The best strategy to avoid all STD's is use of the most sexual organ you have and that is your brain. Common sense avoids all the problems and all the hassles. I am 56-years-old and when I was in my total whoring stages of life I am now almost ashamed to state that I was doing as many as 5 people per night on weekends.
I had the advantage of coming from a Medical family and my Stepfather was an MD. I read ALL of his medical journals and maybe for that reason I knew of "gay cancer" and all the other list of names before we arived at the common abbreviation of HIV.
The late 1970's were fun, but, at that time the main dangers were HIV, Mononeucleosis, Herpes, Crabs and Scabies. Now we have a vast difference. We have learned that the most virulent and dangerous things are several varieties of Hepatitis which are totally unresponsive to drug treatment. These are every bit as fatal as HIV and the death is far worse as the liver fails.
Now we have discovered that HIV is easily preventable as many mixed couples go on for decades by using common sense.
Medical science has also proven some very strange things. There are men who are born with a genetic defect which gives them an additional layer of coating on the outside of their cellular structure. These men will not contract the disease because the HIV virus cannot penetrate the cell structure. The virus is for a time active in the blood of these people until it very gradually dies as it cannot invade and reproduce in the manner it needs. Because of this there will be no antibody response. This is what the home tests and Eliza test look for. It does not mean however that under the right circumstances that these individuals could not be contageous. Not all people at sero-conversion have the fevers or flu-like illness that is supposedly an established marker. What would appear as a symptom such as low grade fever is normal in some people. I do not run 98.6 myself and never have. I run about 98.2 in the early morning and about 99.4 at night. I have had this variance since I was a child and it is normal for me.
None of the criteria expressed here are 100% indicators of HIV infection. I have because of my work and because of the time I did the most buried 52 people and attended the peak of those funerals between 1986 and 1999. Of those 52 people about a dozen of them all had HIV interviews to virtually guarantee that they would not become infected. They lost..... HIV is a retrovirus that does not act the same in all that it infects.
There are averages, what happens on an average, but an average is definitely no gurantee of anyting.
On average GM stock was worth an incredible amount of money two years ago. Look at GM, Chrysler Group, AIG and BofA stock right now. Several years ago averages would have classified all of the above as a great investment.
Lose your money or lose your life, accepting anything other than common sense protection is not the greatest decision.