Oh my god, this is fucking huge. It was huge when we developed a daily PrEP pill that could prevent you from catching HIV; this is a successful phase III trial of a PrEP shot that will only need to be given *twice a year*. Still needs a confirmatory Phase III, but holy fuck.
This really is immense on several levels. Not just for HIV, but when it comes to developing further protection from the negative effects of viruses in general, including COVID. Even PrEP was a huge step forward and still relatively new.
The "cure for AIDS" as a concept has always been treated as a vague future thing in a ton of near-future and scifi things as an example of the world being different, so something like this, looking like we're reaching that point, is just fantastic.
And anyone else who tries to be an obnoxious pedant going "But this isn't a CURE 🤓" is getting a block for not being able to read the whole fucking sentence where I just said that.
We have antiviral drugs that will reduce viral load to undetectable! But they are all much frequent dosage and as far as I know there hasn't been much luck in reducing the frequency.
