Since I have a bad attitude, and I'm going to try to maintain this bad attitude for a while to see what it yeilds creatively, I've decided to let you know how little I care about HIV and AIDS.
Still, it hit my usual prohibitions when my knee jerked at some factoid about HIV and African Americans. My gut reaction was, I don't have HIV and I don't even *know* anybody with HIV, so why do I care about HIV? The fact is that I don't. I don't think about HIV, hell I don't even think about sex. How do you think I get so much blogging done?
Sooner or later I'll need to see a number however. In the case of HIV alarm, P6 has provided the number I needed to see.
In the 2001 survey, out of about 5,500 people examined, 32 were HIV-positive. Of that group, 23 were African American. The overall prevalence of HIV was 0.43 percent, up slightly from 0.33 percent a decade earlier.On the one hand, that's a disturbingly high rate for a deadly illness, regardless of the selection criteria used to decide who to ask. On the other hand, 32 infections out of 5,500 people means it's not too late for you to be safe.
Also, "18 to 59" is a pretty broad swath. In this age of focus group marketing I can't think of a demographic defined that broadly. There's a a finer tuned result in the middle of the article.
It's not disturbingly high, unless you're one of those people who are easily disturbed. Considering the disturbingly high number of juvenile delinquent black auto theives who try to run over cops at 4 in the morning who get shot in the head by the LAPD, maybe HIV infection is distrubingly high. I don't know why such sensitive people aren't disturbed by needle-sharing butt buddies, but then again what do I know?
Now there are a lot of details to be aware of in the P6 article and commentary, which is why I cite it. The pleasant thing about being an ass is that you can be an intelligent ass. And so as an intelligent ass, I am privileged to make jokes about serious material (stay tuned for more cartoons).
If I went to meatmarket bars every weekend for a three months, that would put me in contact with about 5500 packages of potential meat product. Out of those 5500 about 32 would be HIV positive. I think I can pick the hos out of that bunch. What guarantee would I have that they weren't the dirty two and two/thirds dozen? Not much, but the odds are pretty good in my favor. Aren't syphillus and gonnorhea more prevalent than HIV anyway? Well that's a damned hard question to answer because the paperpushers at the CDC have decided against a Fisher-Price interface for us layfolks. Somebody show me were HIV/AIDS morbitity stats are published in the same damned table with other STDs and you get a medal from me. Fricken hype and hysteria.
Just scanning this monstrosity was enough to send my brain into siezures. It's enough to make you think that thetruth.com is probably not such a bad idea after all.
Aldous Huxley said an intellectual is somebody who has found something more interesting than sex. Athough I doubt that he meant football, he was certainly onto something. In the meantime, I think Nancy Reagan said it best. On the other hand, let's ask ourselves some interestingly provocative questions about our friend the bling rapper. Do rappers have HIV? On the other hand, let's not go there.
What's the bottom line? Getting information in context about HIV from the CDC is a lot more difficult than keeping your pants on. Unless you're a ho.
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