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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3495 thread views

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.

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Weird question. When I was in 4th grade, in the early 90s, we did a multi-day segment on AIDS, where they just went and scared the shit out of us.

So in my 20s any time I did something remotely risky, I'd freak out and go to the doctor. And they'd always ask if I was gay. And when I said no they seemed like they stopped taking seriously the possibility that I contracted it.

And looking back on it it finally just hit me. Was the whole program I went through in 4th grade a massive psyop aimed to stop gays from being stigmatized?

If so I feel honestly betrayed. It feels extremely wrong to use children in that way, even if the end seems like a good one.

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."

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