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Comment by droptablemain | Hacker News Reader

Wow. This seems highly illogical -- that someone could knowingly expose me to a deadly, incurable virus -- and only be charged with a misdemeanor.

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Par for the course for California, really. If you live here you know every law has loopholes for whatever lobby or demographic group politicians need votes from. AB5, Prop 13, Prop 47, etc.

So you are saying that people who knowingly expose someone to HIV is a big enough voting block for politicians to pander to?

On the surface this might seem like it would increase risky behavior by infected individuals, but there's a rational reason for this law. It was advocated by epidemiologists for good reason: when someone could be criminally liable for said exposure, they'll absolutely stonewall public health officials who are trying to contact trace exposures. Adding criminal liability to the mix simply doesn't result in the desired outcome of stopping the spread of the disease.

Makes sense, but you're still condemning the victim to a lifetime of drugs and compromised immune system with little consequence.

I don't think any existing laws preclude civil suits for remediation of those damages. This is just removing the criminal charges.

I think the main reason is that these laws were penned specifically to target HIV, not any deadly virus, and they were penned at a time of heightened paranoia against HIV.

This makes the law narrowly focused and if you want a law to protect you from "known deadly virus" then make that law, and you'll cover HIV and any other known deadly virus.

Where is the law for hepatitis? etc... the list could go on and the point is that this law was only targeting HIV.

It should include Hep C at the least.

That's missing the point, if you want a law to punish people for transmitting a disease intentionally, that's as specific as you need to get. The magnitude of the consequences for this law wrt HIV infection is also likely higher than would be applied to a general infection because of the paranoia/homophobia at the time of its writing.

So sure, go write a new law and make sure it covers a broad set of things without singling out a specific group that is already marginalized.

I disagree.

We have all transmitted diseases. And "intentionally" gets pretty interesting -- how many times have we come in to work sick because we haven't enough sick days?

The magnitude of the effect of the disease is what is important. A cold? Well, it happens. HIV ... not so much.

Context here in the thread was deadly diseases.

It's only illogical if you ignore second order effects. Think of it this way: if knowingly exposing someone to HIV is a felony, are you more or less likely to know your status? From a health perspective, the priority is getting people to get tested and get treatment. Those laws run counter to that.

Not only is HIV treatable nowadays, it's also not particularly easy to contract, especially if the person is on ARVs. Let's do a thought experiment. If you're the receptive parter in anal sex with a partner with a detectable viral load, what do you suppose the chances of contracting HIV are? 1 in 5? 1 in 20? 1 in 50?

It's 1 in 72 (1.38%).

What about if the insertive partner is undetectable? Same thought experiment. 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? Trick question: it's 0%.

https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/estimated-hiv-risk-exposur...

Making it a felony to expose someone to a disease that is treatable and only has, at most, a 1.38% of even being contracted is just wrong headed, a carry-over from a time when we didn't know much about HIV and when we didn't have safe, effective treatments.

You take that risk every time you have sexual intercourse unprotected. You have no idea if someone contracted a sexual virus days before and doesn't even know themself. If you're not going to protect yourself and do your homework why should the government?

I'd just be careful with that. To be clear: I'm a huge fan of vaccine mandates. I'm less sure about charging people with crimes related to public health.

For reference: HIV/AIDS caused 4.7 deaths per 100K people with the virus in 2017.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2020/hiv-related-death-...

Covid has caused 216.36 deaths per 100K of the total population in the US

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Should anyone who breaks quarantine after testing positive be charged with a felony? Eh. Having a felony on your record is extremely serious.

Should someone be able to sue the person who infected them for all healthcare costs related to HIV going forward on the other hand? Absolutely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS#Prognosis: HAART and appropriate prevention of opportunistic infections reduces the death rate by 80%, and raises the life expectancy for a newly diagnosed young adult to 20–50 years. This is between two thirds and nearly that of the general population. If treatment is started late in the infection, prognosis is not as good: for example, if treatment is begun following the diagnosis of AIDS, life expectancy is ~10–40 years.

It seems in the best case scenario of early detection and treatment, HIV will shorten your life by a decade or more, so the 4.7/100K death rate is highly suspect. If I understand that paragraph correctly, if you wait until symptoms appear, you're already in the 10-40 years life expectancy group - so another ~decade lost.

As for breaking quarantine - yes, a felony is extremely serious. But so is knowingly exposing others to a 1/200 chance of death (or whatever the current risk is). So I do think a felony is appropriate - but the felony is for (non-consensualy) exposing others. If one can break quarantine without doing so (by e.g. walking alone on the beach, or in the woods, when the quarantine order mandated staying at home), then the crime should be appropriately reduced, just as it would be for someone with HIV whose medication has rendered the risk of transmission negligible/zero.

I should also point out that quarantine is a much bigger imposition on personal liberty, than a duty to inform sexual partners of any STDs you carry.

It’s not highly illogical. The law aligns with the modern experience of HIV treatment which is that it can be managed such that there is negligible risk of transmission. Furthermore, intentionally transmitting HIV is still illegal. Finally, HIV had been treated unlike other dangerous, communicable diseases which can’t be cured with respect to criminal penalty. The law brings it to parity (misdemeanor, not felony).

Your comment seems to be downplaying the medical, economic, and social significance of contracting HIV in the modern age.

Your comment is an unproductive dead end. You hint at consequences in a general way that can’t be engaged with. It could be the “significance” is arbitrary and unjust, like the disparate treatment this law fixed. Finally, “contracting HIV” isn’t really at stake, because it’s totally not obvious that treating HIV disclosure as a felony actually has any relation to the risk of transmission.

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