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FWIW, this is just one paper, but it argues that the important factor for HIV transmission in their rural Africa sample is having many lifetime sexual partners,
by telotortium 5y ago
FWIW, this is just one paper, but it argues that the important factor for HIV transmission in their rural Africa sample is having many lifetime sexual partners, and less so whether they're simultaneous (although that certainly makes it much easier to rack up the count): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60779-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60779-4
- thaumasiotes 5y agoSimultaneity is theoretically valuable to the virus in another way. If the average number of sexual partners in a community is 5, then a lot of links exist for the virus to flow through. But the links are of much "higher quality" if the partners are simultaneous, because in the serial case, a lot of paths through the graph are, when you look at them closer, made impossible by the chronology. If Marie sleeps with Jim, and then Jim sleeps with Agnes, and Agnes carries HIV, the virus can't flow from Agnes to Marie (along what appears to be a valid path in the sexual network) unless Jim goes back and sleeps with Marie again. So it's not just about lifetime sexual partners, though it's certainly true that high average lifetime sexual partners contributes to spread.