VR Headsets Blamed For Spread Of Eye Herpes

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Yes, you read that correctly, VR headsets are being blamed for the spread of eye herpes. Not surprising, the forward-thinking folks at NVIDIA saw this coming a long time ago (pun intended) and took appropriate precautions.

Virtual reality might not be catching on with consumers as rapidly as some companies hoped, but one thing that definitely will catch on with some who tries out a VR headset is herpes—ocular herpes, to be exact. The risk of passing on illness and infections at public conventions has always been real, and that risk is amplified when visitors are sharing objects like game controllers. The same is true for VR headsets, where countless individuals handle, wear, and potentially contaminate the gear before handing it off to someone else.
 
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Just saw this...I didn't realize "eye herpes" was a thing that existed. Gross.
 
Definitely kind of glad now Microcenter didn't have demo unit set up when I went to buy the Vive. :)
 
How the hell am I supposed to enjoy all that VR porn has to offer wearing an occucondom?! It's a sad day.
 
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I never knew 'eye herpes' was a thing. Somebody should probably let Bennett know, the way that guy's been pushing VR - he should probably protect himself.
 
At PAX West pretty much all the game devs were making people wear these before trying out the games. I have a large head, so they stretched out and obscured my vision. Supper annoying.
 
How do you get this without a VR headset.
Do you have to skullfuck?
 
90% of Americans have been exposed to herpes by the age of 50.

Talking about "eye herpes" is nonsense (Edit: oracular herpes isn't nonsense; I have been corrected below). There's either HSV-1 (oral, more common) or HSV-2 (genital, less common). You can get herpes while being born, and usually get it during childhood. HSV-1 is not even classified as an STD, but the typical American puritan guilt reaction towards anything even remotely associated with sex has put a label of shame on a virus that nearly everyone has.
 
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HSV can basically infect any open area / mucous membrane via direct contact so it's not too surprising since hardly anyone washes their hands nowadays.
 
I got the herp from eating some bad oysters when I was a kid. Made my mouth all swell up and ooze puss. Was nasty. I can eat oysters any month now. Let those bastards end in R, I don't care.
 
evilsofa said:
90% of Americans have been exposed to herpes by the age of 50.

Talking about "eye herpes" is nonsense. There's either HSV-1 (oral, more common) or HSV-2 (genital, less common). You can get herpes while being born, and usually get it during childhood. HSV-1 is not even classified as an STD, but the typical American puritan guilt reaction towards anything even remotely associated with sex has put a label of shame on a virus that nearly everyone has.
Click to expand...

It's actually called eye or ocular herpes. HSV is still herpes, no one here was shouting OMG IT'S GIVING US STD'S IN THE EYES.
 
evilsofa said:
90% of Americans have been exposed to herpes by the age of 50.

Talking about "eye herpes" is nonsense. There's either HSV-1 (oral, more common) or HSV-2 (genital, less common). You can get herpes while being born, and usually get it during childhood. HSV-1 is not even classified as an STD, but the typical American puritan guilt reaction towards anything even remotely associated with sex has put a label of shame on a virus that nearly everyone has.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:
 
For all the people joking about "the clap" in the eye, it's real and you don't want that. In fact, you can get most STDs in your eye. This type of ocular herpes simplex is indeed pretty common and contagious by contact only when someone has an active infection. Infections can look very different. Sometimes you can see the vesicles on the eyelids, sometimes you can get lesions on the cornea, sometimes it's just a simple conjunctivitis, sometimes internal structures of the eye are affected. You can also get Herpes Zoster of the eye, but that is only airborne contagious to people that haven't had the chicken pox or been vaccinated.

Herpes simplex of the eye can be treated a variety of ways depending on how its affecting your eye. Sometimes antiviral drops if the surface of the cornea is affected, usually oral antivirals like acyclovir or valtrex, and in some rare cases like one i saw recently, steroid drops. Amniotic membranes are sometimes used for neurotrophic ulcers. If you use steroids inappropriately for a herpetic infection of the eye, it can make things really worse. Tobradex is a very common antibiotic/steroid medication for doctors to prescribe for eye infections. I've seen more patients than I could count that had terrible herpetic infections made worse by that drop. If you have an eye infection, don't go to the ER or your PCP. They have no idea what they're looking at.
 
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Sorry guys, guess I'll stop rubbing my junk on the Samsung displays at BestBuy...
 
MavericK said:
Just saw this...I didn't realize "eye herpes" was a thing that existed. Gross.
Click to expand...

Type 1 is usually transmitted orally. Type 2, via the genitals. Rarely, someone with oral herpes can infect someone's genitals or someone can get type 2 in the mouth.

The virus attaches itself to the nerve cells ( type 2 attaches itself to the ganglion, in the spine ). The nerve cells act as a transport layer, so type 1 can end up in the eyes and worst case scenario, in the brain. A mother with type 2 has a cesarean, to avoid blinding the baby.

Herpesviral encephalitis - Wikipedia

There's some kind of connection between Alzheimer's disease and type 1 - they affect the same sections of the brain.

The Man With The Seven Second Memory



I think the fact that when you go to a STD clinic, they don't do tests for Herpes is because

a) It's so contagious.
b) Cold sores share the same genetics as type 1, so you get false flags.
c) A Western blot ( a blood test which gives you a detailed genetic breakdown ) test cost $200 and the last time I looked ( 11 years ago ), was not available in Canada, only in the USA.
d) They don't want to scare anyone.
 
MrAgmoore said:
The virus attaches itself to the nerve cells ( type 2 attaches itself to the ganglion, in the spine ). The nerve cells act as a transport layer, so type 1 can end up in the eyes and worst case scenario, in the brain. A mother with type 2 has a cesarean, to avoid blinding the baby.

Herpesviral encephalitis - Wikipedia
Click to expand...

They way you're describing may be misleading to people as to how it really works. 1st you contract the virus (HSV 1 in this case) by contact. Viral particles from someone shedding virus has to get into your eyes. You don't get ocular herpes from viral transport through nerve cells. After contracting the virus, it stays dormant in peripheral ganglion in the peripheral nervous system (In this case, the V1 branch of the 5th cranial/Trigeminal nerve). HSV1 and HSV2 are perfectly capable of crossing synapses and traveling from the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system, but it's not well understood what the consequences of that are to us, and this is not how you get herpes in your eye. Herpes is really common and herpetic encephalitis is really rare. Typical recurrent infections will always affect the same dermatome (the localized tissue innervated by the infected ganglion) and never cross synapses. A simple example would be a common labial HSV1 infection doesn't spread from one side to the other through nerves. Each labia would be innervated by a different nerve, so in order to have both labia affected, one side would have to infect mucosal epithelium of the other side leading to the infection being retained in that nerve ganglion as well.
 
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