Capital (Washington D.C.) has severe HIV epidemic, report finds

Reuters ^ | November 26, 2007 | Maggie Fox

[Zakeet]

Sad.

[madison10]

Wonder how many of those are politicians? Maybe I’m being a tad cynical here.

[stephenjohnbanker]

“”This is a 100 percent preventable disease,” Lewis said by telephone. Yet one in 20 adults in Washington has HIV and one in 50 has AIDS, he noted.””

Behavior is hard to regulate.

[TBall]

Wow global warming is really hitting DC hard.

[bill1952]

I find this amusing. Sorry, but I do.

Gee, so how does one prevent a totally preventable disease anyway? duh.

It simply must be Bush’s fault...

Or lack of bushes fault.

[SC Swamp Fox]

It’s a quagmire, we need to pull out of DC.

[Joe Boucher]

due entirely to the handgun ban?

[kingu]

The report found that Washington, with a population of around 600,000 people, has a rate of 128 AIDS cases per 100,000 people in 2006 [...] Of the 12,428 people infected with HIV in Washington, 80 percent are black, the report found. More than 8,300 had fully progressed to AIDS and 224 died of AIDS in 2006.

Math appears to be a particular problem as well, as 128 per 100k would mean a little over 750 for the city, not 8,300. So the actual rate would be, what, 1,380 cases per hundred thousand people? One in a hundred? Oh! NO! It's...Yet one in 20 adults in Washington has HIV and one in 50 has AIDS, he noted. so really it's 12,000 people who have AIDS...

Three broadly different numbers, but I guarantee that 1 in 50 is the one which garners the most donations of money. But no one would be evil enough to overstate the spread of a disease only to get more money, pay for staff, make sure everyone has medical insurance, retirement plans...would they?

[Smartaleck]

...large Dem voting block not fairing well.

[NonValueAdded]

Oh Barney.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Wonder how many of those are politicians? Maybe I’m being a tad cynical here.

I don’t know about AIDS... but the neurological deficits common in late-stage syphilis would go a long way towards explaining the bizarre behavior of our legislators.

[WakeUpAndVote]

We have not been surging enough money into Dafursomething. That is the answer. Or it’s Bush’s fault.

[grb]

Heterosexual contact in the District is the leading mode of HIV transmission at 37 percent of newly reported ....

How many of these are from dirty needles?

[Drew68]

"Heterosexual contact in the District is the leading mode of HIV transmission at 37 percent of newly reported infections

Gay men "on the down low" who go home and infect their wives and girlfriends.

[Dacus943]

Yeah... I too found the math rather strange!

Did they mean to suggest that the + or - 12500 people with AIDS was the number of infected - still alive over a period of years?

[jtill]

but the neurological deficits common in late-stage syphilis would go a long way towards explaining the bizarre behavior of our legislators.

LOL!

[VOA]

Capital (Washington D.C.) has severe HIV epidemic, report finds

Looks like the gun-control folks in D.C. had their blinders on...
and overlooked the really dangerous "guns".

[aruanan]

Sort of fitting for a place where every citizen in the U.S. is so regularly screwed.

[petitfour]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

[Lancey Howard]

Quarantine the place with a giant barbed-wire fence and drop in supplies by helicopter once a month.