My appologies if this question has been answered.
I am a male. Let's say I have genital herpes. Let's say that I am not having any outbreak. I could still be "shedding" the virus around my genitals. If my partner gave me a hand-job, she would presumably pick up the virus from my genitals and it would stay on her hands. The herpes wouldn't infect her hand though, as herpes doesn't affect hand skin cells (or perhaps the hand skin is too thick?). But, if she took her hand and placed it on her genitals, couldn't she transmit the herpes virus to her vagina, which would then give her herpes? What if she rubbed her eyes with her hand? Couldn't the virus go from her hand to her eye giving her herpes in the eye? Or if she put her hand in her mouth? Couldn't she get oral herpes?
I keep hearing that you can only spread herpes from direct contact (i.e., from penis to vagina, or from penis to mouth, etc.), but given what I understand about how herpes is transmitted, I don't understand why someone couldn't transmit herpes in the afformentioned ways.
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* Which I hope I do not, but apparently I need to wait 3 months to get tested, not 6 weeks like in the case of HIV.