[somnic]

As I understand it, large studies of couples where one partner has HIV with an undetectable viral load and the other does not have HIV have not recorded any cases of transmission through sexual activity. The question of whether it's "impossible" or "extremely unlikely" comes down more to philosophy than anything pragmatic at this point.

Transmission through sharing needles we have less confidence around, because illegal drug use is harder to study.

IIRC not everyone reaches an undetectable viral load through antiretroviral medication, so you do need to make sure that's the case. Pre-exposure prophylaxis and general safe sex practices like condoms can mitigate the risk for people with low-but-detectable viral load and their partners.

[pavlov]

I grew up in the 1990s with an overwhelming fear of HIV as a teenager. It still feels incredible that the virus is now undetectable and non-transmissible with medication that’s not much of a burden in one’s daily life. A cure for AIDS was much closer than anyone imagined in 1993.

When everything seems dark and hopeless, this is one of the examples that always lifts my spirits. Humankind can achieve incredible things together.

[Gibbon1]

While looking for something else on San Francisco's heath departments website I found the following two things.

In San Francisco

Deaths from AIDs dropped 70% from 1996 to 1997. That's in one year it went from a relentless death sentence to manageable chronic.

While almost everyone that got HIV in the mid 80's are dead most people that got HIV in the mid 90's are still here.

If that's not winning it's close.

[KennyBlanken]

10,000 people a year die of AIDS in the US. Not even remotely close to "winning."

I suspect a large portion of those deaths are due to poor sexual education thanks to christofascists, and people who don't get tested regularly because of poor access to family planning and reproductive health, again thanks to christofascists. All because Magical Sky God Said Abortion Bad.

That and people who lose their healthcare and can't afford the meds because this country is the only developed nation in the world which does not treat healthcare like a universal human right, because corporations want to keep using health coverage to keep workers from switching jobs more freely, because they don't want a free labor market.

[rjzzleep]

Isn’t that like a third of gun deaths in the USA? Personally for me this idea of trust that it’s undetectable and therefore non jtransmissible is not a risk I would recommend anyone to take, but at the same time we have to put things into relation no?

[mensetmanusman]

It’s mostly through drug use, poverty, etc.

[pbj1968]

“Got it through sharing needles” was the 90s version of “got herpes from a toilet seat.”

[watwut]

Even these days, when cops accidently pike themselves with needles when dealing with addicts, they go to HIV center for preventative drugs. So that they, a cop who got piked exactly once, do not get HIV.

[pbj1968]

Yes, obviously.

[alexey-salmin]

Um, no? Unlike with toilet seats, tons of people got it this way. There were even cases of hospital outbreaks due to insufficient sterilization of reusable syringes.

[pbj1968]

Citation needed.

[alexey-salmin]

Is it really that hard to find?

About 270 patients, mostly children, were nosocomially infected with HIV subtype G in seventeen hospitals in 1988–1989. The infection was mainly transmitted between children through contaminated catheters and needles, and from children to mothers through breast-feeding.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5905505/