I Feel Like I Should Start Reading Medical Journals

So, I feel like a total, full-tilt dumbass right now. And I'm not sure that I should. Look, I'm the first person to admit that I don't know much about office politics or privacy policies mainly because I've never needed protection through one. So that's fine, if I make a statement that makes me look dumb on that account I'll own up to it. Let me set the stage on what leads to this post.

I visit a blog that I love. It's snarky and funny and about a TV show. There was a discussion about the HIV virus. I wondered if, on said TV show, a contestant (It's Project Runway) would have to disclose HIV status so that proper medical attention could be applied if the contestant ever did something like sew through his finger. I set up a hypothetical situation (which has partly actually happened) where a designer sews through her finger - which would bleed - and another designer with an extremely unlikely, coincidental open sore extracts said needle, getting blood in the wound. I admitted to this being very, very hypothetical and downright implausible.

Now, the responses to this really needed to be nothing more than a)that's too unlikely for most employers/production to worry about and b) it doesn't matter because health privacy acts protect people from having to disclose personal issues about their health. End of story. Okay? I'd say, "Now I understand and I learned something about privacy statements."

But it couldn't end there. Am I just that behind in reading up on the transmission of the HIV virus (which I freudian slipped calling AIDS in the first comment and woe is me for that little mistake)? Because what ensued was people telling me that you can't get HIV in that scenario, and also telling me they were worried about my knowledge of how HIV is spread. It isn't true that HIV could (implausibly but not impossibly) be spread through drops of infected blood in an open wound? I actually had a person who thought I thought HIV was a flu virus you could get through the air. Um, you know what, I'm not that dumb. And furthermore, isn't the problem that way too much was read into what was essentially a question about office politics? Where in my scenario, which was clearly laid out as is above, did I imply I thought contestant #2 would get it through the air?

I tried to stay humble, thanking people who genuinely explained things like listing how HIV is spread and who patiently explained about health status privacy. But, it just couldn't end. And I think the real problem is that people read the first comment and immediately wanted to respond without taking the time to see if anything else had transpired before the end of the total comments. There was a person who reminded me about sports where a player is taken quickly off the field before any blood can be transferred onto another body. There was a nice person who reminded me that an HIV positive contestant on the show would probably tell another one not to try to help with the needle without having to disclose why. That made a ton of sense and I agreed that this would most likely solve the problem. I was grateful to a person who said s/he didn't want me to feel like s/he was attacking me because in the time it took to respond many, many more comments had popped up and I tried to reassure that person I had no hard feelings.

My point, though, is that almost 100 comments later it wasn't over, complete with the aforementioned "worried" person and the "you can't get it through the air like the flu" person. Oh, and the person who had to point out that it was freightening that I didn't know the difference between AIDS and HIV which was funny, because many people responded using AIDS when they meant HIV as well. You know, infer that it's a freudian slip. My champion was a person who reminded everyone that HIV could be spread by getting a drop of infected blood in your eye or nose. I knew that but was so afraid of saying it.

Maybe I'm just an idiot who knows nothing about the potential ways of spreading the HIV virus. I feel like I should buy a current book on the subject so I have more information, though. I mean, I try to understand when people just don't have the knowledge I have but I may be asking too much out of others. Anyway, thanks to all the people who were kind about it and patient and just tried to see what I meant and explain where my thinking was off-base. I think I'm just not cut out to be a commenter.