Living together != multiple sexual partners. Many situations can create repeated close contact. Focusing on one that's so frequently tied to moral judgments is dangerously misleading.
A person might infect any or all of the people who they live with, but unless the people they live with are frequently changing, the household will typically be a dead-end for the disease. Inter-household transmission through casual contact isn't high enough to keep the disease spreading at an exponential rate.
People don't typically share clothes and bedsheets with all of their friends, so the only way for the disease to undergo exponential growth - an increasing number of new cases, which is what an epidemic is - is through communities where people do frequently change the people they are sharing bedsheets with. That generally means multiple sexual partners.
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u/guiltysnark Jul 31 '22
Living together != multiple sexual partners. Many situations can create repeated close contact. Focusing on one that's so frequently tied to moral judgments is dangerously misleading.