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Comment by spywaregorilla | Hacker News Reader

Article doesn't offer many reasons why. I wonder if anal sex is on the rise

> it’s primarily the result of a sharp, sustained drop in diagnoses among gay and bisexual men with a 71% fall since 2014.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/09/hiv-in...

People that identify as heterosexual have extremely poor STD testing routines.

People that identify as gay or bisexual have better STD testing routines.

All groups have better STD testing routines and preemptive measures than before.

Gay and bisexual groups have better results by being more proactive.

No new risker behavior is being seen as more prevalent from this data, in the UK.

I wonder if increasing public acceptance of gays is helping as well. Maybe in the past, you were kind of forced into the 'gay club'/promiscuous sex subgroup, even if you were just looking for a longterm monogamous relationship, because there just weren't many places to meet potential partners.

probably helps, the mobile-first dating apps have had a pretty wide and nearly immediate rollout across all orientations over the last decade - which is the time period this report looks at - so people could find each other based more so on the theme of the app (longterm, fling, religion, wealth, extroversion, introversion etc) instead of just the supposed theme if their orientation (but thats an option too)

Actually apps like Grindr (and ofc Tinder for heterosexuals) allowed for more short-term sexual contacts than ever before, thereby massively helped the spread of STIs.

short term sexual encounters will outnumber introverted long term ones, this thread is about the option of choosing where you want to find connection being better, within a comment thread about only HIV spread going down, not all STIs. I think its an ok observation just not really what we’re going over or trying to imagine an optimization for

At least in many localities in the US, PrEP is free or nearly free and free testing is nearly always available, if you identify as non-heterosexual (or belong to other at-risk groups as identified by your local government, like needle users).

The end result: historically at-risk populations have HIV more-or-less under control, while populations that historically have considered it a non-or-low risk (heterosexuals) don't. It has nothing in particular to do with sex acts.

@spywaregorilla 'Heterosexuals were also far more likely to be diagnosed late, meaning damage to the immune system has already begun. More than half (51%) of women, 55% of heterosexual men and 66% of those aged 65 and over diagnosed with HIV in 2020 were diagnosed at a late stage. This compares to just 29% of gay and bisexual men. This is likely driven by a belief that they are not at risk of HIV, which is often reinforced by healthcare professionals.'

seems a possibility

"The fall in diagnoses among gay and bisexual men is a result of the growing availability of HIV prevention pill PrEP and targeted promotion of routine HIV testing followed by the rapid initiation of HIV treatment for those diagnosed, meaning they are more quickly virally suppressed and cannot pass on HIV."

Sexually active gay men generally take PrEP.

It's primarily that it's wrong.

Men who have sex with men are a tiny proportion of the population so the effective rate of infection is still (as we've known for four decades) far higher in these people.

They also don't account for other key risk factors: IV drug abuse, increased immigration from high incidence populations such as Africa and heterosexual woman who have sex with bisexual men.

Apparently understanding numbers and statistics is too hard for people trying hard to fit facts to woke narratives.

There’s a bad moon on the rise.

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