What STI's might I have?

The HIV risk is going to be nil.

There are things you could - but probably didn't - catch. The only way to know is to test - for most things, results will be valid in a week or so.

If sex with a condom isn't safe enough for you, what would be?

I'm not sure. I don't have any knowledge about sexual health.

I'd suggest getting some before you're sexual with anyone else again.

If she had HIV, which she almost certainly doesn't (presuming she's not from sub-Saharan Africa, there's less than a 1 in 1,000 chance) and if she wasn't receiving any treatment (which she probably would be), and if you didn't use a condom (which you did), then the chance of getting HIV would be about 1 in 1,000 = less than one in a million overall. Using a condom makes it nil, because...

... no, it can't.

I should have mentioned, she was a sex worker...

Ah, these little details that are so easy to forget

Doesn't change the maths much: very high levels of condom use mean a much lower level of HIV than you might expect among female sex workers, and lots of testing means that any that do have it are very likely to be receiving treatment that can reduce the chances of transmission to as close to nil as you can imagine (and that testing will have covered other things too). But the fact that you used a condom means, again, that even if she did have HIV, it's not going to happen.

What you have may be a case of guilt...

I would have thought that a significant minority of them have HIV. And how do you know that they get tested frequently?

And if someone is undergoing treatment for it, how do you know that it prevents transmission.

And I've read up that condoms are 98% effective. What about the other 2%?

So are you basically saying that the chance of me having it is less than 0.1%?

In the UK, the research backs me up, but if you thought that, why pay to have sex with someone and, as far as you're concerned, put yourself at risk?

Because I've worked in the sexual health sector in a specialist sex worker service. Amongst other things, STIs are bad for business.



It's been known for at least eight years that after six month's treatment with anti-retroviral drugs that suppress the virus the chances of transmission are negligible. Do an online search for 'Swiss statement'.



You've been looking at the contraceptive effectiveness, which measures how many women get pregnant in any one year using a particular method, not 'one off' chances of infection. So as well as involving roughly 100x the number of times of having sexual intercourse, the pregnancy stats concern something that is much more likely than HIV transmission (about half of women will become pregnant if unprotected intercourse happens at the right point in their cycle).



Vastly less, to the point of being nil.

That 0.1% is 'she has HIV, which isn't being treated, and you didn't use a condom'. Any one of those three not being correct would reduce the risk to nil (if she doesn't have HIV, you can't catch it from her / using a condom) or negligible (the effects of modern treatment), and we know at least one of them was: you used a condom.

As I say, you've got guilt / remorse / worry, not HIV.

Like how many % of sex workers are with HIV?

Ah yes, the contraceptive effectiveness is 98%. What is the STI prevention effectiveness?

And yes there is a big element of guilt right now. I think I need time to get over it.

A few years ago, it was about 1% for users of a service for female sex workers and it was strongly linked to the person's history of IV drug use / coming from somewhere like sub-Saharan Africa with a high prevelence.



Depends on the STI, hence the comment above that there are things you could have caught (but probably didn't).



You can either go 'both of us got what we wanted: she got paid and I lost my virginity' and stop feeling guilty or go 'oh no, I shouldn't have done it' and live with it.

And I should have asked what's the % effectiveness of the condom preventing the spread of HIV?

Ethical issues means no-one is exactly sure: you can't make one group of people have sex with someone who's HIV+ without a condom and compare what happens to them with another group having the same sorts of sex with the same people but using condoms.

But 'very high'. One big study of UK gay and bisexual men found that everyone who was HIV+ had had anal sex without a condom, and no-one who had never done so was HIV+, for example.

Loads of reasons.

There's a physical difference, but a larger emotional one.