I'm going to assume a bit and for that I'll apologize in advance. I'm assuming you're in a high risk group for HIV. Why not just use condoms? Is it because they aren't 100% effective?
Why not just save money and not install those ECP brakes on your vinyl chloride freight train?
Why not just use one unshielded Raspberry Pi on that spacecraft instead of a 3-of-5 quorum from the output of 5 identical engineered-for-space systems?
Using/requiring condoms AND being on PrEP helps me live my best life with less fear-based inhibition and cognitive load.
In case of a pill perhaps negative side effects.
I have no clue how often a person in high HIV risk has sex or behaves.
It should be fine to ask that question
It is. I interpreted the parent post as a neutral question, and I intended my reply to involve playful analogizing. I'm sorry that it didn't reach you as such through the side-channel-impoverished medium of text.
1. in sex work, "not using a condom" is an "extra" that clients will pay quite a bit for
2. people who "party and play" tend to be in an altered state of consciousness that biases against use of condoms
To me, that is such a weird thing.
People literally paying money for something that can damage them for life and may even kill them.
Though the same can be said of addictive things (smoking comes to mind), is this some form of that maybe?
i'm confused. are we acting like we don't full-well know that using a condom sucks for everyone involved? it's like wondering why people didn't like using a face mask during covid: because it sucks. that, of course, is independent from whether it's prudent, but if something sucks, it's no surprise when people avoid it, right?
What do you mean "acting"? We all know it reduces the sensitivity. That's the trade off. You feel less pleasure, and your fucking doesn't get to kill you.
> it's like wondering why people didn't like using a face mask during covid: because it sucks.
Similar analogy. It sucked, but that was a similar trade off. It sucks a bit, but there's less chance it'll kill you or you'll kill others.
> it's no surprise when people avoid it, right?
I think those people would have to be fucking morons, but sure, morons exist.
We all choose to take risks all the time and often pay for the privilege, sometimes explicitly seeking out the thrill of a risk.
I'm guessing what makes this specific scenario weird for you is more likely that this risk doesn't seem worthwhile to you relative to what you get from it (and I agree with that - I've never had an appetite for taking risks with STDs)
You could say the same about sky-diving.
As someone who took the condom off in a risky situation recently, there’s no comparison between the on and off feeling. It’s like licking a piece of candy vs crushing it with your teeth and sucking it all at once.
With consent yeah?
When somebody else takes a risk for you, you have to pay them more than if they are not taking a risk. We pay soldiers more when they are at war than when they are not. People who want to raise money by selling bonds have to pay a higher interest rate if their credit is worse. Etc.
Prostitutes would consider unprotected sex more risky, and thus charge more.
They post you're replying to merely points out they're wrong, as there are examples of it not _always_ entailing a premium.
No-one's saying that there aren't examples of risks that do entail a premium.
Preventative:
1. Gardasil 9 (vaccine against 9 strains of HPV, prevents genital warts and cancers caused by HPV)
2. Monkeypox vaccine
3. Meningitis ACYW vax
4. Meningitis B vax (35% effective against gonorrhea)
5. doxyPEP (two pills of doxycycline taken after sex, 90% effective against syphilis, 80% chlamydia, 50% gonorrhea)
6. PrEP (prevents HIV infections)
7. and the usual suite of vaccines against the rest like hepatitis A/B, mumps etc
Treatment of the bacterial ones (which transmit through oral too):
1. syphilis - butt shot of penicillin 2. chlamydia - 1 pill of an antibiotic 3. gonorrhea - a week of doxycycline pills or one butt shot of ceftriaxone
Remaining: HSV. Half of the population has it, so no big deal. Condoms dont prevent it either.
As for hepatitis: even though it requires blood contact and as such is not necessarily considered an STI, hepatitis c is curable these days thanks to DAAs taken over the course of 8-12 weeks. a/b have vaccines.
Preventatively using antibiotics is a horrible idea, for one it increases the risk of creating resisitant strains, and we are already running out of antibiotics (especially broadband ones). Moreover, antibiotics in general are known to mess with you gut biome whose importance we are just beginning to understand (we know it plays a role in many physical and mental illnesses for example). Then there are the side effects which for doxycyline include diarrhea, increased risk of bowel cancer, higher sensitivity to the sun (and associated risk of skin cancer).
Suppose you’re immunocompromised. Wouldn’t it be worth the diarrhea to avoid infections your body couldn’t fight off?
Suppose you’re in a situation where you’re having lots of opportunities for infection. Whether you can or can’t control that situation, the end result is the same: you know your body is going to be challenged by infectious disease frequently in a way that most people’s bodies aren’t. Isn’t it plausible that the infectious agent may have less opportunity to evolve if you didn’t contract it as frequently?
Different forms of therapy might be both individually and collectively optimal for people in different situations. What’s right for a person who isn’t at risk isn’t the same as what’s right for a person who is at risk.
The overuse of antibiotics is mostly in farm animals, which represent 73% of global antibiotics use, and 90% of American antibiotics use.
If loopdoend’s doing this, it feels like a good bet that there’s a doctor in the mix judging that it’s medically appropriate for them.
In the early days of AIDS (wasn't called HIV back then) the recommendation was to use a condom or dental dam (depending on the hardware of the recipient). That's how I learned what a dental dam was. Later it was suggested that plastic food wrap would work (the jokes just write themselves).
Sadly the ubiquity of paper toilet sheet covers in US bathrooms dates back to the 80s due to straight paranoia over AIDs + widespread and overt anti-gay prejudice, so every time I see one of those dispensers I grit my teeth.
Reminds me of the early days of COVID (not the anti-gay part, but the weird practices when nobody really had yet a good theory of what's going on).
The reason for the reversal in terms is treatment options. When HIV was first found, there were no treatments so AIDS was inevitable. Nowadays, medication can permanently prevent HIV from progressing to AIDS, so AIDS is much less common than HIV.
You might be thinking of “GRID” (gay related immuno deficiency), the original name of AIDS when it was believed it only affects gay people. Once the virus causing the illness was identified it was called HIV.
Personally I’d say that’s a pretty good tradeoff: fear, stigma, and death for a different problem that’s more an annoyance than a mortal threat right now.
lol what
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/condoms.html "condoms are highly effective in preventing HIV"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9141163/ 1997, "reexamination of HIV seroconversion studies suggests that condoms are 90 to 95% effective when used consistently"
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/condoms.html "Most condoms are effective in preventing HIV and certain other STIs"
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/prep/index.html
>PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99%.
Last I checked 99 was greater than 95.
This is how you end up with super STD's
Worse still--large scale casual sex is a great way to introduce new, novel and un-contemplated STDs into the population. STDs are opportunistic that way, just ask Mr. triple-resistant Gonorrhea.
It's decidedly not the way I want it to be, but that's just how it works. For casual sex to be safe I think its more like "Hi, please spit into this tube so we can get busy" and red means HIV, Green means Monkeypox, comprehensively.
See also: Wrestlers' "Herpes gladiatorum" which is just HSV-1. Which demonstrates how HSV-1 survives for transmission far more easily or broadly than just genital contact. Is there "HSV-2 gladiatorum"? Apparently it's usually HSV-1 but probably yes - neither HSV-1 or HSV-2 are really location specific.
Actually it appears the 9-polyvalent HPV vaccine protects against multiple cancers but insurance won't pay for it once your outside the age window.
* originally he said "throat cancer" at the advice of his agent!
[edited: wityl pointed out I’d typed HSV for some reason]
There is no vaccine, it doesn't cause cancer (that we know of, at least not like HPV), and spreads via skin contact on the genital area.
Since fluids are not required for HPV or HSV and it's present on the area that a condom won't cover, condoms aren't effective for either.
moreover, condoms can have numerous issues like tearing or stealthing
We all know exactly at a individual level what to do and not. We can keep asking "Why not just use a condom?" and see how far that gets us, or actually understand psychology and use patterns and work with what people actually do (good or bad).
Same can be said about (illicit) drugs, why not just not do drugs? Simple!
It is actually simple. Just not easy. Same with losing weight - consume fewer calories than you burn.
Edit: lmao touched a nerve? I will never understand why folks here get so prudish when we talk about sex... "Just wear a condom!" is remarkably insensitive, as though 100% of HIV transmission is your own fault, and not, say, someone else who has bad intentions.
This is like saying to someone killed in a motorcycle accident why didn’t you use a car. It’s a reductive, unempathetic and frankly unproductive take. Please think before asking this again.