“I’m a Twink On PrEP, I Can Do Anything!”

Even Pack for Camp?

Just a quickie this week because I’m buried under piles of laundry that need to be washed and packed to go to camp with the no-longer-7^th-grader (thank goodness that’s over, 7^th grade kinda completely and utterly sucked). I love that the camp sends this long packing list that basically asks for her entire wardrobe, a decent part of my linen closet, at least two aisles of CVS, and a smattering of products from Dick’s Sporting Goods and then says, “We all have a tendency to overpack, try not to.”   

While I was folding her 42 changes of clothes (and stamping each one with her name), I watched the first episode of a new Netflix show called Glamorous. It stars Kim Cattrall as Madolyn Addison, a former super model turned cosmetics giant who is realizing her brand has gotten stale and Miss Benny as Marco Mejia, a queer influencer who hasn’t gotten his personal brand off the ground (he has fewer than 1,000 followers). They meet at the makeup counter in the mall when he’s working and she’s trying to check on her products incognito (though why anyone who was trying not to get noticed would wear a full-on “Carmen Sandiego” outfit complete with hat is unclear).

He^* does a great job on her face while giving an emotional speech about what makeup means to real people and explaining why her legacy brand is not what it used to be. In a B-movie twist that we totally didn’t see coming, she hires him on the spot.

Marco has never had a “real job,” and the first week doesn’t go well. He has movie-trope troubles with the basics of office life (copy machines, water coolers, phone systems), leaves top secret samples in someone else’s uber, and makes enemies with Madolyn’s son (who is also gay, “but not that kind of gay,” and calls him a “twink” in a derogatory way). 

Later in the episode, Marco makes an impassioned plea to save his job in which he acknowledges his mistakes but argues that he knows makeup better than the rest of them (you know, despite the fact that they’ve all be running a cosmetics company for decades). If they fire him, he says—while wearing a pink crop top, tiny blue shorts, and fabulous sneaker-heels—he will land on his feet because “I’m a twink on PrEP, I can do anything!”    

I’m not sure I’m going to keep watching because it seems to be devolving into a workplace power/sabotage drama, and those stress me out too much, but I absolutely loved that line.

It also reminded me that I hadn’t shared the CDC’s latest HIV data which show that young gay and bisexual men are the driving force behind fewer new infections and more treatment successes. See below for more.

And wish me luck packing, because in addition to telling me not to overpack, camp also wants everything they asked for to fit into two duffle bags.

*While the actor recently came out as transgender, the character’s gender identity is not discussed in the first episode and Neflix’s promotional material uses he/him pronouns which is why I used them here. A recent article suggested that Marco will transition at some point in the series as well.

HIV Stats Going in the Right Direction; CDC Credits Young MSM

In May, the CDC released 2021 HIV data. It always takes about 18 months to get this data together, but this year it was more hotly anticipated because experts agreed that 2020’s data reflected the pandemic more than it reflected any true trends in HIV prevention or treatment. This newest data showed progress: there were fewer new infections, more people on PrEP, more people who knew their HIV status, and more people living with HIV who had reached viral suppression.

All of this is good news. However, HIV continues to hit already marginalized communities the hardest, and the data show these improvements were not equal across racial/ethnic groups, sexual orientation, or geographic locations.

The CDC estimates there were 32,100 new HIV infections in 2021 which is a 12% drop from 2017. Men who have sex with men (MSM) continued to have the most new infections, and racial disparities continued even within this community. Of the new cases attributed to male-to-male contact, 8,100 were in Black/African American men; 7,200 were in Latino men; and 4,800 were in White men.

New infections among young people ages 13 to 24 dropped 34% from 2017. The CDC credits this decline to young gay and bisexual men with new infections among this group falling from 7,400 in 2017 to 4,900 in 2021. The data suggest that more people in this age group know their HIV status than in 2017 (56% up from 42%) and used PrEP (20% of those who would benefit from it up from just 8% in 2017). Among those in this age group living with HIV, 68% have reached viral suppression compared to 60% in 2017.

PrEP or pre-exposure prophylaxis is a prevention strategy in which people who do not have HIV but are at risk take antiviral medication. PrEP was a game changer when it was introduced in 2012 as it can be up 99% effective in preventing HIV transmission. Still, uptake has not been as widespread as hoped. The CDC estimates that there are 1.2 million people in the country who could benefit from PrEP, but only 30% of them are on it as of 2021. This is a big jump from 2017 when only 13% of this group had been prescribed PrEP, but it’s not enough, and coverage is uneven with far fewer Black or Hispanic people receiving PrEP compared to white people.

Viral suppression rates are another measure of how much progress we are making toward ending the HIV epidemic because they indicate how many people living with HIV are being successfully treated. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) keeps HIV from making copies of itself. If people living with HIV continue to have access to and take their medicine, they should reach a point where the virus becomes undetectable in their blood. (The CDC considers undetectable as under 200 copies of the virus per milliliter of blood, but most people on ART have viral levels between 20 and 50.) People who are undetectable cannot transmit HIV sexually. People who stay undetectable for six months are considered virally suppressed.

There are two plans in place—the National HIV/AIDS Strategy 2022-2025 and the Ending the Epidemic—to help coordinate HIV prevention, care, and treatment efforts. While we made progress in 2021, the CDC notes that we need to do more to reach the goals set out forth, especially in the communities hardest hit by the epidemic.