There's two common things with people who still contract HIV. First, in he bareback culture, there is a sub-culture that eroticizes the transmission of HIV. For this reason, they don't take meds, and deliberately seek to infect other people. As bad as it sounds, there are also people out there who actually want and deliberately try to catch HIV for some reason. While I absolutely do NOT understand why people would want to deliberately infect another person, or why anyone would want to deliberately get infected themselves, the sad reality is that such people do exist.

The second part (especially in the USA) has to do with access to medications. In many cases, there's an alarming number of people who simply do not have access to HIV meds, either for financial reasons because they do not have insurance, or because they cannot afford to access the proper medical care in which to stay on top of treatment. These cases no doubt play a large role in why the infection rate is so high.

I also find the commercials rather comical in a way, as they seem to suggest PrEP as a miracle drug, and completely discount or otherwise omit the fact that most people who are HIV+ are on meds themselves, so they cannot get infected from that person anyway. The 0.1% that do get infected while on PrEP are usually "super sluts" (pardon the term), who generally have no regard for protecting their own health in the first place, and seem to be under the impression that if they take PrEP, nothing bad can happen to them. It is both sad and scary.

You don't become undetectable overnight. Who said people stop having sex until they become undetectable. Which could take months. Alot of people aren't even having the u=u conversation. Let alone the detectable one. I could talk about my ex all day. He's been detectable for almost two decades and ain't stopped anything.

Even 5 years ago around the time I was infected Prep still wasn’t as publicized as it has become the past few years. There weren’t all the pop up ads on Grindr like there are now. I live in a small town and I didn’t know where to go to get it. I was embarrassed to ask my primary doctor. And of course I didn’t think
I needed it because I was “usually” safe although for me safe meant like 95 percent of the time and it only takes one time with the wrong person.

Back in the dark ages. Advertisement. Used to show sick people getting treatment. Now they use models that out conquering the world. Doing activities most of us don’t do.

Brad, sadly, I believe it's largely because some people either are just ignorant about hiv, too embarrassed to be honest with their medical provider to request testing and/or PrEP, or just incorrectly think "that can't happen to me".