And a lot of that giving is done to churches. So programs done at a national level by the government to ensure all hungry across the country have access to more food are to be cut, and the hungry should just hope they live next to a wealthy church?

I've never understood this line of thinking. You'd have to apply it to everything. God made the world and people brought evil into it (I am not saying homosexuality is evil, just the general condition of the world). Someone might as well ask, "Why does God keep making viruses?"

Yes. Why would an all powerful being, who loves beyond measure the 9 billion or so of us individually and takes a personal interest in our daily lives, responds to our requests for help, has a plan for each of us individually, create a virus with no other function on earth than to damage and kill humans?

Why would such an all powerful being allow millions of children to be molested and killed, die of agonizing diseases that he himself must have created, allow tsunamis to sweep over and kill over a hundred thousand people in a flash when he could just stop the wave with a thought? Or maybe made the earth a little better in the first place so that the two continental plates moving a couole of feet wouldn't snuff out so many lives that matter so much to him?

And yet, while ignoring all of that, feels it is very important for us to understand that if someone falls in love with someone of the same sex, they should be put to death for doing such an unthinkable sin as loving the wrong human being.

So yes, take that train of thought to its logical conclusion and maybe our lives matter to us, in the here and now, rather than in some grand sense of all eternity, because we matter to each other and not because we matter to a cosmic being who loves us, has the power to help us, but just chooses to let millions of us live in horrifying conditions and die horrible deaths. It is inconceivable to me that people suggest that without a belief in such a being, who allows immorality of unspeakable cruelty to not just exist but thrive, that we are incapable of generating a sense of morality on our own.

This thread is coming close to rediscovering Camus's Myth of Sisyphus.

I have some stats for you guys that might rock your world:

15% of gay men in the US have the HIV virus.

that means of 10 gay men you meet, 1.5 are injected with HIV.

it's a lot worse in African counties of course, but this number struck me. this is a kinda normal number for western countries.

I have met a lot of gays (its normal in big cities) and never would have thought 15% are infected. so i must have met some with aids but didn't know it. this is not supposed to be fear mongering, just information) aids is a real problem for lgtb communities.

edit: those are estimates.
for Germany estimates are 6% I.e.

"Disclaimer: estimated HIV rates can be inaccurate. For example, UNAIDS reported that the HIV rate among MSM in Australia was 18.1%,[37] but the actual rate reported by The Australian Federation of AIDS was 7.3%.[60] This is due to the fact UNAIDS relied on a convenience sample of men who were more at risk to HIV, and thus did not capture an accurate representation of the MSM population."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_...e_sex_with_men

and hiv is also prerelavant in all other groups. not even close to the number of 15% (its imo about 1% or less something in hetero groups i.e.) another problem is that many aren't even aware they have it.

so what can we do do prevent spread? testing. I don't get why we don't do that. all you need to to is collect blood samples.

to get rid of aids we have to test the group's that have the highest chance of transferal. that is trans and gays and drug addicts. test them and you prevent more spreading. as many don't even know and keep spreading it.


"Men reporting heterosexual contact accounted for 7% (2,400) of estimated new HIV infections. Women reporting heterosexual contact accounted for 15% (5,300) of estimated new HIV infections.02.09.2022
https://www.cdc.gov › hiv › overview
HIV Incidence | HIV in the US | HIV Statistics Center | HIV | CDC"

You've mixed terms. Being positive for the HIV virus is not the same as having aids. So it is not likely that you meant anyone with aids.

As for scare mongering, if not that, what exactly was the point of this post? 12% of people 14-49 in the US carry the virus for genital herpes. That's millions and millions more people you will likely come in contact with than the chance of you running into a gay male who is positive for HIV. Seems like if you were just concerned with public health warnings you might focus on ones that are much more likely than the one you say will "rock our world".

Have you been living under a rock the last 20 years? Testing is common in the groups most affected. Drugs are available to help suppress the spread of the virus. And drugs are available to keep an infection from moving to the disease stage. The reason you haven't been aware of any of this just shows how slight a risk it is for the general population.

Is this true? I haven't been living under a rock but I was not aware of this. You're saying you can have HIV, have unprotected sex, and with certain drugs you won't spread it as readily?

I honestly did not know that 15% of gay men in the US carry the virus.

if testing is done what is driving the spread? I knew affected groups do more testings. but I also know it's not mandatory. once you have it yes. but I mean detection.

yes, there are drugs nowadays that can do this. you can have sex with hiv and not spread it becuse the virol loads are so supressed and that doesn't enable an infection. they can't even detect it, while on these drugs.

I dont think any health organization recommends unprotected sex. But there are drugs that can reduce the viral load to levels so low that they are undetectable by standard tests.

https://www.hiv.gov/tasp

Woah

the problem I have with these virol load supressing drugs is that I was on them about 15 years ago and they have terrible side effects. Never in my life have I felt more moserable from a drug. It conpletely messed me up. Maybe now they have better meds.

I took it as a prevention, becuase you can take them even after the potenital exposure. But it is was same meds that HIV patients received.

browser, I have not been totally clear what I meant. apologies, let me try again. This is how I arrive here:

I have seen examples of gay and bi men bragging about their sexual activity on social media and laying out numbers of 2500 sexual partners, 5000.. etc. we know this fact. some gays just have too many partners and thats fine. But how to prevent the spread in that group which is the most vulneranble? this is not controversial, if you ask any gay men they will verify this. and if you know the gay scene you know.

So I asked myself, have they been tested? they obviously risk all groups now, and we know hiv is mostly prerelavent in certain groups. Imo its the lack of control what is driving the spread. what else could it be? this is as clear as daylight. Not enough monitoring. we know for sure that many gay men play russian roulette, as do many heteroes. there are certain people present more risk of transmitting, and are reckless and affect now all groups and they do not get tested, dont even know they have it. if they are bi they take that risk now to all groups and they dont get monitored, they just fly under the radar. and thats whats causing the spread! the question is how can we control this.

Why do people get any STD? Because if you meet someone, and you hit it off, and you end up back at your house and get romantic (or just sexual) how many really stop the action at that point to check lab test results documents? Compared to how many, in the heat of the moment say "well, only 1 in 10 have (fill in the blank std) so those are great odds and I'll take my chances? Or well I dont think she'll get pregnant? Add in the number of encounters that involve alcohol or drug consumption whete judgement is impaired, and **** happens and viruses spread.

Plus, people have the crazy notion that you can tell if a person has an std by the way they look. Well dressed? Good looking? Good job? Nice car? This person clearly is unlikely to have a std, because, you know, they just seem so clean!

How many people do you really believe have had 2500-5000 sexual partners? If you had a different sex partner every day for 10 years, you would have had 3650 different sex partners. Every single day for. 10 years. And do you really think bc you may see a few posts on a social media site that 1, its really true, and 2, it means its actually a problem for the public at large?

You keep implying that "certain groups" have lack of control. Is it not the same lack of control that leads to std spread in every group? You make it sound like there is a raging epidemic of new HIV cases due to uncontrolled behavior and lack of monitoring.

Yet new cases in the US declined 8% from 2015 to 2019, and an additional 17% from 2019 to 2020. Education, testing and drug therapy are, in fact reducing new infections. You are scare mongering about out of control spread when in fact the opposite is true.

I've read this book at least four times. It's pretty short and can be read in a single sitting which helps.

how many? I do not know how many. I know that many gay men claim to have that kind of number though.

lets start with patient zero who claims to have had 2500 sexual partners.




Dugas is described as being a charming, handsome sexual athlete who, according to his own estimation, averaged hundreds of sex partners per year. He claimed to have had over 2,500 sexual partners across North America since becoming sexually active in 1972.

Gaëtan Dugas - Wikipedia

They declined for all groups, except the group of gay men imo.

they had an increse of 25% last year imo. I would have to look that up again but am pretty sure. I posted this recently.

I'd like to see your source. Everything on the CDC site says that the new infection rate of gay and bisexual men decreased. And given that 70% of new cases are from that category I think it would be almost statistically impossible for there to be a 25% increase in the 70% group and have a large enough decrease in the 30% group to net a total decrease.

I looked it up again for you.
and it wasn't last year it was this time frame.

and the guy wasn't patient zero, there was someone else before, which was later revelaed. nevertheless he is the one who spread a lot and caused the detected cluster imo.

OK. That guy died 29 years ago. Is that your source of concern that gay men are running around out of control spreading HIV?



Wilt Chamberlin claimed in his book that he slept with 20,000 women. Despite criticism he never said he was just kidding or exaggerating. He said he liked threesomes so that helped boost his numbers.

I'm at a casual brunch reading this. I wish I had time to fully respond at the moment -I have had unprotected sex with a number of attractive interesting men and never got aids.