You need to be in the same place, at the same time, every day, and always have them with you, continually. You also need to keep them dry and at room temperature all the time, so no leaving them in your car.
> But people aren’t perfect and it’s easy to forget or miss pills — so in reality the pill is about 93% effective. That means about 7 out of 100 pill users get pregnant each year.
You mess up and you have HIV for life. It's better to have something that provides more stable protection :)
DOTS is effective for TB because it’s a time-limited treatment (usually 4 months for drug susceptible strains of TB) and is only relevant for treating infected individuals
DOTS wouldn’t be feasible for a prophylactic treatment like this as the number of participants would be huge and the treatment period is indefinite (ie: the patient’s lifespan)
I know from experience that I'm not able to take a vitamin D pill every day in the winter months to combat winter depression. It's actually kinda difficult to build habits like that, and I'd have to remember to bring it with me wherever I may go and stay for a couple of days.
I think I got monthly vitamin D supplements a while ago. Since the body stores it it was feasible to just take one large dose once a month. (however overdosing is still a possibility ; definitely never take a monthly pill daily).
Thanks. I just realized I can just take small handfuls from time to time. I should have been taking it daily but, likely because I don't care for it, I only remember to do so about twice a month.
I find such things inordinately simple. I wake, stretch, urinate, go take my vitamins and drink two glasses of water. A third follows me to my current home office, where I process emails, alerts, whatever may be.
I find the best time to triage overnight emails is when I'm not quite awake yet to realise I'm doing it. Less pain that way.
The key is it being part of a routine, and the easiest is a part of the wake routine. At least for me. Which is why I find human variance interesting.
Meanwhile scheduling something 6+ months out (a doctor's appointment, or maybe at a pharmacy) for a shot is quite difficult to keep on time. I have to schedule, I have to keep free, I have to keep it in my mental space (calendars on phones help, but still...).
I literally don't know what part of the planet I will be on in a week. How on Earth could I know where to schedule such a thing, months or even weeks in advance?
Yet I bet for the parent poster, scheduling things like this is a breeze. Wild. Totally incomprehensible for me, as maybe it being easy for me to daily schedule is for them?
How do you ensure that you always have a sufficient stock of vitamins either you, despite being in a different part of the world on a weekly basis?
Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taking vitamins took a back seat?
> It’s a bit like “how do you manage to brush your teeth daily if you have a chaotic routine”.
That doesn't move me away from my hunch that the jab is more convenient for many. Studies show that around 30% of people faily to brush the recommended twice a day.
On the other hand, even fewer have their recommended yearly checkup:
"For working-age adults ages 19-64, 38.7% had a dental visit [in the past 12 months]." [0]
As you say though, the shot may not be everyone's preference, but it will be great for many.
I don't have much issue with buying vitamins, because I take them with me. Just as I take toothpaste, etc. If I am there long enough to need more vitamins, it is in the same category as needing more toothpaste, and you resupply as you would at home.
No kids. I do have emergency paging and downed server / PROD to deal with 24/7, not the same as kids, but wake-disrupting all the same.
There is rarely something urgent enough to prevent urinating in the morning, and being thirsty after waking up is typcially a no go either. If prod is down maybe I'll eval first, but humans need out and in of water. I'm not going to urinate on the floor, and I'm not going to sit dehydrated and parched mouth for long either.
So wake, urinate, drink and vitamins are in that too.
My vitamins are in the bathroom, and it takes less than 10 seconds to consume them.
> I don't have much issue with buying vitamins, because I take them with me.
Nevertheless you do have to remember to pack them, and you need to regularly replenish your stocks. I'm guessing that this replenishing happens at least as often as every 6 months, which is how often you need to arrange the injection in question. By the sounds of it you do a lot of travelling, so you may need to anticipate cases where you are away at the time you would normally replenish stocks.
> you resupply as you would at home
How does that happen? You notice how many pills are left in the bottle, and make a note to order more when it's getting low? Or immediately make an order there and then?
I know I'm being really pedantic, but I'm trying to illustrate why many people would perceive daily pill-taking to be strictly more labour-intensive than a 6-monthly injection.
This is such a weird conversation to me. As I said before, I'm not surprised I don't, and you don't grok.
What order? Order? I go to the grocery store from time to time. I also go to the pharmacy. When I do, I buy things I require. It's literally that simple. I do the same with any other type of food, or supply I need.
Why aren't you asking me if I have trouble buying butter, toothpaste, salt, pepper? I see I'm getting low, and I buy. Done. Super simple.
Literally, the entire planet seems to do it mostly this way.
> Do you have kids, if so how do you deal with frequent disruptions to the morning routine? Do you not have days where you just need to get up and go e.g. to catch a flight, get to a meeting, take a kid to school, or because you stayed up late and got drunk, etc... and taking vitamins took a back seat?
This is crazy. You deal with the morning routine by taking your pills when the alarm goes off, because there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that.
Flying, driving, and driving are exactly the same. Take your pill when the alarm goes off.
If you drank so much that it rendered you unconscious through the time you needed to take your pill, the solution is "don't do that". That's not exactly an unavoidable necessity of life.
> because there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that.
I feel you don't have young kids then. Jumping on you, bleeding, having a nightmare, making possibly-chocking-sounds, running away with your pills, vomiting on the floor, etc. will definitely take priority over whatever you thought you were going to do after waking up. And that doesn't even touch on people with executive functions issues. Or the 1-2yo period where the time you officially wake up may be often a very fuzzy concept. (You mean the 5am wake-up, the 5.45 one, or the getting up after not falling asleep)
Do you miss urinating? Drinking water instead of dying?
It's literally all the same thing. I wake up. I do wake up stuff. If there's some disturbance, some emergency, I still have to go to the bathroom, drink, and yes take vitamins eventually.
It's insanely simple beyond all belief. You just need to form a habit, that's all. "Take vitamins when first drinking water in the morning", or coffee, or whatever. Done. Done forever.
I get that my above statements baffle some people. As I said before, I don't get why.
> Jumping on you, bleeding, having a nightmare, making possibly-chocking-sounds, running away with your pills, vomiting on the floor, etc. will definitely take priority over whatever you thought you were going to do after waking up.
No, you're just desperately hoping to imagine a scenario that might make it difficult to take a pill with a one-minute take-it-now-or-die window. You're crazy, and you should try to refrain from arguing like that.
The only one of the things you mentioned that could even take priority over a scheduled pill is choking, though you should know that choking doesn't make a sound -- the whole problem with choking is that it blocks airflow -- so if the kid is making sounds, they're not choking. If your kid runs away with your pills, first, that implies that you keep them somewhere your kid can get them (?!), and second, catch them and take the pills back.
Most of what you mentioned is random nonsense that wouldn't even interfere with you. If a little kid jumps into you while you're swallowing a pill, you can just... keep swallowing. If they throw up on the floor, there's nothing time-sensitive about that in any way.
> I feel you don't have young kids then.
I don't, but then again, I have a brother and sister who were born when I was 16. I seem to have more relevant experience than you do. Learn to tell the difference between an emergency and a nothing.
> there's nothing the kids can be doing that won't wait for that
There are plenty of things kids - especially young kids - will do that require you to push tasks back. Like a vomit, poo, or spillage situation needing immediate attention. Or throwing a tantrum if you try to bring them back upstairs where the pills are (thus waking everyone else up). Not to mention that it can be exhausting if they're not sleeping well - which can be half the time - and it's tough to remember every little thing when you're exhausted.
> If you drank so much that it rendered you unconscious ... that's not exactly an unavoidable necessity of life
You asked "how much time does it take to swallow a pill". The convenience of that depends on people's lifestyles. Lots of people will wake up at 7am in the week, go out and have a few drinks on Friday/Saturday, and wake up whenever/wherever they wake up the next day. That is not an extreme situation. It's a great freedom to dynamically adapt when you go to bed and when you wake up. Requiring a change to that lifestyle is hardly evidence that something is trivially simple.
As a diabetic that needs to take their insulin at the same time every day... set an alarm? It is inconvenient, sure? But if you value your health then it's worth it. And if you don't value your health, why do you care if the medicine is less effective?
Of course it's easier to get a shot than to take individual pills, I think people would universally agree on that.
Also with prep, since you have to continue dosing 2 days after last activity you get awkward situations where you left it at home or get distracted by life events.
I think this is more common because most people do event based dosing rather than continuous (which would form a habit of taking it every day).
Here's another example of a pill that needs to be taken every day, at approximately the same time of day: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-...
From this article on that pill,
> But people aren’t perfect and it’s easy to forget or miss pills — so in reality the pill is about 93% effective. That means about 7 out of 100 pill users get pregnant each year.
You mess up and you have HIV for life. It's better to have something that provides more stable protection :)