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Matt Irwin MD's avatar

The study Rebecca cited of IV drug users and clean needles had an eye-opening effect on me when I read it many years ago. It was done in Montreal, Canada.and found that exclusive users of clean needles in a special clean-needle exchange program were more likely to test HIV positive than IV drug users who had limited or no use. When combined with the Padian et al study which showed that there were zero transmissions of HIV in serodiscordant partners despite 282 “couple years” of follow-up, I realized that the condition of HIV positivity was simply not infectious.

When people try to defend this idea of infectiousness, they mainly use anecdotes. I could supply some anecdotes that would burn your socks off: people being abandoned by family, friends, and healthcare professionals due to fear of a “super-virus“. In Covid-19 the isolation was codified into 14 days of mandatory solitary confinement, which was especially harmful to people who already had fragile health, but also plenty harmful to everyone else.

In elder-care homes solitary confinement was combined with severe understaffing, with no family, friends, volunteers, or even “non-essential” healthcare providers allowed inside. This was not the fault of the nursing homes and assisted living facilities, which were forced into it, but rather due to universal fear of infection - something many “public health” officials like Fauci and Walensky built an entire career on. I consider them, and people like them, to be the true superspreaders“.

Fear and anxiety run deep in all of us, including myself. Sitting with these emotions in the present moment is something I find much more helpful than pointing out the fears in everyone else. 😇

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Tom Busse's avatar

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington said in 2014 PrEP would reduce new HIV among MSM in the state by 40% by 2020. The real number in 2020 was exactly the same as in 2014.

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