Yeah, I get that. But even antiretrovirals are not available to a lot of people. In Europe they must be approved and some of them are not. The same is true in the USA. Then, in the USA, you have to be able to afford them because your insurance will help you pay for them or you have lots of money. In Europe, where socialdemocracy is still in place, the public health system may or may not decide it’s a thing you can have access to. If it decides you can’t have access to it, you have to pay. So, um, you know, your point is a good one, but it’s a moot point. I also did not directly refer to prophylactic drugs in my comment. You just assumed I was talking about them. Read my comment again and think about what I’ve said here about access to medicines that prevent the spread of the disease. You unwittingly made a ton of assumptions about my comment.

Ah! I get it, then. I guess I was reading this poster as a kind of warning to recreational drug users because I didn’t put my pharmacology hat on. Thanks for the clarification. The more I interact with people on this thread, the more I see how it makes sense to post warnings like this.

It’s good news for this place in the world and I hope other places in the world pay attention and make these medical marvels available to everyone. In the EU country I live in, you can have access to these kinds of drugs if you say you are a prostitute and you have to somehow prove you are a sex worker to get access to them. It looks like in Innery Sydney, Australia, they actually tried a different approach which made medicine available to people who wanted to protect themselves from accidental exposure. It’s really a no-brainer, medical professionals and politicians: Stop making people feel guilty about having some fun a screwing around with people of the same sex and start helping them protect themselves when they’re just a little too tipsy to think and have an “accident.”

Wow! I have been absent from the United States for a long time (I’m assuming this is from the USA, where I’m from). What a thing! I had no idea this was typical back home. I guess it’s a good thing. I mean, it prevents death, right?

But you see, this approach is an international problem on both sides of the tipping argument. Are you against tipping and think the worker should be compensated by their employer? That’s great. Do you believe in this philosophy enough to actually seek out politicians who will make sure employers compensate the workers? All around the world, it seems that nobody cares that much about workers when it’s time to vote. Workers in countries where tipping is not customary earn a crappy salary that does not allow them to live without depending on the kindness of their families. Good luck making yourself independent of your parents on a typical salary a waiter earns in Spain, for example. Workers in the USA where tipping is all the rage don’t do much better. You can work in the retail industry and earn minimum wage, or sometimes slightly higher than minimum wage and live out of your car or live with your parents. You can work at a restaurant and depend on tips and live out of your car. You can be a visiting professor of sociology at whatever university and live out of your car. In Spain, you can have a PhD and ghost write for full professors and live out of your car or you can wait tables and not have a car and live with your parents. I mean, really. There is no difference in the end. Wages from work are low all around the world. They are low in democratic countries because people care more about some other issue and not about the people who bring food to their table at a restaurant, no matter what kind of tipping culture is predominant in that democratic country.

Wow, I guess you know what part of the city you’re in when you have that appointment with this dentist.

“If you’re alive, could I interest you in some dessert? We have a wide selection of desserts! If you don’t order dessert and you’re not dead, please leave. Your table is useless because you aren’t buying anything more!”

Do parents pet their children now? So strange!

Yeah, it goes along with the low standards that define probable cause. Policing, just like a lot of professions, is subject to bean counting when bean counting is not appropriate. Voters love to see statistics that flaunt “more arrests.” Funny how people love numbers without really understanding what the numbers mean.

I mean, law enforcement occasionally uses polygraph tests in their investigations even though that type of “evidence” isn’t admissible in court and, to be honest, what kind of scientific credibility does a piece of technology like a polygraph even have? They’ll use whatever they can get their hands on even if it’s questionable. Some police forces probably even have a psychic consultant or something. It scares me.