What is more likely is that the people you know that have slept with hundreds to thousands of partners have it and aren't telling you or are asymptomatic. With an incidence of 1 in 5 in the US (and most methods of birth control providing almost no protection against its spread), it doesn't take a math major to figure out if someone is full of crap. Why care?
The disease is potentially fatal in newborns (and can cause epilepsy in newborns) and can be particularly severe in people with hiv infection. Symptoms of herpes—recurrent painful ulcers— can be treated, but the infection cannot be cured. Most people with herpes have no symptoms and are unaware of their infection. In a national household survey, less than 10 percent of people who tested positive with herpes knew they were infected (Fleming, 1997). With or without visible symptoms, the disease can be transmitted between sex partners, from mothers to newborns, and can increase a person’s risk of becoming infected with hiv. Genital herpes can also make hiv-infected individuals more infectious and is believed to play a role in the heterosexual spread of hiv in the United States