PREP already gives you good prevention for this to work it needs to be both a therapeutic vaccine at least at stages at which PEP is no longer effective as well and or as being at least as effective as PREP whilst being more cost effective as an overall treatment.

Also there is no chance that this would have a higher adoption rate than COVID unless it turns out to give 100% life time immunity and would end up being part of the National vaccination program world wide.

This likely would have the same usage as PREP/PEP today so at risk individuals and a post exposure treatment.

what makes you think so? how could the market for this be greater than the market for the covid vaccine? the number of people susceptible to covid is much greater than the number of people susceptible to HIV.

I think the general public’s perception of the consequences of infection are different depending on the disease.

I think most people see it as “covid = bad cold; HIV = death”.

but surely more people would say "my lifestyle choices mean that I'm never going to be exposed to HIV so I don't need a vaccine for it" than ditto for covid?

I think unprotected sex is more common than many people in wealthy countries realise.

sure but the set of all people who engage in frequent unprotected sex so as to be possibly susceptible to HIV is strictly smaller than the set of all people who could be possibly affected by covid.

Yes, it is.

I'm not sure how we're lost in translation here, so I'll try to express this another way.

I think the majority of sexually promiscuous adults aren't particularly concerned about COVID infection, because the likelihood that they'll die from it is low. If they do catch it, they will most likely recover without long-term damage.

I think those same adults however are indeed concerned about HIV infection, because it is [so far] incurable, and has an enormous social stigma attached to it, and without constant treatment will eventually kill you.

The number of people who would benefit from a drug against COVID is larger than those who would benefit from a drug against HIV, however, of those who would buy either drug, I think the latter drug is the one that would have much higher market demand because of just how consequential an infection with that disease is.

well, hopefully that market demand results in getting a drug that is more than adequate at what it's supposed to do, because I'd imagine the consequences would be much worse.