Why Testing Positive On Any Of The HIV Tests May Not Mean Much

Here's a list of factors that just might skew the results of an HIV test.  So if you test positive, you might not want to rush out and order a coffin and burial plot, just yet. 

 I've highlighted a few of the factors below that seem problematic to me because they just might affect a lot of people not in the risk groups associated with AIDS deaths.  For Example:  seventy-to-ninety percent of the (adult?) population has Herpes simplex I and twenty percent of sexually active adults have Herpes simplex II.  

Why I Will Never Knowingly Allow Myself To Be Tested For HIV.

I remember when the big AIDS scare broke out in the '80's.  

Breathless commentators predicted that the deadly disease would ravage our society.  Even though it first erupted among the male homosexual and illicit needle-using communities, it was caused by a virus and could easily jump, we were warned,  from bath house to Baptist picnic.  

Our bodies would have no resistance to this new virus, and it would strike us down as easily as smallpox--brought from Europe by the pilgrims--smote the natives in the New World.  Initial estimates were that in the United States alone, a hundred million of us would succumb to the dreaded HIV.

Well, that never happened.  Casualties pretty much stayed in the first groups of male same-sexers and needle junkies.