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Now all they have to do is roll back SB239, which reduced knowingly exposing someone to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor [1], and their laws might be somewhat

Now all they have to do is roll back SB239, which reduced knowingly exposing someone to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor [1], and their laws might be somewhat sensible in this area. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-california-law-reduces-penalty-knowingly-exposing-someone-hiv-n809416 https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-california-law-r...

droptablemain 5y ago
Wow. This seems highly illogical -- that someone could knowingly expose me to a deadly, incurable virus -- and only be charged with a misdemeanor.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  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.
  - jklein11 5y ago
    So you are saying that people who knowingly expose someone to HIV is a big enough voting block for politicians to pander to?
- codezero 5y ago
  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.
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    It should include Hep C at the least.
    - codezero 5y ago
      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.
      - at_a_remove 5y ago
        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.
        codezero 5y ago
        Context here in the thread was deadly diseases.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  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?
- xxpor 5y ago
  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-rate-press-release.html 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 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.
  - chuckee 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS#Prognosis 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.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  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.
  - snapetom 5y ago
    Makes sense, but you're still condemning the victim to a lifetime of drugs and compromised immune system with little consequence.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      I don't think any existing laws preclude civil suits for remediation of those damages. This is just removing the criminal charges.
- shuckles 5y ago
  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).
  - droptablemain 5y ago
    Your comment seems to be downplaying the medical, economic, and social significance of contracting HIV in the modern age.
    - shuckles 5y ago
      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.
- 28801461 5y ago
  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-exposure 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.
mc32 5y ago
It would definitely make sense to align these laws, if they would like to remain consistent.
jowday 5y ago
Wasn’t SB239 mostly passed so that people whose HIV treatment has rendered it untransmissible can resume normal sexual activity without having to warn everyone they hook up with? I’d agree it’s a weird way to go about it - probably would be better to just make it not a crime at all if HIV has reached undetectable levels in your blood for at least six months instead of reducing it to a misdemeanor for everyone with HIV - but I often see people bring up this law without the context of the advancements in HIV treatment that motivated it. Edit: Looks like it was mostly passed because the prior laws were almost exclusively used to charge sex workers with felonies when they’re brought in for minor charges like solicitation - they’d get convicted for solicitation, forcibly tested for HIV, and then get their misdemeanor solicitation charge upgraded to a felony if they tested positive, even if there’s no evidence they were going to engage in activity with a high risk of transmission or not take precautions to prevent transmission. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/09/knowingly-infecting-others-with-hiv-is-no-longer-a-felony-in-california-advocates-say-it-targeted-sex-workers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/1...
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  I think that a concern exists in some about the potential gap between "untransmissible" and someone saying that they are untransmissible. Compliance/adherence is a big deal. "In the United States, the rate of adherence to HIV therapy is generally low." as one meta-analysis went.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  The right thing to do would be to legalize prostitution. I guess "my body, my choice" somehow isn't a good enough argument for this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
abeppu 5y ago
I gotta disagree there -- that change merely brought HIV in line with other communicable diseases. Now, maybe one can make an argument that knowingly exposing someone to any of a class of communicable diseases, based on the seriousness of those diseases, should be a felony. But singling out HIV exposure to be categorically distinct from every other disease doesn't seem reasonable or just.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  The HIV medications aren't exactly side effect free and, unlike STDs such as herpes, result in death if you don't take them. HIV isn't just another communicable disease.
  - 3520 5y ago
    You're right. HIV isn't just another communicable disease in someone with an undetectable viral load, it's just another untransmissible disease [0]. [0]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2720997 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/27209...
    - bingohbangoh 5y ago
      If you take diligent care to take the proper pill everyday, you can make in transmissible for your partner. But the risk of you not doing so is _very high_ to your partner. As such, it should be disclosed. If there is trust between people, then its acceptable.
      - 3520 5y ago
        I would argue that the risk of someone not taking their medication is not "very high". The individual with HIV is highly incentivized to take their medication because it ensures their continued survival.
- chuckee 5y ago
  Then the solution is to raise the penalty for other diseases similarly severe as HIV, not lower the penalty for HIV. Though I agree with the other comments that the risk of transmission should be taken into account (since medication, if taken, has lowered it considerably since the HIV-felony laws were passed), that's not what the law did.
lsy 5y ago
There are a lot of reasons HIV exposure laws don’t work well: they treat HIV differently than any other disease (because they were originally designed as anti-homosexual laws), and the “knowingly” part discouraged people from getting tested, which is worse for public health. The law referenced in the OP article is about consent, not disease transmission.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  If people don't get tested, they literally die. There's plenty incentive to get tested as-is.
  - jayd16 5y ago
    Testing is not a cure. When treatment isn't available, the game theory becomes "expose yourself legally by knowing something that won't help you" vs "ignore it".
    - bingohbangoh 5y ago
      It's not a cure but getting tested means you can be put on a myriad of near-cures. The whole logic of this law is that getting HIV is no longer a death sentence after all.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

droptablemain 5y ago

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

b9a2cab5 5y ago
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.
- jklein11 5y ago
  So you are saying that people who knowingly expose someone to HIV is a big enough voting block for politicians to pander to?
codezero 5y ago
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.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  It should include Hep C at the least.
  - codezero 5y ago
    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.
    - at_a_remove 5y ago
      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.
      - codezero 5y ago
        Context here in the thread was deadly diseases.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bastardoperator 5y ago
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?
xxpor 5y ago
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-rate-press-release.html 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 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.
- chuckee 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS#Prognosis 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.
mullingitover 5y ago
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.
- snapetom 5y ago
  Makes sense, but you're still condemning the victim to a lifetime of drugs and compromised immune system with little consequence.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    I don't think any existing laws preclude civil suits for remediation of those damages. This is just removing the criminal charges.
shuckles 5y ago
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).
- droptablemain 5y ago
  Your comment seems to be downplaying the medical, economic, and social significance of contracting HIV in the modern age.
  - shuckles 5y ago
    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.
28801461 5y ago
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-exposure 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.

mc32 5y ago

It would definitely make sense to align these laws, if they would like to remain consistent.

jowday 5y ago

Wasn’t SB239 mostly passed so that people whose HIV treatment has rendered it untransmissible can resume normal sexual activity without having to warn everyone they hook up with? I’d agree it’s a weird way to go about it - probably would be better to just make it not a crime at all if HIV has reached undetectable levels in your blood for at least six months instead of reducing it to a misdemeanor for everyone with HIV - but I often see people bring up this law without the context of the advancements in HIV treatment that motivated it. Edit: Looks like it was mostly passed because the prior laws were almost exclusively used to charge sex workers with felonies when they’re brought in for minor charges like solicitation - they’d get convicted for solicitation, forcibly tested for HIV, and then get their misdemeanor solicitation charge upgraded to a felony if they tested positive, even if there’s no evidence they were going to engage in activity with a high risk of transmission or not take precautions to prevent transmission. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/09/knowingly-infecting-others-with-hiv-is-no-longer-a-felony-in-california-advocates-say-it-targeted-sex-workers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/1...

at_a_remove 5y ago
I think that a concern exists in some about the potential gap between "untransmissible" and someone saying that they are untransmissible. Compliance/adherence is a big deal. "In the United States, the rate of adherence to HIV therapy is generally low." as one meta-analysis went.
wayneftw 5y ago
The right thing to do would be to legalize prostitution. I guess "my body, my choice" somehow isn't a good enough argument for this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

abeppu 5y ago

I gotta disagree there -- that change merely brought HIV in line with other communicable diseases. Now, maybe one can make an argument that knowingly exposing someone to any of a class of communicable diseases, based on the seriousness of those diseases, should be a felony. But singling out HIV exposure to be categorically distinct from every other disease doesn't seem reasonable or just.

bingohbangoh 5y ago
The HIV medications aren't exactly side effect free and, unlike STDs such as herpes, result in death if you don't take them. HIV isn't just another communicable disease.
- 3520 5y ago
  You're right. HIV isn't just another communicable disease in someone with an undetectable viral load, it's just another untransmissible disease [0]. [0]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2720997 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/27209...
  - bingohbangoh 5y ago
    If you take diligent care to take the proper pill everyday, you can make in transmissible for your partner. But the risk of you not doing so is _very high_ to your partner. As such, it should be disclosed. If there is trust between people, then its acceptable.
    - 3520 5y ago
      I would argue that the risk of someone not taking their medication is not "very high". The individual with HIV is highly incentivized to take their medication because it ensures their continued survival.
chuckee 5y ago
Then the solution is to raise the penalty for other diseases similarly severe as HIV, not lower the penalty for HIV. Though I agree with the other comments that the risk of transmission should be taken into account (since medication, if taken, has lowered it considerably since the HIV-felony laws were passed), that's not what the law did.

lsy 5y ago

There are a lot of reasons HIV exposure laws don’t work well: they treat HIV differently than any other disease (because they were originally designed as anti-homosexual laws), and the “knowingly” part discouraged people from getting tested, which is worse for public health. The law referenced in the OP article is about consent, not disease transmission.

bingohbangoh 5y ago
If people don't get tested, they literally die. There's plenty incentive to get tested as-is.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Testing is not a cure. When treatment isn't available, the game theory becomes "expose yourself legally by knowing something that won't help you" vs "ignore it".
  - bingohbangoh 5y ago
    It's not a cure but getting tested means you can be put on a myriad of near-cures. The whole logic of this law is that getting HIV is no longer a death sentence after all.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]