Comment by MyelinatedT
10 hours ago
Not really, in most cases! I read up on the per-exposure chances of actually picking up HIV a while back[1] and was shocked at how low the risk is, especially for heterosexual men (4 in 10,000 per-exposure; insertive vaginal sex with an infected partner).
Even in the highest-risk scenario (receptive anal sex) the risk is ~138/10,000 per exposure.
pregnancy would seem rare too if you only looked at the averaged per-incident chances (swings from 0% to 33%ish for about 2 days for a perfectly healthy breeding-aged couple); or if you were to compare the amount of heterosexual sexual encounters overall to the amount of pregnancies.
but that's not really how the risk should be considered.
Most people have sex more than once.
If your risk is 138/10000 per exposure and you have sex with your partner once a week for a year, that's about a 50% chance of infection overall. (Assuming the infection risks are independent, which they might not be.)
If it's 4/10000 per exposure then that's a 2% chance of infection after a year, which for sure isn't huge but I personally would take an annual 2% risk of getting HIV quite seriously.
(Obviously the "once a week" figure is an arbitrary choice for the sake of simplicity, and I am well aware that some people have a lot more sex than that and some have a lot less.)