"Ending HIV" - pie in the sky?

My mind is still not made up, in regards to the latest ACON campaign for HIV. The "Ending HIV" logo/catch cry sounds a bit pie in the sky for me. Although it's better than what they were originally planning (I attended one of a number of focus groups in the development of the campaign). 

Here's the add from the campaign:

 

It all sounds marvellous doesn't it. We're all going to make daisy chains and sing kumbyah as we all act in unison...... 

What I have a problem with about this campaign is that it seems to ignore the fact that we live in the real world, which is far from perfect. Of course ideally everyone of us would wear condoms during sex, take our medication on time, and test regularly if we're negative. The thing is though that condoms aren't always 100% effective (break, slip off), people don't always wear them in the heat of the moment. In cases like mine I was so fucked up mentally I didn't care if I lived or died at the time and safe sex was the last thing on my mind. I don't see a massive overhaul of the mental health services in Australia now or anytime soon. Some people are just hopeless at taking pills every day, let alone on time, and can therefore be walking around with a detectable viral load increasing the risk of it being spread. Not to mention people take drugs and sensibilities fly out the window.

In an article about the campaign, Geoff Honner finishes his piece with this:

Your choice. Our collective consequences. more

I dunno. I've been at the bottom and I know what it's like. Being on a path of self destruction it could be argued is hardly a choice, but rather a condition that arises when life is too much for you. I certainly didn't chose to be like that. And we all know just how much LGBT people are way over represented in mental health statistics. Yet are we to believe that someone in this condition will suddenly start acting responsibly, simply by choosing to do so? Fuck I wish it'd been that easy for me! It was years of therapy and anti-depressants that stopped my decline. I'm sure I'm not the only one either.

Then there are the pills themselves, which now they want everyone to be on so that we'll all have undetectable viral loads. Well, it didn't work for me. I've just started back on them after a two year break. Allergic reaction to one of the HIV pills saw me have acute kidney failure and months of recovery. In those two years I was detectable, albeit at a low rate of about 5,000. 

There's other variables too. What about an influx of tourists in some big event hosted by Sydney, or simply the general tourism that happens all the time. Overseas people on holidays here aren't going to feel a hell of a lot of responsibility in regards to this campaign. What about the straight population? There was a bit of an outbreak in the straight population in Western Australia recently, as mining blokes would take holidays up in Asia and have unsafe sex with the locals, unknowingly catch HIV, then come back to Australia and have unsafe sex with their wives. 

I was pleased to see this at the end of the opinion piece then, that the best way to stay safe is still with condoms:

What it does means is each of us acting on what all of us already know: the best way to avoid HIV is to use condoms when fucking with guys you don’t know or where HIV status (including your own) is unknown, unclear or unreliable. ‘Unreliable’ is another way of saying “I was neg when I last tested back in um….” and it’s not qualified by how hot he is. more