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Ricken, it's a good rant, and I think the situation is sad.
However I'd respectfully like to note that the news essentially mis-reported. Chicago is the number #1 city ONLY for Gonorrhea. It is the #2 city for Chlamydia. The term STD really should not be used anymore either. The current accepted term is STI (Sexually transmitted infection) this is because by definition a disease has a set of definable symptoms. A person can be infected with Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis; HPV (Venereal Warts); HIV (Herpes) or even HIV and be infected but not diseased. Further though HIV always turns to a disease, HPV does not. It is interesting to note that the body will frequently "clear" itself of the HPV virus.
The news seems to be fixating only on Gonorrhea and perhaps this is a good thing because there is a strong link between co-infections of Gonorrhea and HIV (also with Chlamydia). Thus a very high rate of Gonorrhea will directly translate to a high rate of Chlamydia (even though Chicago for some reason is #1 for Gonorrhea but #2 for Chlamydia. Sadly, a very high rate of Gonorrhea will also translate to a very high rate of HIV. HIV of course kills. Chlamydia rarely kills, but in its own way it does. Chlamydia often goes undetected in males, and can "go into hiding" in females becoming asymptomatic. The problem is that often this leads to a condition known as PID or Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. As PID remains mostly asymptomatic it insidiously damages a woman's reproductive system and over time can cause the infected women to become infertile.
Back to Chicago. It is likely that the high incidence of Gonorrhea is at least partially a combination of racial, ethnicity and poverty. The most recent data that I could find shows Chicago to be 42% white, 36.8% black, 4.4% Asian, about 14% "other races including Native Americans, and about 3% a mix of two or more races. In addition 26% is Hispanic. (Note: Hispanics can consider themselves to be White Hispanic or Black Hispanic, it is important to realize that Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race). A further consideration is that about 20% of the population and about 17% of families are below poverty level.
I do not understand the reason why, however CDC reports that Blacks account for 71% of all reported cases of gonorrhea. I am not sure what percentage of cases reported were Hispanic but it is worth noting that during the past 4 years the rate of gonorrhea has been declining nationwide for all races and ethnicities. However the drop for Blacks has been 15%, for Hispanics the drop has been 21% and for whites, the drop in gonorrhea cases has been 25%.
Therefore I suspect that, for some reason, more effort must be directed pointedly at the Black population an at the Hispanic population since infections in these groups have not dropped as greatly as they have in the white population. (See CDC if you care to look at infection rates.)
I suspect also that the effects of our economy will result in a spike-like increase in gonorrhea as well as other STI's. It is probably that Blacks will be disproportionately affected for two reasons. First though they represent a smaller segment racially in Chicago, Blacks are indicated in almost three quarters of new gonorrhea cases. I also suspect that Blacks and Hispanic/Latinos are likely to be disproportionately affected in terms of opportunities to escape poverty. I believe it likely that the 20% poverty level of the population at large has probably grown considerably.
Stupidity and ignorance are different things. Chicago has the 5th highest foreign born population in the US. As a result, there may be, due to language difficulties increased ignorance (lack of education/knowledge) among some groups. Stupidity may also play a part in several ways such as not being realistic about the need for sex education in schools. It is simple numbers--don't teach sex education in schools and the result can be measured in deaths (especially in this case via infertility) and in medical costs, as even though gonorrhea, its related Chlamydia and HIV infections are often asymptomatic, all, in time will become symptomatic and demand treatment.
As we move into a world where full-time jobs with insurance is a thing of the past, this will exacerbate the problem.
Since symptoms of all three diseases can be mild and/or transient, or totally non-existent in both women and men when people are without income and/or insurance they often ignore symptoms that might exist hoping that they will go away. In the case of gonorrhea and Chlamydia the usually do go away and therein lies a huge problem.
This is often what happens: The male becomes infected with gonorrhea asymptomatically. He transmits it to a female. The female is far more likely to develop symptoms. Assuming that the female goes for treatment any doctor/clinic will explain that the male that caused the infection in the woman must be told and must also take antibiotics for an adequate amount of time for the infection to be cured. So the women often take the antibiotics and ask the male to go to a clinic (some clinics will even now give enough antibiotic for the female to take to the male). But frequently the male (and sometimes the female) will either not go for treatment and/or not take the complete round of antibiotics (especially if they show no symptoms) and so remain infective. Further it is complicated by the fact that one antibiotic will cure most but not all cases of gonorrhea. For medication resistant strains, the person must go back to be tested. Even if they take all the antibiotics, if the strain is resistant, they may not be cured, though they may think that they are. In this case, either the male or the female will continue to infect new partners. I'll leave it up to you to decide if the infected partner who does not go back to make sure that they are clear of the infection, or the partner who only takes a few antibiotics or throws the entire lot away because the symptoms disappear are ignorant or stupid.
The asymptomatic nature of gonorrhea, Chlamydia and HIV is an important part of why this is such a huge problem.
Since all three infections are largely stopped by condom use it seems logical that males in Chicago are not using condoms and/or females are not demanding their use. Since there are many means of effective birth control (and condoms are not an effective means of birth control as they have a 10% annual failure rate) condoms are no longer necessary except for infection control. Clearly there is a problem with this correlation which I think is sad. A couple that cares to have wet, juicy sex can--simply have both partners go without other partner exposure for 6 weeks (to get past the latency period on testing) (it is much shorter if one is not concerned about HIV) get tested, and then go for it.
This however requires a commitment, though it is possible for a small group to do the same, as in the case of polyamoury. Of course since HPV and HSV are often asymptomatic and generally there are no tests for them, even then the couple or group are at risk for those STI's.
It is fascinating, and frustrating for today's population and it is clear, by an odd statistic, that parents/schools have been attempting to teach their children about the risks. That statistic is the rather large increase in oral pharyngeal cancer rate. This increase is undoubtedly related to an increase on oral sex between partners often in response to not wanting a pregnancy. Therefore we have taught teens to avoid coitus and they have listened, and tend to frequently (this is my theory) utilize oral sex instead. Since HPV is endemic, this shift in behavior has resulted in the increase of infection of HPV orally, leading to a corresponding increase in oral cancers. Interestingly, for anyone who cares no listen, I suspect that since smoking is a huge risk factor in the development of cervical cancer related to HPV, the same probably holds true to oral cancer. Therefore if you enjoy unprotected sex and/or unprotected oral sex, never starting to smoke, or ceasing to smoke will likely significantly reduce your chance of developing cervical cancer (if you are female) and oral pharyngeal cancer in both genders.
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Chicago #1 std's for teens - 
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