HIV now infects more heterosexual people than gay or bisexual men – we need a new strategy | Ian Green | The Guardian

16 comments

  1. Reminder, if you’re at risk of catching HIV, contact your local sexual health clinic and ask about prep! It’s free and can prevent you being infected by the virus.

  2. What a click bait headline!

    Infection rates are about 50/50 between hetro and homosexual yet homosexual and gay only make up about 2% of the population.

  4. The current strategy I’ve seen is “don’t worry about it, the meds suppresses it enough that it’s no longer transmissible or even has any long term health implications.

    Which IMO is both great and sadly reckless.

  5. [heterosexuals reading the headline](https://c.tenor.com/hro_AtUivhUAAAAd/shock-surprise.gif)

    > Thankfully, this isn’t about a huge spike in HIV diagnoses among heterosexuals. Instead, it’s primarily the result of a sharp, sustained drop in diagnoses among gay and bisexual men with a 71% fall since 2014. This shows what is possible. And, as someone who has received that life-changing HIV diagnosis, I understand the immense value of every transmission halted.

    [heterosexuals reading that paragraph](https://c.tenor.com/g_d3iHyzc68AAAAM/hammaya-relaxed.gif)

  6. We should just move to growing babies in tanks, removing genitals at birth and having sex like they do in Demolition Man.

    Sex is far too dangerous and the state needs to step in.

  8. Moderna is working on an mRNA vaccine for HIV. It’s entering trials now.

    I am actually really excited about mRNA technology. I must admit I don’t know all that much about the space, but tailoring mRNA to target specific, exact immune responses just seems so powerful on the face of it.

  9. Despite the clickbait headline, I still wouldn’t be surprised to hear it’s rising in heterosexual people. The amount of my friends that openly admit to never bother with condoms is mad

  10. When it talks about a new strategy, what we have seen previously is hyper-focus on msm (men who sleep with men) and trans women because of infections predominantly manifesting in these cohorts.

    HIV only spreads sexually between one person who has HIV and hasn’t been tested (viral loads can be reduced to safe levels in people who know they have the virus) to a person who isn’t on Prep (prep prevents spread).

    Going forward it is going to become increasingly important to find ways of targeting interventions at straight/cis populations populations who are at risk (step one is identifying which groups these are).

    Putting the whole county on prep isn’t a viable approach for obvious reasons, but encouraging STI testing for all groups would be wise (there are other STIs that linger without symptoms and cause damage down the line such as chlamydia which would be good to get more on top of too), whilst if other demographic factors reveal increased risk of HIV targeting such demographics with offers of prep would be worthwhile.

    Given the tools available to us (drugs that suppress viral load, drugs that prevent contracting the virus and condoms) every new HIV infection is entirely preventable, we just need to keep going with trying to get the right tools into the right hands.

  13. We need a new strategy?

    I wouldn’t say that exactly. Keep doing what we’re doing and maybe add something else?

    Rates of HIV have remained relatively flat for heterosexual men and women.

    Gay and bisexual men are still by the the most at risk of contracting HIV by far. Why would we want to turn away from targeting them first?

    I’m not opposed to some more help for heterosexual people, but don’t ruin the progress we’re making.

  14. I was absolutely shocked, some years ago now, when I was told at the sexual health clinic that I’d never been tested for HIV.

    I thought I was very responsible as a young man, I regularly when for checkups at the clinic. Used to be the old cocktail stick down the japs eye, you’d be sat cross legged for the rest of the day at the thought of it.

    Then one time I went and they asked their normal questions, one of them was have you had sex with anyone from Africa in the last x months. I’d recently been seeing a girl from Algeria so I said yes. They said do you want an HIV test? I said yes of course…

    Turns out it didn’t used to be routine, you were supposed to ask for it. Nobody ever mentioned it in all those times I’d been going.

    So the first time I had a HIV test was in my mid 30s, and I thought I’d been doing the right thing all them years. Very odd.

  15. Not a great headline. Essentially:

    > HIV doesn’t just affect The Gays (TM) any more, now straight people are getting it we need to do something to stop that!

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