British “Bug Chaser” Inadvertently Demonstrates the Lack of Transmissibility of “HIV”

Is this story real?

I have a very strange human interest story for you all today. You may have seen reference to this in the news; it has been trending.

The following video from Channel Four Television Corporation in the U.K. was released in March 2024, and has since gone viral on channels such as Pop Culture Crisis. It’s about an anonymous man, known as “Wolf,” who claims to have spent ten years actively attempting to “contract ‘HIV’,” both via unprotected sex and by directly injecting blood products, and now claims to generously bestow his very hard won positive status upon other “bug chasers.” The entire story is really crazy and I’m not even sure it’s true; I’m reporting on it with a healthy dose of skepticism. The Channel 4 video is embedded below, and I will mention a few oddities about this man’s story.

First, if the attempt is to make this guy seem as creepy as possibly with the wolf mask and the distorted voice, it has certainly accomplished that goal. Obviously, I don’t believe that “Wolf” is doing what he says/thinks he is doing with respect to being an “ethical giver” (his term) of “HIV” positivity. In fact, when he is asked how many people have tested positive after engaging in unprotected sex with “Wolf,” he refuses to answer directly, instead saying that “no one has ever been upset” about a positive result that presumably “came from” “Wolf.” Has anyone actually tested positive following an encounter with this fellow?

He also mentions that, despite being mostly attracted to men, he was married to a woman for some time, but it was only upon his divorce that he decided to pursue “bug chasing” like it was his job. (That’s another interesting part of this story—at the 5:57 mark he is asked what he does for a living and he works in healthcare administration.) He claims that he wanted to “seroconvert” because it would be “relaxing”; indeed, he mentions “being able to relax” as a prime motivation for many “bug chasers.” I suppose if you spend your entire life being afraid of contracting “HIV,” testing positive might actually promote relaxation because you no longer have to worry about what would happen if you tested positive. (You’ll be “retained in care” at great risk to your health if you aren’t careful, that’s what will happen.)

This story is really wild and honestly kind of difficult to believe. However, the main reason I bring it up is to point out that this fellow allegedly spent ten years actively exposing himself to “HIV,” including apparently injecting “HIV” positive blood into himself. Yet it still took ten years for him to obtain a “positive” result. If we were really dealing with a deadly, contagious, blood borne virus, why did it take this man ten years of engaging in many risky behaviors, including shooting up “infected” blood, to even ping a positive test? Shades of the “no seroconversions” Padian study.

He is asked at one point why he didn’t take PrEP rather than pursue a decade of “bug chasing,” and he indicates that when he began his “bug chasing” journey PrEP was not an option. Given the lack of strong clinical trial evidence for the efficacy of PrEP, and how long it took this individual to “seroconvert,” I’d say this story is yet another nail in the coffin for the need for, or the effectiveness of, PrEP. Recall from the lenacapavir study that even without PrEP, “seroconversions” remain extremely low at about 2 per 100 person-years (recall that that means that if you followed 100 “exposed” individuals for a year, you would expect to see 2 “seroconversions”), which is not how infectious diseases nor STIs work.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the entire story has been made up. “Wolf” is anonymous; he could be anyone. He might not have ever had a positive “HIV” test; I have no idea. This story could be a massive troll for all we know, but its interesting nevertheless.

What do you think of this? Have you seen this story before? Is this guy for real, or is this some bizarre, twisted and entirely invented story?