PrEP has caused a cultural shift from condom use to a medical intervention in HIV prevention in the USA. This obsession with “getting down to zero” for HIV infections with drugging HIV negative men so they can have unprotected sex and abandon condoms has conveniently ignored all the other STIs that exist. Many are becoming untreatable.
Conferences show an obsession with HIV prevention from so called experts in the field that somehow they can drug all the gay men who are “at risk” or “vulnerable” as they now like to call it with PrEP. They can successfully “target” the barebackers get them “engaged” with sexual healthcare and prevent them getting HIV.
However reality in the real world is very different than a theory presented on a powerpoint presentation. Those that are engaging in sexual healthcare are really the ones that already have been doing so and now are switching from condoms to PrEP. The toolshed of nonsense that condoms will still be worn to prevent other STIs is revealed in epidemic levels of some of the other nasty STis knocking around in the gay community. They really have opened a Pandoras Box which they are now trying to close. It’s too late.
However the gay (ill)health organisations here in the UK see no problem in the epidemic levels of STIs. Perversely they see it as a good thing that gay men are barebacking on PrEP as they can have check ups for other STIs which can be caught and treated. It’s a sexual health engagement to limit the spread in the ever growing “bareback community” which is a swirling cesspool of disease.
Our advice, as always, is you can drastically reduce your chances of STIs and prevent being infected by HIV by using a condom. Something the gay unprofessionals hate to promote and will always have weasel words to wriggle out of the obvious that condoms protect you from STIs.