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Comment by jdw64 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious. HIV has been largely conquered, so why hasn't HPV been conquered yet? Same goes for shingles.

Chicken pox is conquered. We went from 95% to <1%. Shingles will see a similar plunge.

Adding to my sibling comments: It also has been conquered in some sense of the word. There are effective vaccines for the 9 most problematic HPV types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine . It is worth getting, regardless of your gender.

Gardasil 9 seems to be the best available HPV vaccine. I guess the chewing gum is mainly intended for people who were already infected with some HPV strain before they got the vaccine, or where the vaccine didn't work (because it doesn't offer complete protection).

>Gardasil 9 seems to be the best available HPV vaccine.

Only in high income countries. The 4-valent version is still the dominant version available worldwide.

For Gardasil 9, some lower income countries also use just a single dose rather than two, due to cost.

You need to use antiretrovirals constantly to control the HIV. It's not worth it for the HPV that is mostly benign (and only rarely causes cancer).

thanks!

Less resources devoted to curing because of lower lethality

There's been a lot of failed attempts at therapeutic vaccines and the like, but nothing has proven effective. It seems that the virus is quite hard to detect and target in the skin.

That, plus a lack of urgency due to the effectiveness of preventative vaccines, leads to a lack of urgency on the issue.

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