Hiv/aids: The Truth About A Subject

[geriatrickid]

The statistical facts about HIV infection rates in Thailand unfortunately do not corroborate with your assumptions. Still, use a condom.

Unfortunately, the old THai leading edge programs are in tatters and fell by the wayside starting in the early 2000's. HIV numbers have been increasing. It's really quite simple. The surveillance & education programs that targeted the sex workers just aren't functioning anymore. Public education funding isn't where it needs to be and has decreased. One would hope that parents take up the slack, but what do you do in the uneducated poorer areas where people do not know?

This is why there have been all sorts of press conferences since Q4 of 2008, with public health workers trying to bring attention. I think we are in for a very sad shock as adolescent cases continue to increase.

Hep C is only spread by blood contact. It is recommended that you should of had a vaccination for Hep B before coming to Thailand

Vaccines are not perfect and some do not trigger an immune response. The only way to know for sure is to check your antibodies after the vaccinations.

[spacefruit]

I know nothing.

I do talk to (sometimes rather worthy) NGO health workers and the HIV infection rates in the last couple of years are frightening from what they say. Usualy frontline people.

As for all the mathematical guff: too many variables and error margins to tke seriously. However they still made me think.

So I think I'll stick with the wife!

[offset]

Hepatitis kills more on a global scale than HIV, yet nobody talks about it. Hep B and Hep C are spread sexually.

Hep C is only spread by blood contact. It is recommended that you should of had a vaccination for Hep B before coming to Thailand

A tip that I have told friends is if you are paying for sex ask how much for no condom and if they give you a price go somewhere else quick

When I had my vaccinations in the UK before coming here they only advised for Hep A

It is not recommended for short trips but it is recommended for longer stays including children there is now a joint vaccine for Hep C+Hep B and it is recommended to have a blood test after vaccination

[PattayaParent]

having a read a few posts in the health forum, and did some goggling, and some personal thinking of the obvious which has escaped me thus far...

there are a few studies out there which suggest the rate of infection of HIV is 1 in 1000-3000, however, these figures, which are clearly unreliable as you can see by the huge range in the 'guess', come only from studies conducted between married couples where one partner was infected.

consider the following facts:

1. personally having any other stds greatly increases the chances of you yourself contracting HIV.

2. 99.9% of sex workers have multiple stds. you cannot go through that much volume and not pick up other stds.

3. sex workers will work while they still have their period. there is also the risk of their period starting during sex.

4. frequent sex means they are more likely to be bleeding and have lesions inside of themselves.

5. the majority of sex workers participate in unprotected sex... put it like this, Thais have almost no concern whatsoever when it comes to unprotected sex. the goodest of good and the baddest of bad girls will not insist on condom use, they will often even suggest otherwise. so if you think that they are not using the logic that, outside the office, the rule does not apply, you are seriously mistaken... on the other end of the stick, one looks no further than Thai Visa to see the male perspective to this issue.

6. the majority of sex workers will seek a relationship with a man outside of work and he is very likely to himself be at high risk for HIV. he is very likely to not be a lawyer, but instead a minimum wage earner and more likely to be an IV drug user.

6. you have a cut anywhere in your body. a sex worker touches herself, she has blood, she touches that part of your body. Very simple, very not unrealistic.

7. When you hear numbers like 2% of the population has HIV.. you have to first trim that number down and figure out what percent of the demographic you will be in contact with are infected? It becomes much scarier. If we eliminate under 13 and over 70, for example, how much higher does 2% rise? What number do we use, 10-15%?

8. HIV can be undetected for 6mo in your body. you continue infecting others without knowing it.

So, for unprotected sex

.125 (12.5% chance of having HIV) * (1/500) (random guess of contraction rate) = 1/4000 chance per encounter

1 month of encounters = 1/133 chance

3 month = 1/44 chance

6 month = 1/22 chance

**i have no idea how much a condom changes these numbers.

**i have no idea what kind of testing is done in these establishments.

That's a lot of sweeping generalisations for one post.

Makes me think that it has not come from any sort of informed study but just made up from of the top of your own head.

[JohnGotti]

which generalizations do you disagree with?

[EvilDrSomkid]

which generalizations do you disagree with?

To start with, your statement that 99.9% of sex workers have multiple STDs. Please give some serious back up of this alleged "fact".

I do not find your calculations at all helpful. Mind you, I am not a punter. Your attempted emotional blackmail, ie. why are you endangering your children, is not helpful either.

However, the bottom line is going bareback is a crapgame all the time.

[tim armstrong]

Hepatitis kills more on a global scale than HIV, yet nobody talks about it. Hep B and Hep C are spread sexually.

Mosquito borne diseases kill more people (Thais) in LOS than anything else. So right now, if you are a large, overweight farlang, with beer in hand, sitting near a pool of stagnant water, and not wearing a condom - then you are in big trouble!

[noahvail]

Fascinating topic. It reminds me of that old line from Saturday Night Live: "89.7% of statistics are made up on the spot."

Of course it makes common sense to wear a condom, always has, even before AIDS. But I don't see anything here to support the sweeping statements that have been made by certain posters. Anybody care to quote the research behind the underlying assumptions before applying the magic of statistics?

[Orac]

Apart from the sweeping generalizations, can the OP explain his claim that no children under 13 have HIV???

[camerata]

When I had my vaccinations in the UK before coming here they only advised for Hep A

Probably because Hep B is mostly transmitted by sexual contact, rather than other environmental factors that anyone can come into contact with. However, with 15% of SE Asians being carriers, it's a no-brainer to get the vaccination if you are going to be having sex with Thais without a condom. If you become a carrier, it'll put some restrictions on your life and put you at risk of liver disease later in life.

[nidge]

Many Thai girls have the idea that if they insist on their boyfriend/lover using condoms then they will be considered to be dirty.

This would cause a loss of face and so it is better in their minds to not use one and appear sweet and innocent.

The Thai guys do not like using condoms because they are afraid the girl will think he does not trust her or that he sleeps around too much.

So it seems to me you are as likely, if not more, to catch something nasty from a "good" girl than a bad one.

So perhaps we can blame the increase in HIV on Thai logic

[JohnGotti]

Apart from the sweeping generalizations, can the OP explain his claim that no children under 13 have HIV???

lol. not claiming that, just that when you look at broad numbers like 2% of people in Thailand have aids its pointless because that includes all demographics. it makes more sense to look at the rate of the demographic your partner comes from.

[Sheryl]

We have just had a lengthy thread on this topic in which I have endeavored to explain the "statistical risk"issue

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Friend-He-s-...lp-t256765.html

As explained there, the actual odds of getting HIV in any unprotected sexual contact are unique to that specific encounter and whatever you will get from even the best statistics are averages which may differ greatly from the risk in any specific case -- and the factors that surround this are for the most part not ones you can identify.

3 points specific to other things raised in this current thread:

condoms dramatically reduce risk and are a very effective means of prevention. The average transmission risks one hears about refer to unprotected sex. Use of condoms virtually eliminates the risk, as long as use is consistent. In the very rare case of transmission despite condom use it is usually a case where the condom slipped off during the act, which does occasionally happen.

Hep C can be sexually transmitted; and the point about the Hep B and C risks is excellent. Hep B vaccination is a must for anyone having sex with Thais unless in the context of a mutually exclusive realtionship with someone already tested and found not to be a carrier (and even then, you'd better be sure enough of her faithfulness to risk your life on it!). Sexual transmission of Hep C can only be prevented by condom use, just like HIV.

There certainly are children much younger than 13 with HIV, there are infants, since the virus can pass from a pregnant woman to her infant. Many tragic cases in SE Asia of men getting the virus from a sex worker and then infecting his wife and child -- so that there are 3 victims as a result of one man's failure to use protection.

Of the men I have known personally in Thailand who contacted HIV here, all did so as a result of not consistently using condoms and the reasons I have heard include:

- counting on the odds of transmission being so low (which was no comfort to them at all when they found themselves on the losing end of those odds)

- believing they could "tell"which sex workers were risky and which weren't

- relying on the woman having been tested and found HIV neg + belief that they were now exclusive

The flaws with the last reason are that 1)conventional testing will not detect early stages of infection; 2) sadly, a lot of faked or borrowed (someone else's) negative test results have sprouted up as a way of allaying customer concerns; and 3) more often than not, the bg someone thinks he is now having an exclusive relationship with and can "trust"enough to stop using condoms with is, in fact, still having relations with other men -- so even if she was not infected initially she may become so in the course of the relationship...

[Orac]

Apart from the sweeping generalizations, can the OP explain his claim that no children under 13 have HIV???

lol. not claiming that, just that when you look at broad numbers like 2% of people in Thailand have aids its pointless because that includes all demographics. it makes more sense to look at the rate of the demographic your partner comes from.

In that case I suggest some maths lessons.

By using made up figures and over the top generalisations you are inviting ridicule on what is a very serious issue.

[sabaijai]

If you follow the logic then in 10.96 years you are 100% certain to catch HIV . (I didn't just pluck this figure out the air, I just calculated this on 'goal seek' in Excel). The first person to explain the logical fallacy of Mr John's fantastical calculations wins a slap on the back from me.

It's called the gambler's fallacy, also known as the fallacy of the maturity of chances.

The fallacy is built on the notion that previous failures to contract HIV indicate an increased probability of contracting HIV on subsequent conjugations. As Sheryl pointed out, with all factors equal, the odds are the same for each event.

No backslap necessary

[Goshawk]

some folks believe (not necessarily me, i'm just reporting it) that HIV was originally a laboratory created bio weapon introduced into the world by certain eugenicist illuminati groups with the sole intention to eradicate certain other groups of the populous..

controversial stuff i know, but this theory is widespread...

[Jingthing]

controversial stuff i know, but this theory is widespread...

Sure, among loony ignorant people. There was really no need to mention such rubbish.

[Goshawk]

Sure, among loony ignorant people. There was really no need to mention such rubbish.

rubbish..? if only we knew.. i don't & you don't, but it is a possibility..

[orchis]

Hepatitis kills more on a global scale than HIV, yet nobody talks about it. Hep B and Hep C are spread sexually.

Hep C is only spread by blood contact. It is recommended that you should of had a vaccination for Hep B before coming to Thailand

A tip that I have told friends is if you are paying for sex ask how much for no condom and if they give you a price go somewhere else quick

When I had my vaccinations in the UK before coming here they only advised for Hep A

It is not recommended for short trips but it is recommended for longer stays including children there is now a joint vaccine for Hep C+Hep B and it is recommended to have a blood test after vaccination

That woud be hep A+B vaccine, there is currently no vaccine for hepatitis C at all.

[EvilDrSomkid]

JohnG.

You still have not provided us with any backup for the 99.9% as I requested following your request what generalizations people disagreed with.

[mommysboy]

JohnG.

You still have not provided us with any backup for the 99.9% as I requested following your request what generalizations people disagreed with.

The only safe sex is none at all. Although I suspect that some self help techniques as practised by some posters on this board may also be safe.

It's a controversial topic, we never have these kind of doubts about bunions, athlete's foot or the common cold. And should in fact be more concerned with catching flu.

IMHO this is an area of medical science which has simply not been nailed and has been subject to mis-information of the worst kind.

Equally crank theories do not cut.

Chance is random by the way.

[lung]

Sure, among loony ignorant people. There was really no need to mention such rubbish.

rubbish..? if only we knew.. i don't & you don't, but it is a possibility..

rubbish ??

...not at all :ph34r.

[monkeycircus]

consider the following facts:( some of which i just made up)

1. personally having any other stds greatly increases the chances of you yourself contracting HIV. (this ones true)

2. 99.9% of sex workers have multiple stds. you cannot go through that much volume and not pick up other stds. (99.9? this is nonsense. the majority of sex workers ive met protect themselves. and if you protect yourself you wont have an STD)

3. sex workers will work while they still have their period. there is also the risk of their period starting during sex. (you really are just making this up)

4. frequent sex means they are more likely to be bleeding and have lesions inside of themselves. (possibly)

5. the majority of sex workers participate in unprotected sex...(wrong) put it like this, Thais have almost no concern whatsoever when it comes to unprotected sex(racist, and wrong) the goodest of good and the baddest of bad girls will not insist on condom use, they will often even suggest otherwise. so if you think that they are not using the logic that, outside the office, the rule does not apply, you are seriously mistaken... on the other end of the stick, one looks no further than Thai Visa to see the male perspective to this issue.

6. the majority of sex workers will seek a relationship with a man outside of work and he is very likely to himself be at high risk for HIV. he is very likely to not be a lawyer, but instead a minimum wage earner and more likely to be an IV drug user. (again, you are speculating wildly. perhaps the scenario you mentioned is relatively common, it sounds feasible, perhaps its not....how on earth would you know either way)

6. you have a cut anywhere in your body. a sex worker touches herself, she has blood, she touches that part of your body. Very simple, very not unrealistic. (so now we have a very simple and realistic scenario where a hooker is rubbing her internally bleeding sex organs and rubbing the blood over your fresh wound? where exactly do you party john?)

7. When you hear numbers like 2% of the population has HIV.. you have to first trim that number down and figure out what percent of the demographic you will be in contact with are infected? It becomes much scarier. If we eliminate under 13 and over 70, for example, how much higher does 2% rise? What number do we use, 10-15%? (i dont know john, what number shall we use? shall we just make one up? great idea! )

8. HIV can be undetected for 6mo in your body. you continue infecting others without knowing it. (modern hiv testing will detect hiv antibodies in the vast majority of cases after about a month. most people produce antibodies after around 25 days. after 12 weeks you can have a certain result)

So, for unprotected sex

.125 (12.5% chance of having HIV) * (1/500) (random guess of contraction rate) = 1/4000 chance per encounter

1 month of encounters = 1/133 chance

3 month = 1/44 chance

6 month = 1/22 chance

**i have no idea how much a condom changes these numbers.(dont you? it changes them by removing all risk)

**i have no idea what kind of testing is done in these establishments. (thanks for the warning)

[mommysboy]

which generalizations do you disagree with?

ALL OF THEM FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE !!

[PurpleNote]

I hate these kinds of threads because the end up getting dragged down into a lot of side debate rather than discussing the real issue. I applaud those who have posted some researched facts rather than the absurd claims of the OP.

I like what one of the posters said (sorry it was a few pages back and I'm lazy) about asking a girl if she's willing to go sans condom and running if she suggest she is. I've asked that question jokingly to several women and have yet to receive a single positive response. Maybe I'm the exception and certainly my datapoint here is anecdotal but unless you're picking up the yabba heads in Nana parking lot or off Sukhumvit at 5am most of the girls I've run into don't fly that way. In fact, a lot of the gals I know carry their own supply of condoms just in case they get back to the room with some guy who pulls the "Oh, I don't have any condoms" scam on them. Again anecdotal but I can't see how you can justify those numbers simply by guesstimating them.

Also when you take the HIV/AIDS rate for the entire populace and try to extrapolate anything from there you're going to run into a lot of problems. First of which is that as others have pointed out - yes, many infants are infected. So are many children under 13. The most egregious oversight though is that there is not attempt made at segregating farang/Thai prostitution and Thai/Thai prostitution. Based on all sorts of speculative numbers from NGOs to official government agencies the number of sex workers in Thailand is roughly 2 million. Meanwhile the number of sex workers servicing farang customers is estimated to be between 100,000 - 200,000. While this doesn't change the overall math of your chances of becoming infected it again proves you can't take the stats for the entire population and extrapolate them any way you see fit.

Also worthy of note is that HIV infection is especially high in Thai men who frequent prositutes and have unprotected sex which would actually suggest that the problem is more prone to Thai/Thai prostitution where Thai men may insist on not using a condom. If farang men were contracting HIV infections at the rate that Thai men are I'm sure with our small representation here in the LOS it would be viewed an a mini-epidemic.

And has also been pointed out the OP gets a big fat F in statistics/probability by compounding the risk factor. If you flip a coin 100 times and it comes up heads 100 times it's still 50/50 to come up tails on the 101'st flip.

Lastly, and I don't mean this to make light of anything but, NGOs and many of the people who report these numbers only get more funding if they can make the problem they've set out to resolve sound scary. There was an article on the Stickman site about a guy who actually did some investigation into child prostitution in Cambodia. The NGOs claim it is a massive problem (and it is) and have billboards in English up all over warning of the penalties of having sex with underage boys/girls. I've seen it myself there too. It's even in the tourist map you get at every hotel and in the airport. A pair of handcuffs warning that it's a serious crime. Well, the only problem is that when he asked the police how big of a problem it was with westerners they told him that had very few complaints and only a handful of arrests each year. The vast majority of people arrested for having sex with underage boys/girls were Cambodian.

But what gets donars to fork over cash; Cambodia on Cambodian/Laos/Vietnamese underage sex or dirty, evil westerners coming over and defiling Cambodia? It's obvious it's the later. So that's the angle they push to keep getting funded and that's why they market so heavily at westerners while the problem gets almost no funding to stop the majority of the underage sex.

That's why I said I hate posts like this. I'm not defending unprotected sex. I'm not defending child prostitution. But you can't simply let people lie and make up numbers because the ends justify the means. If someone took 100 baht for every post in this thread and gave it to a charity that was doing outreach to Thai/Thai prostitutes they would be achieving far more than worrying about whether or not some girl from the Tilac Bar is going to spring a hemorage and rub her blood on an open wound and give you HIV.

Posts like this, while well intended, ultimately end up doing more harm than good. The supposed facts are shot down for being flimsy, made up, or mind-numblingly poorly constructed and it has the potential to lead some to believe that the chances of catching HIV are sufficiently low enough that they can party without a hat. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But instead of real facts and figures this entire thread has become about tearing down the well intention though fateally flawed assertions of the OP.

And since I just helped tear down some of his assertions I'm as guilty as anyone else. That's why I hate these threads. :-)

[hhgz]

"NGOs and many of the people who report these numbers only get more funding if they can make the problem they've set out to resolve sound scary."

You are exactly right. AmFAR confessed they made up figures to imply that the heterosexual population was substantially at risk, simply to raise money. Oprah committed the same error claiming that by the year 2000, 80% of the AIDS cases would be heterosexuals. You see the same type of hyper nonsense with avian flu, SARS and now, swine flu. "Experts" make up numbers, simply to get more funding for their "research" and to read their names in the newspaper.

[hhgz]

The research that I read indicated that, using a condom, there is a 1/5000 risk of contracting HIV if your partner is HIV+. The exact number is not important. Statistics neither impel nor compel - they show a trend. Accordingly, you might contract HIV with your very first unprotected sex act. Is it worth the risk? Reading the various postings, it's obvious a lot of guys say, "duh, yeah". The fact remains that if you have intercourse with an HIV+ partner (and that includes the oh so innocent bargirl you've been leering at from across the room), you're taking a risk.

[mommysboy]

The research that I read indicated that, using a condom, there is a 1/5000 risk of contracting HIV if your partner is HIV+. The exact number is not important. Statistics neither impel nor compel - they show a trend. Accordingly, you might contract HIV with your very first unprotected sex act. Is it worth the risk? Reading the various postings, it's obvious a lot of guys say, "duh, yeah". The fact remains that if you have intercourse with an HIV+ partner (and that includes the oh so innocent bargirl you've been leering at from across the room), you're taking a risk.

I'd certainly go along with the idea that numbers have been distorted.

[HagenvonTronje]

"Approximately 3% of couples who reported using condoms consistently and

correctly (considered “perfect use”) are estimated to experience an

unintended pregnancy during the first year of use."

The window to get pregnant is about 5/28 days = .179 x 365 = 65 days of fertility... Assume couples studied have sex 3 days a week. 3/7 = 43%

So they had sex an average 43% of the 65 fertile days = 28 fertile days a year, and ended up pregnant 3% of the time or (3/100 = x/28) = 16% rate of failure of a condom.

So for a condom encounter

don't know where you get your first quote from with the 3% of couples who using condoms correctly, but okay take that as given same as your figures on the fertile days per year and now we start the mathematics.

x couples having sex with condoms on statistical 28 fertile days a year. 3% of them ended up pregnant. failure rate of the condom?

[phetaroi]

The trend in this discussion seems to have devolved down to statistics. Does it really matter for "our" purposes in this forum. HIV/AIDS is an often deadly disease that can be totally prevented. But then again, so is lung cancer as a result of smoking. And, many other diseases.

So what if the stats are off by 50%. Do you really want to catch it?

I know someone who has HIV and is lucky to be on life-preserving meds. Well, sort of lucky. He shit his guts out for months adjusting to the drugs. Every time he catches a cold he wonders if this is the beginning of "the end". He can't have a relationship anymore, so he does think about dying alone.

I feel lucky. Sort of wild when young and middle-aged, but somehow avoided this scourge. Now I'm a good boy. Sexually bored, but I've found so many things in life more important...including real love.