alt Hacker NewsWe are unaware of any situations where HIV+ doesn’t turn into AIDS without treatment.
But being HIV+ is simply having a virus, not actively dying. HIV+ status also never clears - later tests that are “negative” mean your viral load is undetectable, at which point you can no longer transmit HIV to others. Undetectable = Untransmissable.
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That all makes sense. A couple things I’m still not clear on:
* If someone has a negative test after treatment, but that’s not counted as “cured”, does that imply it could (or maybe will) come back if treatment is stopped?
* What’s the importance of the distinction between HIV+ vs AIDS, from a public health or human perspective? We don’t talk about influenza+ vs “has the flu”, at least as far as I know. Does HIV+ carry less stigma than AIDS?
Thanks for your earlier answer. I know this specific infection has lots of difficult history. It’s hard to formulate my questions without sounding suspiciously close to a sea lion or something, but I sincerely want to know. And yes, I could google it but then it wouldn’t be an interesting conversation, or one others could read and learn from.
FTA, it seems that a (very) small number of people develop effective antibodies againt HIV.
"These antibodies are very, very rare, but they can be found in blood samples from a small number of people living with HIV.
The vaccine causes the immune system to produce more of these "broadly neutralizing" antibodies.