An at-risk person not knowing their HIV status is not privacy, it's stupidity, and unlike other brands of stupidity, this one does affect other people in aggregate. More than terrorist attacks which have produced much more onerous restrictions than a simple blood test.
We have drivers ed to teach people how to drive. I'd be in favor of having mandatory firearms education in secondary school.
All I'm arguing in favor of is a similar level of education regarding HIV. Good drivers ed emphasizes the reality that it's not just others that pose a threat, but that we pose a threat to ourselves and others. Good firearm safety education is similar: we can pose a threat to ourselves and others if we do not handle firearms properly. It is impossible to conduct similar threat assessments for HIV without knowing who is infected, and since 1/5 (CDC estimates, see link in my first post) of the 1m+ living with HIV in the U.S. are undiagnosed and unaware, that represents, IMO, a breakdown in HIV education.
Why shouldn't HIV education start with knowing whether you're infected? And how can that be implemented without mandatory testing, when 1/5 of people in the U.S. who are clearly at risk (because they are already infected) don't even know it?
If a program ostensibly to test for HIV is too offensive, how about a mandatory blood donorship program?
It still is because one of the highest infection rates continues to be in the gay community last time I saw numbers and still largely due to behavior.
"It probably won't affect me, so why should I worry about it?" Is homosexuality and/or drug use worthy of an increased chance at a death sentence?
I mean, sure, AIDS is very bad if you have it, but do you know how low the likelihood of an individual person is to become infected? Do you realize that AIDS deaths are in decline in absolute numbers? [dropped below 16,000 total in 2002]
That's still a lot higher than terrorist threats that could, in combination with the government's reaction, turn the U.S. a virtual warzone. The fact is we could reduce those HIV numbers dramatically simply by mandatory testing (no scarlet letters, but simply by informing anyone who tests positive).