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Comment by sargun | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'm confused about is why HIV at-home tests are not more available. There's Oraquick (https://oraquick.com/), which in bulk is $15/test, whereas its about $40 retail. On the other hand, we've gotten COVID tests down to something like $5 retail. On top of that, it's relatively easy to get free COVID tests.

Imagine if you could test for this right before you "got down." I imagine that'd change the game.

Although, a terrible part of me wonders if the condom debate will become the same as masks.

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> Imagine if you could test for this right before you "got down." I imagine that'd change the game.

Unfortunately, HIV tests can't detect early infection, which is when it's most transmissible. The Oraquick FAQ says their test is accurate 3 months after exposure. So there isn't much benefit to testing right before sex vs every few months.

Fair, CUE health built RT-NAT COVID tests, and I imagine that same tech can be copied to HIV testing (provided there is a cheap-ish way to detect HIV RNA).

I dont understand the last paragraph. Condoms have been widely used for decades, is there a debate similar to masks?

Have you had much casual sex lately? Anecdotally, condom use is down significantly over the last couple decades now that HIV is no longer a death sentence.

Not lately no, been married 12 years. But I don't remember ever hearing about debates as heated as masks around condoms.

Yeah there are fringe groups advocating for no birth control and all, but what's really their market share? Doesn't sound similar to the big divide we had a few years ago over masks.

I am a millennial but my understanding is that many gay men scoffed at condom use pre-AIDS, in the 70s, the same way many today scoff at mask use. This is the way it's generally been described by older gay men I know and documentaries and movies. Not to necessarily equate the health risk between the two scenarios, just equating the public sentiment during the beginning stages of a major public health crisis.

It is why from my perspective the gay community at large has an intimate relationship with the phrase "new normal" because it seems like gay men's cultural understanding of what a healthy sex life looks like truly changed more or less permanently since the AIDS epidemic.

There has definitely been a lasting effect in that gay men who have resources tend to be very well educated and proactive about their health. Everyone is on PreP. As a result of that, condom use has definitely become the exception and not the rule again over the past five or so years.

Yeah for sure, I'm not denying that condom use is now dropping. But it requires that the daily pill gets taken or do whatever else it is that needs to be done that constitutes safe sex today.

I'm single, but ugly. I didn't realize condom use was down.

I would have to assume most sexually active women in the US are on some form of birth control or just avoid hooking up near ovulation windows. I've had exactly one woman ever ask me to use a condom, but she was french. Not sure if they're more expected there.

I'd happily raise any kid that came of it so I've never been worried.

My data point is that every woman under about 30 wants to use condoms. Above 30, there is a lot less of a concern.

I would think it's the opposite. Older women come from a time before widespread birth control usage and are used to condoms vs younger women who rely mostly on pills. Unless you were referring to fertility in which case yeah probably got better odds of not having unexpected kids in your 30's.

> Older women [in this context, 30s] come from a time before widespread birth control usage and are used to condoms vs younger women who rely mostly on pills.

Lol? Hormonal birth control has been around since the 1960s. Women old enough to remember a time before the pill are postmenopausal and probably not worried about conceiving. Women in their 30s today grew up in a time of omnipresent birth control.

There is, particularly around the evangelical sector in the US whom have been pushing towards banning all contraceptives (or rather, making them hard to obtain making them defacto banned). It's part of the idea that only moral approach to sex is abstinence or procreation.

Yes I'm sure it's the religious people not the fact that 'creampie' is one of the most popular genres of online pornography, that was virtually nonexistent 20 years ago, and now at the forefront of the zeitgeist.

Oh come on, look back at the “golden age” of porn - not a condom in sight!

No condoms, but the money shot was always external prior to the recent "all internal" craze. Creampies forego any and all risks. Coitus interruptus is in the minority these days.

Well, so don’t even know where to start if you think that “coitus interruptus” is a way of preventing STDs.

Good luck!

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