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Sex in the time of Covid-19

When we are all trying to avoid deadly spread of coronavirus infections, can we still have sex?

This is a GREAT question. Luckily the New York City department of health has answered this and many more questions you may hesitate to ask in their very complete and unabashed 2 page primer on the subject. Please follow the link. It is a brilliant document leaving just enough to the imagination.

The most controversial and absolutely true statement they make is that "You are your safest sex partner." 

Sex is the most physically intimate activity that most people engage in. Coronavirus is transmitted when virus from one person's respiratory tract (usually lungs, mouth or nose) finds its way to another person's respiratory tract where it infects vulnerable cells. Not all cells are vulnerable. Coronavirus is found in certain other body fluids but it is less practical for the viruses in, say, stool or tears to be involved in transmitting infection. But sex between humans just about always involves two people creating respiratory aerosols. We can assume that having sex is extremely good at transferring coronavirus from one person to another, and that there is virtually no practical way to have safe sex with a person who is shedding the virus. Most likely it's just the kissing and heavy breathing that is the dangerous part rather than the part that involves genitals.

So when there is an outbreak like this it is a terrible idea to be physically intimate with anyone new. 

It's important to evaluate your risk of infecting others or being infected by others according to how many contacts you have and how intense those contacts are. The clerk at the grocery store has had some contact with hundreds of potentially infected people every day and when you contact that clerk, you are, in effect, in second hand contact with all of those people. But since you barely breathe the same air as the clerk, the risk is tolerable. If that clerk was also a daycare worker who was in close and messy contact with many potentially infected children, the risk to you is higher. If the clerk also coughs right in your face or he is your husband, you have many high risk intimate second hand contacts.

Sex is like that. If you were unwise enough to go out on a Tinder date with some guy who you only know from his curated content, he might in fact be an international cage fighter. If the date got hot and heavy, you would have intimate second hand contact with all of those other international cage fighters (or pro basketball players or whatever) because your new beau had deeply inhaled all of their very high risk respiratory aerosols. This guy might not feel sick at all, or maybe just a tad under the weather, and still be shedding virus like crazy. In fact, with all of those high risk contacts, he would be more than likely to be infected. 

The safest of all contacts at this time is none at all. This is impractical for most people. Second is to limit contacts to only a household and make sure that household limits their contacts to you. Once you start hanging out with people with many high risk intimate contacts, your risk of contracting the virus goes way up and then you are sick and are the person infecting others. So think about it. If you are hooked on online dating, keep it online. Think of it as a long courtship. By the time you meet this guy in person after weeks or more of quarantine you'll be pretty sure he's not a jerk.

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