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Hantavirus may survive in human sperm for up to six years and cause a transmission risk
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Immune privilege. You're talking about immune privilege. Sperm is immunogenic, if you took your own sperm and put it inside your body your body would react to it as a foreign body. So the testes get weird about the immune system. The eyes are also immune privileged, although not in the same way.
Also holy crap just looked immune privlidge up and the central nervous system is part of the group—is that why rabies can lurk for years and then crawl up your spine and kill you?
Its one of the reasons why our best tool against an infection you already have is a vaccine.
I haven't heard of rabies "lurking for years", but there are absolutely pathogens that can survive in latent form and cause all kinds of bad stuff.
A classic example is vcv returning as shingles, and JC virus killing AIDS patients and organ transplant recipients years after initial infection.
And cold sores, but that's less scary.
Ah thanks—that sounds much more accurate than my vague description. It’s so interesting that there are these sort of autonomous zones in our bodies. My understanding is that when the viruses are in there, they aren’t necessarily a threat to you anymore—basically just sorta hiding out. But certainly in the testes you could imagine it being a problem for transmission sexually…
Okay whar about sperm in your eye
That shit stings. But the presence of foreign rna could also give you conjunctivitis (Could, I'm not sure. Don't look to me for medical advise, I am not out of school). So don't take facials from people who have hantavirus would be my initial suggestion
Edit: I actually originally thought about writing like a whole thing about how the ocular immune system works, but then I realised that even if I acknowledged that I wasn't going along with the joke, it would still not actually be interesting or funny.
Thanks! It could be interesting. I do feel kinda bad that you have put a lot more thought into your reply than I did into my shitpost comment.
it stings
Hmm I'll keep that in on mind