People DO know that we don’t have a cure yet, right?
The Whitman-Walker Clinic has revealed the number of its clients testing positive for HIV jumped from 80 in the first half of 2007 to 266 in the first half of 2008–an unprecedented increase of 232 percent.
At each of our testing sites, we are seeing an increasing number of young gay men, particularly African American men, coming to us newly infected. These are young men who don’t remember the first wave of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and came of age when effective treatments were available. As a result, they have never seen HIV as a major problem.
I am still having such a hard time wrapping my brain around why people are not more careful and don’t see this as a huge issue.
[article from Washington Blade, image from Copyranter]
Complacency. Everyone figures, while it’s not a good thing, if it happens you can just take a pill for it and get on with your life. It’s not until after the fact that they get educated and realize that the pills have their own problems and that even if they didn’t, HIV creates a whole series of obstacles that they never thought of.
I think also that the fear that our generation (and a slightly older generation) has is not there in this new generation. Not just because of the availability of treatment but because they haven’t seen what AIDS does to a person’s body and they have a belief that HIV is not as prevalent as it is; that a person with HIV is going to look thin and sickly anyway so they will be able to avoid it.
I could go on, but I’ll save the rambling incoherency for my own blog.
O M G that is a great pic! What diet are those guys on?! Oooooh right, the killer-AIDS diet. I’ll pass.
I agree that it’s complacency in the younger generation combined with slick media showing buff HIV+ guys looking fine and enjoying life. Almost as though if you were to get HIV then you’d get a hot body and get to fuck more people because it would include the guys you wouldn’t otherwise have wanted to fuck.
I’m surprised that multiple strain infections aren’t on the rise, or if they are why they aren’t being reported more. There are plenty of places online where HIV+ guys seek out HIV- or HIV+ guys to have bare sex with and some actively want to mix strains. I never know whether that is the fantasy they are talking about or the reality they are pursuing.
I get the feeling the era of the bug chaser is over, it seems like I hear less about/from them now and more from strain swappers. There will always be both though. I think they could be put to an end if we could detach sexiness from HIV. I don’t think that people post on forums and personals sites about wanting to find a partner with gonorrhea so they can get a raging case of it. I’m pretty sure no one thinks gonorrhea is sexy or anal warts either for that matter.