[hn_throwaway_99]

As a person on PrEP, it is only recommended for people at higher risk of HIV. In the West, that does not include sexually active straight people unless you have other confounding factors (e.g. IV drug use, partners who are at higher risk, etc.). Essentially all gay men (or, more accurately, "men who have sex with men") are at higher risk, which is why it is recommended for them.

[bradlys]

Gay men living in cities also have many more sexual partners than the rest of the populous.

The men I’ve met who have had 1000+ partners is exclusive to gay men. I’ve yet to meet a straight man who isn’t a celebrity that has gotten anywhere near that. Yet this order of magnitude (100-1000) is common among gay men.

The risk levels for your average young straight man in the west are obscenely low these days. You’ll have sex with maybe 10 people in your entire life if you’re a try hard. Chances are astronomically low for most straights - especially if you practice safe sex until both parties are tested and monogamous.

Straight people aren’t concerned because they’re simply not having that many sexual partners.

Less than 10% of all male HIV cases came from having sex with a woman. Yet men who have sex with women are 95%+ of the population. There’s a risk but it’s really low. And I think it’s even lower now with the ways things are going - straight male millennials and zoomers are having less sex than any generation before it that we know of.

[thebradbain]

A lot of this is grossly exaggerated and anecdotal, and actually rooted in homophobic tropes from the Reagan era so as to dismiss HIV as a “human disease” and instead condemn it as a “gay disease” that the LGBTQ+ had coming its way. The average US gay man has had no significant number of sexual partners more than the US straight man, and this has been backed up by study after study. Do you have actual sources?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/82330.php

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4936006

You know, let me link the whole Wikipedia article on this very topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuity#Gay_men_(homosex...

Anyways, in absolute numbers now there’s more heterosexual people who are testing positive for HIV than gay people in the West (and it’s been the case globally for a while, too)

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

[throwaway2037]

I would also add East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, Macao) to that list. The rate of HIV positive ("seropositive") status is still incredibly low. Ignore China for a moment because it is hard to believe any of their official gov't stats! These countries are definitely much more sexually active (more lifetime partners) than more socially conservative neighbors in South Asia (Indian subcontinent).

Interestingly, in these countries, there is still ready access to sex workers in any medium-sized city and above, yet infection rates are still very low.

I must confess: I wrote the above post strictly about heterosexuals. I have never read anything seropositive rates for gay men in these regions. (I write the last sentence with the assumption that gay women have a tiny risk to contract and spread HIV.)

More about "seropositive": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV-positive_people

[thebradbain]

Well, in absolute numbers, recently heterosexual people are more prevalently diagnosed with HIV. Likely because they don’t know about PrEP in the first place, and then decided whether or not it’s for you. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...