4 ms·

It's all a statistics game. If you can vaccinate against 99% of current strains, you can severely stunt the spread of the virus with its current strain distribu

It's all a statistics game. If you can vaccinate against 99% of current strains, you can severely stunt the spread of the virus with its current strain distribution. Combine this with adequate awareness about general prevention methods (safe sex practices) and you have a shot at severely reducing the incidence of the virus so that its numbers are small enough to control. New HIV infections are actually on the decline worldwide thanks to community awareness and ART meds that decrease the chances of spread. We've been able to eradicate or nearly eradicate several viruses from the planet. It starts with getting them down to manageable numbers, then addressing every outbreak. (Granted, HIV is not quite an analagous in terms of spread to viruses like smallpox.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases#Eradicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...

branchless 10y ago
If spread is reducing is it viable to simply manage this out over the long term? Or is that unrealistic.
- kendallpark 10y ago
  The difficulty is that once you're a carrier, you're always a carrier. With modern ART these people can be expected to live long lives. ART decreases the odds of transmission, but not everyone is compliant with their medications. Reducing the spread is one piece of the puzzle. The only way we've managed to "cure" HIV is through a bone marrow transplantation from a donor that have a mutant CCR5 receptor (which the HIV virus needs infect T-cells). I think that reducing the spread alone still could get us to a point where we "manage this out over the long term" as you say. Say you're a person with many sexual partners that has say a 1 out of 100 chance of sleeping with someone infected with HIV on a given day. Say there's a 1 in 10 chance that encounter will lead to transmission of the virus. (These aren't like factual numbers, just examples). That's still a 1 in 1,000 chance per encounter, so it adds up over time. After 1000 encounters chances are you've contracted HIV. But say you're vaccinated against 99% of the serotypes. That reduces your chance per encounter to 1 in 100,000. Even after 1000 encounters your chance of contracting HIV is 1 in 100. Not terrible.
  - shard 10y ago
    Minor nitpick: the proportion of each serotype would determine the final reduction in your calculation above. If the serotypes in the 1% the vaccines don't work for are in 10% of the population of patients, then the final reduction would be to a 1:10,000 chance.
    - kendallpark 10y ago
      Ah, true. I was assuming an even distribution.
- gwbas1c 10y ago
  (Sarcasm)If everyone waited until they're married, and remained monogamous, we'd stop the spread without needing any drugs!(/sarcasm) Of course this is not realistic. People like sex, novelty, and having sex with different partners!

branchless 10y ago

If spread is reducing is it viable to simply manage this out over the long term? Or is that unrealistic.

kendallpark 10y ago
The difficulty is that once you're a carrier, you're always a carrier. With modern ART these people can be expected to live long lives. ART decreases the odds of transmission, but not everyone is compliant with their medications. Reducing the spread is one piece of the puzzle. The only way we've managed to "cure" HIV is through a bone marrow transplantation from a donor that have a mutant CCR5 receptor (which the HIV virus needs infect T-cells). I think that reducing the spread alone still could get us to a point where we "manage this out over the long term" as you say. Say you're a person with many sexual partners that has say a 1 out of 100 chance of sleeping with someone infected with HIV on a given day. Say there's a 1 in 10 chance that encounter will lead to transmission of the virus. (These aren't like factual numbers, just examples). That's still a 1 in 1,000 chance per encounter, so it adds up over time. After 1000 encounters chances are you've contracted HIV. But say you're vaccinated against 99% of the serotypes. That reduces your chance per encounter to 1 in 100,000. Even after 1000 encounters your chance of contracting HIV is 1 in 100. Not terrible.
- shard 10y ago
  Minor nitpick: the proportion of each serotype would determine the final reduction in your calculation above. If the serotypes in the 1% the vaccines don't work for are in 10% of the population of patients, then the final reduction would be to a 1:10,000 chance.
  - kendallpark 10y ago
    Ah, true. I was assuming an even distribution.
gwbas1c 10y ago
(Sarcasm)If everyone waited until they're married, and remained monogamous, we'd stop the spread without needing any drugs!(/sarcasm) Of course this is not realistic. People like sex, novelty, and having sex with different partners!