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Help virtual reality gave me herpes

by on28 October 2016


Latest health scare


One of the dafter rumours we have seen is doing the chatroom circuit at the moment – sharing VR goggles apparently has created a herpes outbreak.

According to Daily Dot, logs posted by YouTube game streamer Drift0r, claim to show that an outbreak of ocular herpes is going around VR headsets – ones that are used to share with people at trade shows.

A studio apparently started the rumour by saying that herpes was going around and people should clean their headsets regularly. When Drift0r asked for more details someone who had got it was named.

This fed into people’s VR health concerns. But we are talking about developers and they can be neurotic. What is amusing is that if a VR developer did end up with ocular herpes, they would not have got it from a headset. Passing on that way is unlikely too.

Ocular herpes is the herpes simplex virus that’s behind cold sores and if you get it in your eye it is painful and needs treatment. It is a virus so it must go from one hot moist area to another to survive. Mostly they are transmitted from touching the infected area with a finger and then rubbing your eye. The virus dies pretty quickly so even if it did contact the glasses you would have to put it into your eye pretty quickly.

Last modified on 28 October 2016
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