[Question #6627] Possible blood contact
12 months ago
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Edward W. Hook M.D.
12 months ago
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Welcome to our Forum and thanks for your question. Congratulations on recognizing and addressing your OCD regarding what you describe as your irrational fear of HIV. My sense is that your concerns are a manifestation of your unwarranted fears and encourage you to discuss this with your therapist. If you think it might be helpful, please feel free to print and show this to your therapist.
Let me review some of the elements of what you have just described to me:
1. You do not know if what you saw was blood or not and do not think your bike tire when through it.
2. Even in the unlikely circumstance was that it was blood, the chance that it was blood from a person with untreated HIV is far less than 1% (i.e. less than 1% of Americans have HIV and of those who are infected, many are treated and thus non-infectious to others). thus there is a greater than 99% chance, IF it was blood, that it did not contain infectious HIV.
3. HIV is not transmitted through the sorts of events you describe. There are absolutely no cases of HIV in which the sort of environmental exposure you describe has led to HIV infection. The virus becomes virtually immediately non-infectious upon exposure to the environment. You are not going to be the first.
I hope that this perspective is helpful. There is no imaginable way that the events you describe from yesterday could put you at any risk for HIV or other blood borne infection. EWH
12 months ago
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