Yes I can, actually. The transmission rates for those diseases are lower than what the media/medical community would lead you to believe. In reality you have about a 4% chance of contracting HIV from unprotected vaginal sex with someone that's HIV positive. It's just that scare tactics work, so they've been exploited in order to lower its prevalence. An institutionalized elderly person probably has a higher mortality rate from E. coli and other forms of food poisoning than that figure. But even then, whether you think the comparison is poor or good doesn't really matter. Both acts are despicable.
I'm an RN that works primarily with the elderly, if that matters.
You can, but that doesn't make the comparison valid, and practicing medicine doesn't give you a license to make such terrible comparisons. In no way is food contamination in any way comparable to PURPOSEFULLY INFECTING PEOPLE WITH STIs. Jesus Christ. No one mentioned transmission rates or the likelihood of contracting HIV during vaginal intercourse. There are many routes of transmission -- sharing needles, exchange of bodily fluids, etc. that fall outside of the bounds of intercourse. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the comparison of food contamination to purposefully transmitting STIs. There is no comparison. If you seriously think food contamination is in any way comparable to the purposeful transmission of a disease like syphilis, you should not be practicing medicine.
No one is arguing that both acts are wrong and gross. But you're really suggesting that the guy who spits on a burger is comparable to the HIV-pos guy who
purposefully has unprotected sex with multiple partners, or the guy that
uses the same needle multiple times, infecting countless people?
I'm glad you work with the elderly. At least they don't have a lot of time left to be subjected to your...beliefs.