This sucks...

For a hypochondriac like me, the constant stream of these reports make the hobby all the more stressful! The ladies at the local lab know me by name and recognize what I'm there for the second I walk in. :/

I know some may say I shouldn't be doing this if I feel that way, but I'm human after all.

Too many articles are out there for the purpose of scaring people.
I did not investigate all the claims, but as soon as you see a statement like this..
" It's estimated that 20 million new cases of STDs, including HIV and herpes, appear in the US each year, half in those aged 15 to 24. "
It is a clear sign that the author is lying.
Lumping HIV and Herpes in a single statistic is completely meaningless. It could mean 1 case of HIV and 23,999,999 cases of Herpes. Aside from being STIs the 2 are completely unrelated in how serious they are, how they are caught, who the primary population is, . etc....
In fact UNAIDS report 1.8 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2016 WORLDWIDE.
For the US, the latest information I could find was 2015 and the number of new HIV infections was 39,513.

So since the HIV number wasn't scary enough, they combined it with Herpes which is wide-spread just to further whatever their agenda is.

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/index.html

So bottom line is, play safe but don't believe everything you read.