Gay Life Expectancy.. different?

08/11/2010 04:06:13 PM · #126

Originally posted by yanko:

Why are you limiting it to just North America? Is that where all the gays are located?

Because as I mentioned, HIV is a very different demographic disease in Africa.

Instead of me just spouting statistics, etc. I have found what is a mildly dated, but still excellent review from the New England Journal of Medicine from 1994 on homosexuality. I'm not trying to spin anything but am rather just trying to equip people with the best information available (perhaps there are more up to date reviews). With regard to this conversation the first section "Sexual Behavior" is pertinent and cites many articles comparing human sexual behavior.

I hope my posting something like this helps people understand I don't have an agenda here, I'm really functioning mainly as a medical doctor by equipping people with an understanding of how a disease operates.

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 16:07:00.

08/11/2010 05:02:26 PM · #127

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

Originally posted by yanko:

Originally posted by VitaminB:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

That doesn't make sense George.

Smoke ----> some get emphysema or lung cancer (overall at a much higher rate than non smokers) ---> they die early
Be gay ----> some get HIV (overall at a much higher rate than non-gays) ----> they die early

How does an insurance company distinguish between the two?

Simply being gay doesnt increase your chance of getting HIV though. Being promiscuous does.

Stop bringing logic into the equation. It'll only get ignored.

So, if 1 in 9 American gay males has HIV and 1 in 568 non-gay people have HIV, what is the distinguishing factor? Promiscuity?

Look people, there's no spinning the data. Somehow I get this feeling that it's verboten to say that being gay, on average, may shorten your life. That doesn't make any judgement on it, it's merely stating fact (or possible fact).

When you have a radically smaller pool of possible acceptable partners, promiscuity has a much higher incidence of a 'bad roll of the dice'. Even NON-promiscuous sexual activity has the same disadvantages.

Let's do a little thought experiment, shall we?

You're a gay 20-something in college. You're lonely. You're looking for love/companionship, or maybe just a booty call... just like any other hormonal college-aged male. So, you set out to find a partner. There are 1000 students at your school. Assuming a 5% gay population and roughly equal gender split, that means a straight male student has a baseline of 475 possible choices ((1000 - 50) / 2) for girlfriends, and a gay student has... 25. Let's say you don't click so well with your chosen partner, so you try again, once a semester on average. This is hardly slutty behavior when actively looking for a boyfriend/girlfriend. By the end of your schooling, you will have hooked up with 8 other guys... almost a THIRD of the gay male population. The equivalent straight behavior will only expose you to approximately one SIXTIETH of the female student body.

Let's say only only ONE person of each gender/orientation combination (for a total of four) has HIV at your school. What are your chances you'll end up sleeping with one of them if you're gay vs. straight? A lot, lot higher if you're gay. I'm not going to bother to do the numbers for the actual HIV infection rates mentioned above, but assuming a higher percentage of gays have HIV only makes the situation worse.

Even as a simple numbers game, the dice are totally loaded against gays.

Who's spinning the numbers now? What does being gay and promiscuity have to do with simple numerical odds?

08/11/2010 05:43:00 PM · #128

I 100% agree with what you are saying Mousie. If you are promiscuous and gay your risk is higher of contracting HIV because the % of your "pool" that has HIV is higher. If you haven't understood, I've been saying this all along. But you need to realize that is not the whole story and that behavioral risks (ie. the type of sex you have) also plays a role. If it didn't I need you to explain to me how the HIV "pool" became uneven to start with among groups.

I'd also say we all have out personal definition of "slutty".... ;)

yanko

Carl Zeiss 50mm ZE f/1.4 Planar T for Canon

08/11/2010 06:50:09 PM · #129

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

I'd also say we all have out personal definition of "slutty".... ;)

Well only the free thinking among us. The rest seem willing to just swallow whatever their chosen ~~masters~~ authorities feed them. ;)

08/11/2010 07:09:56 PM · #130

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that whether you're promiscuous OR NOT your odds are STILL worse, and not because the percentage of HIV is HIGHER in your group, but because your pool of possible partners is radically SMALLER. Putting it in terms of "% with HIV" is biased framing. To reiterate: It's not that more of your pool has HIV, it's that you, by definition, sleep with more of your pool, HIV or not. At a school of 300 or so students... given the exact same serial, non-slutty, six month dating cycle, if only one single student in your entire school that suits you has HIV... YOU WILL HAVE SLEPT WITH THEM BY THE TIME YOU GRADUATE. 15 gay students, 7.5 gay males, 8 failed relationships, 100% exposure to HIV. The only thing this has to do with 'being gay' is QUANTITY.

If 5% of straights have HIV, and 5% of gays have HIV, but you sleep with a larger percent of your pool because there are simply fewer of them available, your risk is STILL higher. GET IT? Same behaviors, same infection rates, same morality, different result.

And if you're going to take issue with my definition of 'not slutty' as serially dating one potential mate every half a year... you best start talking to your straight heterosexual college-aged acquaintances about their irresponsible behavior. Myself? I had one and exactly one romantic interest for the four years I was in school, and even that relationship was ill advised.

As a gay man, I've had the opportunity meet an awful lot of gay guys. Dozens! I personally know only ONE person with HIV. I know numerous gays in long-term partnerships, and even more who've tried their best and failed. JulietNN's posts were very frustrating for me... since she must be running around with an altogether different kind of homo than the ones I'm used to. Maybe we're too nerdy here in Silicon Valley to club it up and go home with random strangers all the time... but jeeze! Claiming insight into 'gay culture' and how 'different' it is after a glimpse into a narrow demographic in a particular region is not exactly helpful. Threesomes are the NORM? Only in fantasy land. Do people honestly think that gay guys are any easier to get into bed if they don't like you or don't want to sleep with you? That it's any easier to get three gays to agree on doing something, ANYTHING together than it is to convince three straights (even if one's a dude with a thing for two chicks going at it)? If I had a dollar for every time I had to listen to some poor queer whine about how his romantic interest simply isn't interested in return...

Please. You're making it out like being gay is like some endless sex carnival with people lining up to share your bed en masse... when being gay is a daily exercise in lack of opportunity. There just aren't enough options out there, even in a huge urban center. Why do you think so many of us move away from home?

No wonder some gays crack and lower their standards, and no wonder those lower standards lead to failed relationships. In a world where 'one true love' is the common ideal... and you're already pulling from a tiny pool... you're set up to fail. And that's WITHOUT straights invalidating your relationships left and right.

08/11/2010 07:34:10 PM · #131

Originally posted by Mousie:

You are getting your math wrong here Mousie. It IS because the % in the group is higher. Look at it this way. Let's assume the HIV rate is the same in both groups at your hypothetical college. There is 1 HIV positive gay man in the 25 which is 4%. If the rate is similar in the hetero population you will have 19 HIV positive people out of 475. If we attribute 25 different partners to our hypthetical gay and our hypothetical hetero we have a 100% chance of exposure in the gay student and a virtual 100% chance in the hetero (a 19/475 percent chance times 25. This isn't exactly right, but simplified and won't change the result by much. Suffice it to say it is near, but not exactly 100%.)

The difference in your scenario is that the HIV rates are different. In your example the rate in the gay population is 1/25 which is 4% and the rate in the hetero population is 1/475 which is 0.2%. Make sense?

Originally posted by Mousie:

If 5% of straights have HIV, and 5% of gays have HIV, but you sleep with a larger percent of your pool because there are simply fewer of them available, your risk is STILL higher. GET IT? Same behaviors, same infection rates, same morality, different result.

So, as I said above, this is wrong. If the % was the same, the risk would be the same. Would someone else like to confirm this so he can believe me?

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 19:36:25.

08/11/2010 08:46:20 PM · #132

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

So, as I said above, this is wrong. If the % was the same, the risk would be the same. Would someone else like to confirm this so he can believe me?

Only if you choose to ignore the number of sex partners someone sleeps with. Since this math works the same no matter what that rate is, you can't pin rate to the concept of promiscuity... there's a disparity in effect at any scale.

Crunching some hypotheticals, exaggerated to illustrate the math:

- Ratio of gay to straight: 1:10
- Overall population: 1100
- Gay population: 100
- Straight population: 1000
- Gays with HIV: 5%, or 5
- Straights with HIV: 5%, or 50
- Rate of sex partners per year, regardless of orientation: 100 (Ooh la la, what hounds!)

Straight result: Slept with 10% of the total straight population in one year
Gay result: Slept with 100% of the total gay population in one year

Are you telling me that sleeping with a mere 10% of a population with a 5% infection rate carries the same risk of exposure as sleeping with 100% of a population with the exact same 5% infection rate? Really? It sure looks like the size of the available pool of sex partners has a DIRECT effect on risk, one completely orthogonal to the orientation and promiscuity of our hypothetical studmuffin. In the first case, there's a good chance you might not have been exposed at all by the end of your debauchery. In the latter, you will have unavoidably slept with FIVE people infected with HIV.

Who's math is unsound?

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 21:23:01.

08/11/2010 09:16:33 PM · #133

And, given that my math IS sound... are you willing to admit that this is a factor that will act as a feedback loop over time, disproportionately effecting smaller populations as each new infection skews the percent more than it would in a larger population? The infection rate is a factor in overall risk, I've never denied that... but my point is that pool size itself exacerbates both one's exposure to and the impact of this risk, regardless of orientation or promiscuity.

You can't look at this on a national level either, that's not how the social dynamics of romance work. Think about it at the class level, the campus level, the office level, the town level, or the friends-of-friends level, where personal connections function best. That gets us down to populations around the sizes I'm describing. 1000, 300, 50. It's not beyond reason to think that a sex-positive gay man in a small town or college could end up sleeping with ALL possible opportunities in that context, so if any of them has HIV, he'll have been exposed. (All 2.5 people them in a company of 50! Even at the staid rate of one partner every two years, it's still only 2.5 people, and you'd be finished after a mere two years, unless you like sex with half-cadavers, in which case it'd be only four years.)

I grew up in Jericho VT. How many gays with the correct combination of sex, age, looks, and demeanor for me to find them appealing do you think I had available? Oh that's right... NONE! Good thing he didn't have HIV.

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 21:27:40.

08/11/2010 09:38:00 PM · #134

Originally posted by Mousie:

Are you telling me that sleeping with a mere 10% of a population with a 5% infection rate carries the same risk of exposure as sleeping with 100% of a population with the exact same 5% infection rate? Really?

Actually that's exactly what I'm telling you. I'm searching for the proper statistical calculator that will help us out because I believe the probablility is a binomial equation. The actual math makes my head hurt, but I know the principle is correct. The number is not going to be 100%, but it's going to be something like 98% or 99%.

I'll keep searching for the calculator.

EDIT: I think I'm getting closer, I actually want a hypergeometric probability calculator...*geek alert*

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 21:48:47.

08/11/2010 09:46:08 PM · #135

Uh... even if you find that calculator... 98% != 100%

P.S. Someone who's good at math please speak up, I don't want to write an algorithm to generate the values empirically by rolling dice, accumulating results, then calculating the infection rate by comparing a large number of runs. Even if it'd be easy!

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 21:54:18.

08/11/2010 09:56:34 PM · #136

Originally posted by Mousie:

Uh... even if you find that calculator... 98% != 100%

True, but I was wrong. ;) The actual number is 99.5%. You can enter it yourself at this link.

The only reason your example is 100% is that you are assuring that the hypothetical gay person sleeps with 100% of the population. In real life one hopes this is not a common scenario.

Population size 1000
Sample size 100
Number of successes in population 50
Number of successes in sample (x) 1
Hypergeometric Probability: P(X = 1) 0.0262
Cumulative Probability: P(X < 1) 0.0044
Cumulative Probability: P(X < 1) 0.0307
Cumulative Probability: P(X > 1) 0.9692
Cumulative Probability: P(X > 1) 0.9955

I entered your scenario. 1000 people, 50 have HIV, you sleep with 100. The bolded line is the probability that you sleep with at least one HIV positive person. If you want to continue to make the argument that the 0.0045% makes a difference over time, I would counter that the hetero actually is worse off since he can potentially sleep with many more HIV positive people if he is really unlucky. (He could have 50 exposures while the gay person could only have 5).

You can try to argue with math, but she's a cruel mistress...

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 22:03:01.

08/11/2010 10:29:37 PM · #137

Still less than 100%, which certainly matters over time.

Also note that HIV transmission is not 100% on exposure, and this is assuming a 100% transmission rate. That there's a 99.5% chance that you'll sleep with one or more, but in the other case it's guaranteed you'll sleep with all of them. You actually need to add in the risk of transmission itself, based on the average count you'd sleep with from each pool (some number between 1 and 50 not provided by the calculator, vs. a constant 5) and do another calculation using the infection rate and number of exposures. I'm actually curious to see that number. :)

MORE interestingly, as population size gets smaller and smaller, the disparity between the two values gets larger. Drop the scale down to 200 straights/20 gays, each with a 5% HIV infection rate and a 10 partners a year (to remove your 'forcing it' complaint), and the result is for straights is 40%, gays 50%. That's a full 10% more likely to have been exposed. Up the partners to 20 (preserving the original ratios) and the results are 66% straights, 100% gays.

I think my point still stands, given that I've been trying to tie it to small population sizes. In real life gays are often forced to form relationships (sexual or not) with 100% of the fellow gays in their social circles or go it alone... because there simply aren't that many. I grew up rural. So do a lot of us. There's a dearth of gays, I assure you.

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 22:32:30.

Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f2.8D

08/11/2010 10:33:55 PM · #138

I will grant, however, that the numbers are surprisingly close for large populations.

David Ey

Nikon D80

08/11/2010 10:43:41 PM · #139

Have you guys forgotten about the exposure you get to a carrier even though you didn't personally sleep with a positive but some number of those you slept with did? I think this must enter the equation somewhere.

08/11/2010 11:15:57 PM · #140

Originally posted by Mousie:

In real life gays are often forced to form relationships (sexual or not) with 100% of the fellow gays in their social circles or go it alone... because there simply aren't that many.

I'll give you more credit than you are giving yourself. In a typical population I gotta assume there are gonna be at least a few members that are so repugnant that even you can keep it in your pants... ;)

I'll reciprocate the actual admission that I had a point by telling you I was surprised that the number was even 10% different for very small populations. I thought it would pretty well be the same at all population sizes. Whether that matters or not in the real world? I'm not so sure. I'll wager the other factors we spoke of play a much larger role, the most obvious being that the % of HIV positives are nowhere near the same in the two populations.

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 23:19:25.

08/11/2010 11:16:55 PM · #141

Originally posted by David Ey:

In this condition there would be no such thing as a "carrier". Either you are HIV positive or not.

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

08/11/2010 11:38:13 PM · #142

Let's us the CDC and NEJM numbers to conjure up some real life scenarios.

City Population: 1 million
Gay Population: 4% (40,000)
Incidence of HIV in Gay Population: 1:9
Number of HIV positive gays: 4,444
Number of lifetime partners: 20

Hetero Population: 960,000
Incidence of HIV in Hetero Population: 1:568
Number of HIV positive heteros: 1690
Number of lifetime partners: 20

Risk of exposure to gay man: 90.5%
Risk of exposure to hetero: 3.4%

We can see that while we have kept the # of partners the same the different incidence numbers make a huge difference. Compound that by the increased rate of risky behavior (anal sex versus other sex) which makes the actual transmission rate higher and the numbers would be even more exacerbated. I actually found some apparent transmission rates, though I can't corroborate the sources. If we take the most conservative of the ranges we find that the risk of anal receptive sex is about 1:1300 per encounter. Multiplying this by the 90.5% we get a risk of 0.069% of transmission (odds 1 in 1450). The conservative risk for vaginal sex is 1:100,000. Multiply that by 3.4% and you get .000034% (odds 1 in 2.9 million).

Now those are just back of the envelope calculations, so don't hold me to them, but you can see my point. I also understand that not all gays have anal receptive sex and some heteros do (assumed to be mainly women), so the real numbers are going to be different.

Source for Risk of Infection

Message edited by author 2010-08-11 23:48:40.

Strikeslip

Canon EOS-5D

08/12/2010 06:52:50 AM · #143

Originally posted by Mousie:

...By the end of your schooling, you will have hooked up with 8 other guys...

Sadly, that's more hookups than I've had in my entire life. :-(

Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D

08/12/2010 10:57:18 AM · #144

Originally posted by Strikeslip:

Originally posted by Mousie:
...By the end of your schooling, you will have hooked up with 8 other guys...

Sadly, that's more hookups than I've had in my entire life. :-(

Hence the hypothetical. I was nowhere close myself. I'm basing that number mainly on the behavior of my straight friends and acquaintances from college, who actually had opportunity. Serial girlfriends, and all that. I went to a huge college's art program... but I knew only one other gay guy from my year, and he was way too queeny for me. Only one, in art school! Mostly it was hipsters, goth chicks, and granola girls. I literally had to go to MIT to find my first boyfriend, a less than successful LDR. :)

Louis

Nikon D800

08/12/2010 11:40:15 AM · #145

Originally posted by Mousie:

I went to a huge college's art program... but I knew only one other gay guy from my yea...

Are you kidding? You can't swing a dead cat anywhere in the vicinity of Toronto's OCAD without beaning two dozen gay men, of the queeny variety or not. Hell, you can't go anywhere in Toronto without tripping over gay men.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED

08/12/2010 12:02:12 PM · #146

Originally posted by Louis:

Hell, you can't go anywhere in Toronto without tripping over gay men.

Why are they on the ground?

Apple iPhone 5

08/12/2010 12:04:54 PM · #147

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

Originally posted by Louis:
Hell, you can't go anywhere in Toronto without tripping over gay men.

Why are they on the ground?

So they're closer to the wrath of Lucifer.