site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 11, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Unless you went to an all-boys school, I assume that half of your classmates were female. The risk of male to female HIV transmission is much higher than the risk of female to male transmission.

As ever, the multipliers on these are wild:

An advanced stage of HIV infection in the index patient (odds ratio 17.6; 4.9 to 62.7) and sexual contacts during menses (3.4; 1.0 to 11.1) increased the risk of female to male transmission and stage of infection (2.7; 1.5 to 4.9), anal sex (5.1; 2.9 to 8.9), and age of the female partner (3.9; 1.2 to 13.0 for age > 45 years) increased the risk of male to female transmission.

Just applying as simple of heuristics as "don't screw people that are dying from AIDS and currently bleeding" prevents the vast majority of infections. The number of heterosexual teens getting HIV from hooking up at parties is just absolutely trivial.

But the question is not how many heterosexual teens get HIV from hooking up at parties. Rather, it what the lifetime risk of getting HIV is from heterosexual sex when using condoms versus when not using condoms. Because sex ed is not just about "what to do at parties."

That's 12% and 20% of people getting infected after regularly having unprotected hetrosexual sex with an infected person. Yes 20% is higher than 12% but those are both pretty low in the context of the parent post's point.

Those are actually very, very high numbers from the perspective of an educator who is concerned with the long-term health of his or her students.

That's after the 1 in 200 chance of picking someone for a long term relationship who has an active HIV infection.

Most of whom are not in normal people dating pools because they’re sex workers/gay/drug users/etc.