need to be overcome; do you plan on doing so? Or are you here looking for us to solve those problems?

This seems to have turned into a pissing match, so unless you have something constructive to add or ask, I think it is a waste of time for me to continue to post to this thread. Good luck on creating your system, if it works well, I will gladly use it.

[Trojan Defense]

I will agree with you on one thing: continuing this discussion does seem rather pointless.

As for my comment to Alura about why I am talking about stds, and safer sex so much, I mistakenly referred to this part of the forum as a forum in and of itself. The point is, posting anything other than stds and safer sex in this part of the forum would be off topic, so that only leaves me with one thing to talk about whenever posting here. (Thought that'd be obvious.)

[Alura]

Couplerotic wrote:

Like Alura said, "progress". A "work in progress" generally connotes that some logistical, functional or systematic hurdles have been overcome. This proposal seems to have not even made it past the idea stage to the drawing board, let alone resolved obvious problems in its concept.

Trojan Defense replied:

As for my comment to Alura about why I am talking about stds, and safer sex so much, I mistakenly referred to this part of the forum as a forum in and of itself. The point is, posting anything other than stds and safer sex in this part of the forum would be off topic, so that only leaves me with one thing to talk about whenever posting here.

An answer somewhat related to the question would be good, Trojan Defense. Nevertheless, let me give you an actual sincere suggestion on how to proceed in getting this "work" "progessing" onto paper and, thus, a plan.

Who will administer this plan? and most importantly,

Who will pay for it and with what funds?

My suggestion would be The Center for Disease Control could create your plan and design the website on which folks might get answers. Your plan could, like all other medical care, be funded by a tax on products or activities that make people seek health care. Twenty-five cents on each box of bullets sold in America might be the established tax that would pay for treatment of gunshot wounds. Cars might have to be taxed $50.00 to cover the costs of treating auto accident victims. Thousands of items would need to be studied actuarily (Is that a word?) to determine their taxes. A surcharge would be needed to cover costs that were expended to lower the incidence of disease... in this case STDs. The CDC has most of the needed statistics to do this.

The tax revenues would be paid directly to the Non-Profit Health Care Provider (Blue Cross-Blue Shield comes to mind as a national and experienced non profit provider.) who would fund the costs of implementation. A cool thing about this would be that everybody would eventually pay for their health care before they needed it.

Get started on that and you'll be well on your way to seeing your plan thrive, eventually to having a statue of you at Johns-Hopkins and Harvard Medical. Your "Hero of the People" medal would be at the Smithsonian.

Alura

[Trojan Defense]

Originally Posted by Alura

My suggestion would be The Center for Disease Control could create your plan and design the website on which folks might get answers.

Its a nice suggestion, though, according to my sources, such a plan would not work due to political reasons. That said, I do realize the scope of such an endeavor would require the help of experts whose knowledge and resources exceeds my own.

Originally Posted by Alura

Get started on that and you'll be well on your way to seeing your plan thrive, eventually to having a statue of you at Johns-Hopkins and Harvard Medical. Your "Hero of the People" medal would be at the Smithsonian.

Thanks, but I really do not seek fame, or notoriety in the pursuit of these ideas. Simply put, what I seek is to make a positive difference, and if successful, that is reward in, and of itself.

[two4youinswva]

Originally Posted by Trojan Defense

As for my comment to Alura about why I am talking about stds, and safer sex so much, I mistakenly referred to this part of the forum as a forum in and of itself. The point is, posting anything other than stds and safer sex in this part of the forum would be off topic, so that only leaves me with one thing to talk about whenever posting here. (Thought that'd be obvious.)

Just to clarify, and make sure I understand (I'm slow sometimes); you do realize there are other forums besides STD/Safe Sex within swingersboard.com, correct?