It's one thing for schools to give out condoms, quite another to give out condoms with suggestive wrappers

"Well we have these condoms, but we should wait till we're married, although this wrapper is pretty suggestive, ok pants off."

I wouldn't. I only care that my boys obey Rule #1, handed down from their grandmother and great grandmother (she was a mother at 15):

If you can't be good ... BE SANITARY!

That's right. Ask this person if they have a
list of dead friends who have died from AIDS,
or are sick with AIDS
http://notb4weknow.blogspot.com/2009/06/people-i-k...

You are correct. They aren't exclusive.

Make a list of dead friends. Indicate which
of them used/didn't use condoms. Indicate
those who got tested before sex and did
have sex if the potential partner was HIV+.

Compare the two lists to see how many
dead friends are on each list.

Likelihood

Getting tested is only accurate after a window period, so you also have to advocate that you not have sex with someone until a month after they last had sex or shared needles with someone else. Just saying "get tested" isn't helpful.

Getting tested is helpful. On the other hand, just saying
may result in someone getting tested.

Here's information about "windows":
http://www.sfaf.org/hiv-info/testing/hiv-test-wind...

Also, in our state, there are a total of about 28,000 people living with HIV in MA according to the state in 2011 (including undiagnosed cases). That is 0.4% of the population. The failure rate of a condom (including human error) is around 15%. Without human error, it's only 2%.

Saying what the failure rate is, isn't helpful. I suspect
mathematics doesn't enter into most people's calculations
regarding having sex.

That means the probability that you would both have sex with someone who is HIV+ and have a condom failure is 0.004 * 0.15 = 0.0006 or .06% or 1 in 1667. That is the equivalence of having sex with a different partner every day for nearly 5 years before you finally got AIDS. You would be better off just advocating that people not have sex to be 100% certain,

That's one approach. Unfortunately nature wants its way.

especially since telling your potential love interest that you want to get tested with them will have that effect for all but the most romantically (yet not having sex) involved couples.

While you were sleeping the rate of couples getting
tested before having sex has increased considerably.

These numbers also don't account for the predominance of transmission in MA (just over 50%) still being male-male gay sex and shared needle drug use. Or age...since we are speaking about teenagers getting condoms here. All of these facts would even further reduce the likelihood of getting AIDS

Somehow I'm skeptical that facts reduce the
likelihood of getting AIDS. I think using condoms
and getting tested are more likely to do that.

for a random couple giving it from one to another without first getting tested. In fact, we are starting to talk about probabilities that are in the same ballpark as the failure rate of the test.

You seem to be relying on the power of mathematics
more than I'm willing to.

Finally, only about 200 people die each year in MA from AIDS. The number is way down from where it used to be. The likelihood that any of our lists (assuming we are under the age of 45) would even have more than 10 names or be growing is really low unless we hung out in the right circles of friends that are at higher risk than the average population.

Make your own list if you are gay, then ask your gay
friends how many are on their lists.

You would also do more of a service to tell people to keep a list of friends killed in motor vehicle accidents and tell them not to get behind the wheel until they always blew into a breathalyzer or took a defensive driving course.

No disagreement about drunk driving, text driving,
or other variations on inattention while behind the
wheel of a vehicle.