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medpundit |
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Saturday, July 13, 2002Sullivan quoted and said: Federal officials said they felt confident in reporting that the number of new H.I.V. infections has been stable in recent years, with an estimated 40,000 Americans becoming infected each year. Government officials estimate that 900,000 Americans are living with H.I.V. or AIDS. The number has increased by 50,000 since 1998, largely because advances in treatment have controlled the infection in many people, allowing some to go back to work and live longer. If 40,000 are infected each year, shouldn't over 120,000 new infections have been logged since 1998? So why only 50,000? No one at the CDC really answers that question ever. The 40,000 a year is plucked almost out of thin air, and used for funding purposes. (And factoring in deaths doesn't help either. The total number of deaths for those three years is a decelerating 50,000. That still leaves 20,000 alleged infections unaccounted for.) I take these numbers to say that 850k estimated AIDS cases in 1998 +120k estimated new cases, 1998-2001 (3 years * 40k cases/year) - 50k deaths, 1998-2001 ------ 900k estimated AIDS cases in 2001 There's a discrepancy, since 850 + 120 - 50 actually equals 920, but the estimates for AIDS cases and new cases per year are so soft that I still don't see a problem. The original story says, "One reason for the continued spread of H.I.V., however, is that about half of the 900,000 infected Americans have not been given a diagnosis or treated or both." So 20k more-or-less seems well within the margin of error. posted by Sydney on 7/13/2002 07:17:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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