You needn't be at all worried. These all were completely zero risk situations in regard to HIV transmission. Here are some details.

Nobody in the world has ever been known to acquire HIV from events like this. For example, even after 10+ years of lving in the same household with HIV infected persons, sharing toilets, towels, eating utensils, and sleeping in the same bed, no household contacts ever catch HIV (unless of course they also are sex partners of the infected person or share drug injection equipment with them). Cuts, nicks, hand scrapes, etc. make no difference. If HIV could be transmitted in these ways, it would be far more common than it is; would not be heavily concentrated as it is among gay men, sex workers, and injection drug users; and there would be at least occasional infections in people who did not have these traditional risks. (Whenever someone with newly diagnosed HIV says s/he doens't know where it came from, or they s/he has no apparent risk factors, it always turns out s/he is wron  -- either because they don't want to admit the truth, or because of unrecognized expsoures, like a sex partner being infected but previously unknown to them.) The same applies to the straw sharing with an infected person with a cut and bleeding lip. In fact, swalliowing a small amount of HIV infected blood is no risk.

You should not have been advised to be tested after the shared straw event, and also did not neeed HIV testing after any other the other events. The symptoms you describe are not at all typical for newly acquired HIV. And of course that your sibling got a sore throat means nothing:  people get viral colds, sore throats, etc all the time.

If you are sexually active without a mutually committed monogamous uninfected partner, then on that basis you need HIV testing from time to time. Same if you ever use injection drugs and share injection equipment. Other than these, there is never a reason for HIV testing. (Well, health experts recommend everybody be tested once, in case of unrecognized risks. But you've not done that, so need not do it again unless and until you have real risks.)

So all is well, no worries at all! I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

HHH, MD

Since household exposure has never been known to transmit HIV, the biological reasons don't really matter. But they have to do with a) short survival of HIV in the environment, b) not enough blood or body fluids transmitted by such contact, and c) for infection to take hold, blood or fluids with HIV must have contact with certain types of cells that for the most part are deep inside the body.

Trust me on this:  you could not have caught HIV and do not have it. Believe it, accept it, and move on without worry.

I will just add that you need to be careful reading online information about HIV risks. Like many anxious persons, you are being drawn to information that increases your fears and missing the reassuring information that also is there. You're also putting the most negative spin on most if not everything you find. For example, no responsible resource says you can catch HIV simply by touching an open wound.

I suggest you carefully re-read my replies above and concentrate on every word. If despite that you still remain concerned, I recommend professional counseling. I have to suspect you have OCD or perhaps other potentially significant psychological disability; it is not normal to be so resistant to reasoned, science based reassurance. I suggest counseling from compassion, not criticism. But in the meantime, please do your best to forget about HIV and not be tested for it. There is no chance you are infected, assuming no standard sexual or drug use risks.

That completes the two follow-up comments and replies included with each question and so ends this thread. Please do not be tempted to start a new one on these same questions; we delete repeated anxiety driven questions without reply (and without refund of the posting fee).

I do hope the discussion has been helpful. Best wishes to you.