Hi Burt,

It's hard to say.  I think you need to clarify a point or two.

For instance:

Man number 1 has oral type 1 and has 2 or 3 outbreaks a year.

Man number 2 has genital type 1 with infrequent outbreaks.

Who is more contagious?

First of all, the longer you have herpes, the less you shed.  I don't know
if shedding increases if you have more outbreaks or not.

The man with type 1 orally is more likely to pass it on to someone else's
mouth or genitals than the man with type 1 genitally.  Genital type 1 can be
passed to someone's mouth through oral sex but tends not to pass genital to
genital very easily.  Also, the man with genital type 1 might shed less
because the virus is out of it's home environment.  But, I really don't know
that for a fact.

ar

Hi Burt G,

Why would you be concerned about passing it on if you both have it?
Is this other man your sexual partner? If that's the case then you can't
keep passing it back and forth. Once you have it you keep it. If this other
man is not your sexual partner then I would say that both of you will
experience asymptomatic shedding at some point. It's just really hard to
tell when we are shedding because we can't see or feel that the virus is
active on the surface of the skin.

Here's some good information about type-1 and type-2 and the differences
between the two along with some site and type guidelines:
http://members.cox.net/yoshi2me/Site-Type/Site-Type.htm .

Hope this helps,

Angela

Hi.

The people that know claim that large numbers of people with HSV1
genitally will have only the one primary outbreak.

I've always assumed that more outbreaks equals more shedding (and
therefore more risk of transfer), and it seems to me that some of the
studies of the last year or two more or less point in that direction.
However, since it's so hard to corral a study group of people and find
out when they are asymptomatically shedding (would require continuous
and expensive testing) it's only really speculation that says that the
person with fewer outbreaks is shedding less.

And when you get down to individual cases, say, if the two men above
were having sex with the same woman, I think it would be impossible to
know which one was the doner of any virus that might have transfered.
Statistics that apply to populations just can't be applied to
individual cases.

Take care,

Mike