 What is a blip? Who has them? Why do they have them? And what does it mean? No, I'm not talking about the sound that you hear on a radar screen. I'm talking about what happens to someone's viral load when they have HIV. A blip is just that. It's an irregularity in someone's viral load, presumably someone who is otherwise undetectable. I personally had a blip in February 2014, two years after my diagnosis with AIDS, and my viral load when I had the blip was at 20. When I get my blood work done and I have my viral load checked, anything under 20 copies per milliliter of blood is considered undetectable. So at this point, when I got my blood work done, my viral load was at 20 copies of the virus per milliliter. That was right on that line that made me detectable. Anything under 20 would have been undetectable, but I had exactly 20. So I was considered detectable, and I had been undetectable for the previous, almost two years. And suddenly I had a detectable viral load, even though I was taking my medicine on time every day, I was adhering to my ART appropriately. Despite having that blip, my doctor instructed me to continue taking my medicine as usual, go about my business as usual, and sure enough, my viral load went back down to undetectable, and it has stayed that way ever since. In recent history, studies have shown that people who are undetectable for six months or longer are sexually untransmittable. This begs the question. If someone has a blip, and they don't know it, and they have sex with someone who is HIV negative, will they give them the virus? Are they then, as not being undetectable any longer, therefore transmittable, able to transmit the virus to someone who is HIV negative? There are many, many debates and discussions about this online. I did a video for Jubilee Media in which we talked about having HIV, and the idea of disclosure came up, and inevitably the conversation about untransmittability came up, and one of the biggest arguments, aside from adherence to the medication, is that people experience blips, and during those blips, you are exposing someone to HIV, and therefore, we cannot rely on the idea that someone who is undetectable is untransmittable. I instinctively knew that there was something wrong with this argument. If this was such a danger and a risk, why would physicians and studies, and the CDC, and the World Health Organization, and all these countries and organizations say that someone who's undetectable is untransmittable? If there's this big, looming pink elephant in the room of the fact that anybody could have a blip at any time, and therefore could transmit the virus, why would all these organizations, countries, and people take on the responsibility of saying that there is zero risk of transmitting HIV if you're undetectable? So I decided to dig in a little deeper and find out what the facts are. What do the studies say? Science, not stigma. First, I wanna point out that most blips are, in fact, between 20 to 199 copies per milliliter of blood. Milliliter is basically a drop of blood. So remember what I said. My test is able to detect a viral load of 20 or greater. Anything below that is considered undetectable. So when someone typically does have a blip, it tends to fall in the range of 20 to 199 copies per milliliter of blood. Now, when we talk about people who are undetectable and untransmittable, this means that they are undetectable for six months or longer and have a viral load under 200. By and large, major majority of people who do have a blip still fall in this range of undetectability being under 200 copies. Those of you who are concerned, many, many people experience blips and are unaware of blips and have sexual acts without protection with HIV negative people and do not transmit the virus because they still cannot transmit the virus. I do wanna point out the study where discordant couples or couples where one person is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative have many, many sexual acts over a period of time and in this study, eight people did transmit the virus. This study is known as the HPTN052 study. 1,172 couples followed through to the end of the study. These were HIV, serodiscordant or couples where one person was positive and one person was negative and primarily heterosexual. Of these 1,171 couples, only eight transmissions occurred. The reasons being the HIV positive partner was put on ART treatment at the beginning of the study. Four of these transmissions occurred in the beginning stages of treatment when the HIV positive partner was presumably not fully virally suppressed. The other four transmissions occurred because treatment had failed, either due to a lack of adherence to the medication or because that person had a strain of HIV that was resistant to the drug. Aside from these eight transmissions, there were zero other transmissions that occurred, even though there were presumably hundreds if not thousands of sexual acts performed between these 1,171 couples over the course of four years. And before we move on, I have to say a quick thank you to Movement. I partnered up with them for this video as well as offering me these awesome ever scroll blue light glasses. These bad boys filter out blue light so that when I'm spending hours and hours editing on my MacBook, they filter out the blue light so the light's not as harsh, less likely to give me a headache. And then at the end of the night, when I'm ready to turn down, it's much easier to do. Not only that, but I actually really like these glasses just for style. I think they're cool. I think they're slick. I love that the frames are clear. There's a little metal on the side and you have the MVMT logo emblazoned there. I use it primarily functionally for the computer screen at home or even watching TV at night. But I do like to wear it out just because I think it's stylish and it looks cool. So what I really like about these watches is that they're not outrageously priced but they're still really sleek and stylish and they kind of have like a luxury brand feel to it. I'm really digging this one. It's called Element Chrono and it's in carbon gray. I like the gray because I can pair it with a lot of different colors. Kind of like gray and black are my go-to's for a lot of things just because I like to switch up my style a lot, wear different colors and it's pretty safe to say the gray will go with a lot of things. Luxury brand vibes without luxury brand prices. And that's essentially what the two guys who founded MVMT were trying to do. They were trying to find watches and apparel that gave off that luxury vibe but then were turned away because the prices of so many of these brands were just so astronomically high and you know watches can get really expensive. So I think it's cool that they found this niche in the market where you're gonna pay a little bit more but you're gonna get a lot more style and bang for your buck as far as aesthetics go. I'm not like a watch head and I need it to be like synced to the satellite and the moons around Jupiter. I just need it to work and as long as it works, we're good. And that's what it does. You know for me it's more about aesthetics and the way it looks and the way it makes me feel wearing it because I don't wanna wear a watch if it's clunky. It's cool, it's dope and I like that the watch face is like bigger than normal. It just has that kind of contemporary feel to it. Check the info box below. I'll put a link to their Instagram there as well as a link where you can get 15% off on their website. They have free shipping worldwide as well as free returns. So check it out, give it a look. If you like it, there it is. You got a 15% off. All right, let's continue on with the video. The next study I wanna mention is the partner study and this study happened between 2010 and 2014. This study included both heterosexual couples and gay couples and all the HIV positive people and the study were on ART therapy for years already. After 900 couples had sex more than 58,000 times, there were zero transmissions of HIV. Let me repeat that again. After 900 couples had sex more than 58,000 times, there were zero transmissions. Statistically, theoretically, we can all presume that blips happened. There were definitely blips that just happened within these couples' health history during this four year span. Whether they were aware of it or not, whether it showed up in lab result or not, there were without a doubt blips that happened and yet zero transmissions. 900 couples, so 900 people who had HIV did not transmit it to 900 people who did not have HIV. 58,000 sexual acts, that's a lot and that's just this one partner study. Moving on to partner two. The partner two study enrolled couples between 2014 to 2018. It involved 783 couples and it involved over 77,000 sexual acts. Partner two is actually the second phase of partner. So in partner two, they wanted to include more gay couples and so a lot of the gay couples that were included in the 2010 to 2014 study were extended from 2014 to 2018 in the partner two. Now they did enroll more couples. All the couples that they enrolled into partner two were all gay. So with a total of 783 gay couples, some of whom who'd been in the study from 2010 all the way to 2018 and those from 2014 to 2018 who enrolled later for partner two out of 77,000 times that these couples had sex, there were once again zero transmissions. Of all these studies, science and the data all remain the same. There are zero transmissions at HIV when people are adherent to their medication and when they don't have a resistant strain there is zero transmission when undetectable. And we are talking now about hundreds of thousands of times couples having sex. And let me make it very clear. These couples are not using condoms. The HIV negative partner is not on PrEP and they are not using PEP which is post-exposure prophylaxis which you can take after having sex as a precaution. So there's no condoms, no PrEP, no PEP. The HIV positive person is undetectable and they are having sex and there are zero transmissions. Presumably you can imagine that there are blips that happen that happened during this study had to be. Statistically it just had to be the case. Who knows if these blips were over 200? I don't know but there were definitely blips and there was zero transmissions. I hate to be a dead horse over the head but the data speaks for itself. For the naysayers out there the burden of proof of evidence is on your shoulders to prove that there is risk. Because the data, the science proves that there is zero risk. So if you're gonna make that claim the burden is on you to prove otherwise. There is a reason why governments, organizations, scientists, leaders are all saying that there is zero risk of transmission for those people who are HIV undetectable for six months or longer because the science and the data and the facts prove that that is the case. Blips aside that is just fear mongering and it's understandable that people are afraid. This is relatively a new finding that's endorsed by the public. It's been around but to be endorsed by countries and organizations and people is relatively new and so a lot of people are traumatized and scared and remember the very recent history that was the AIDS epidemic and how scary that was and how very real and how many people were lost. A whole generation of people were lost to the virus. So understandably people want to be cautious and safe. But there is a point where I have to put my foot down and that is when fear is leading the narrative. Fear is leading conversations and arguments online especially I see it and it's not based on any fact or figures, data, it's just stigma and so we have to combat that with the facts and with information and that's why I decided I wanted to make this video. So let's not sweat the small stuff, the blips are the small stuff and they really don't affect our transmission rates. As long as a person is responsible and they're taking their medicine as they should be and they don't have a resistance to the drugs and by the way if they had a resistance to the medication they wouldn't be able to say that they're undetectable because they would have never gotten to that place. So anybody who is adherent to the medication and undetectable does not have a strain of the HIV that is resistant to the medication. That leaves one final argument that a lot of people make and is that how do we know if people are adherent to taking their medication as they're supposed to? And that's a fair argument and people are flawed and it happens. Now I don't have any studies or facts to show that missing a dose or two or three won't make a difference or does make a difference. I don't have the facts so I'm not gonna speak on that but it is a fair concern and so I leave that open ended. What I can say is that those of us with HIV it's in our best interest to take our medication and to do so responsibly and by and large almost everyone that I meet or come across is someone who's very much invested in their health and wants to live and wants to be healthy and wants to take their medicine as they're supposed to. And not to get too off track but there are constantly new treatments being developed including injectable medicine that will stay in the body for a month, three months, maybe eventually six months, who knows and that wouldn't negate the concern over adherence because as long as you've been to your doctor in the last month, three months, six months you know that the medication is doing its job inside you and you don't have to worry about taking a pill every day. So knock on wood that comes sooner than later. Thanks for sticking around and watching this video. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this, your comments, your arguments. Maybe you disagree with something I had to say. Maybe I pointed out something that you hadn't thought of or enlightened you in a way. Who knows what? I wanna hear what you have to say. Please leave a comment down below, like this video if you like it, subscribe. If you haven't subscribed already I'm gonna be making a lot more content just like this and I will see you guys soon.