I live in the Bay Area and yesterday the residents of San Francisco voted
to ban handguns within the city limits.

The reason of course is guns are dangerous and kill people, so I wonder
how they justify banning guns while permitting the uncontrolled spread of
the HIV virus. I set out to compare the annual number of gun deaths with
the annual number of HIV infections and discovered that while the former
data is publically available, even exaggerated (e.g. cops shooting
suspects is included), the number of HIV infections seems to be an official
state secret. I did find a figure for 1999, guns killed 44 people in San
Francisco, and I'm willing to bet the number of HIV-related deaths far
surpasses that, not to mention the number of new HIV infections.

So my question is why a city so concerned about public health and safety
prohibits the most responsible person from carrying a gun to protect
himself, yet allows the most irresponsible person to spread HIV? A
typical handgun could kill a few dozen people at most, but a typical HIV
patient has enough virus to potentially infect everyone on earth.

If you want the most unreadable and uninformative website on HIV/AIDS in
California, try the following link:

California Dept. of Human Services:
http://www.dhs.ca.gov/aids/statistics/default.htm

Links to mind-numbing but meaningless HIV info:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/PUBL/guide10.html

Mind-numbing but meaningless graphs #1:
http://uarp.ucop.edu/prevention_indi...HIV_PreInd.pdf

Mind-numbing but meaningless graphs #2:
http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/PHP/RptsHIVAIDS/annual99.pdf

Finally, the mind-numbing info links on this site must consume 90% of
the state HIV budget paying the salaries of the otherwise useless
researchers who compile the data:
http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/PHP/AIDSSurvUnit.htm

That final site is fun, as it provides a pretty graph showing the
geographical distribution of the city's HIV/AIDS cases in the
sense of residential address, but does not bother to graph the
areas the virus was contracted in. Any other epidemiological
graph attempts to pinpoint Ground Zero (hint: it's the Crisco
Disco on Castro Street).

Alfonz Mephesto <amephesto@geneticengineeringranch.com> writes:

You might read <http://www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=113417&ClassCD=CL1 04>.

The infection rate in 2005 seems to be a bit over 1/2 of what it was
in 2001. While public health officials are being cautious about such
apparent good news, those numbers are not consistent with a claim of
an "uncontrolled spread."

If you really need to rant about a handgun ban, I'd suggest a
comparison to the reckless use of a very large weapon---the SUV. All
too many drivers of those vehicles seem to confuse these vehicles with
battering rams. :-)

Bill Z. wrote...
Yes, I already read that report elsewhere and I believe it to be false.
HIV infections are not reportable in California, only diagnosed AIDS
cases, something the CDC is getting on California's ass about (though
California and New York states have some of the highest rates of HIV
cases, they are not included in the CDC statistics so the national
rate appears lower than it really is).

The statistics are false, probably rectified to justify the trillion
dollars spent on those useless studies I provided in my final link.
An alternative explanation is that the apparent decline in new HIV
infections in San Francisco is indeed true, but the reason is that
almost everyone in the city has already been infected, so there are
fewer new people to infect.

Oh, and notice that the link you provided me does not give an actual
number for new HIV infections, it simply mentions a rate that is
purported to have declined. As I said, the actual number seems to
be an official state secret.

The following quote is relevant but lengthy, please bear with it:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's
figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one
piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were
dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even
the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics
were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their
rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make
them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's
forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145
million pairs. The actual output was given as 62 million. Winston,
however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to 57
million, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been
overfilled. In any case, 62 million was no nearer the truth than 57
million, or than 145 million. Very likely no boots had been produced at
all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less
cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of
boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of
Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact,
great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which,
finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."
-- George Orwell, "1984"
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Alfonz Mephesto" wrote in a message

I couldn't find an easy to read, chart type link, but digging through a
Google search I was able to glean some estimates. In 1999, new HIV
infections were surging (somewhere around 700). 2000 was somewhere around
800-900. The CDC in early 2001 or so estimated an annual average of 500 new
infections per year. The numbers weren't as easy to find as percentages -
about 25% of the gay population in SF is HIV infected.

Baltimore was at about 40%.

Miami, NY & LA turned in some pretty large numbers as well.

"Bill Z." wrote in a message

Right. In real numbers, it's about 500 new infections per year.

Alfonz Mephesto <amephesto@geneticengineeringranch.com> writes:

To be blunt, I'll take the opinions of public health officials in
San Francisco over yours.

Alfonz Mephesto wrote:

Yes, Diablo... we know.

B/

been there done that wrote...
Well check out those links I provided, all of which deal with HIV in
California and San Francisco. The man-hours put into compiling all
those irrelevant reports and graphs must have cost billions of dollars,
probably the majority of the state's HIV budget, yet it hasn't done
anything to reduce the infection rate.

Therefore, one could reasonably expect that health officials would lie
about HIV infection trends, otherwise they would look bad for having
spent all those billions of dollars on unreadable research articles,
colorful graphs, and professional conferences in Hawaii, while the
spread of HIV not only continued but increased.

Here's a challenge: As I said, check out the links I provided, then
wade through the millions of pages of dry statistical data and
graphs and try to discover an actual NUMBER of new HIV infections
annually for San Francisco. Not "normalized" rates or pointless
references to a decline in "AIDS" or cumulative totals for the last
20 years, I just want to know how many people in San Francisco test
positive for HIV each year. It appears to be an official state secret.

Alfonz Mephesto <amephesto@geneticengineeringranch.com> writes:

You have a very poor grasp of reality. I'll ignore the rest of what
you posted - it is not worth dignifying with a response.

"Alfonz Mephesto" <amephesto@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net...
Passing out those con-dumbs had to be a hit also.

The answer to aids is quarantine, forced if necessary.

Bill Z. wrote...
Well you did mention 500 new HIV cases each year for San Francisco,
but I am pretty sure that was from a third-party source and not an
official figure. Still, you helped me make my point, guns killed
about 50 people in around the same year as HIV infected 500 people
(and I still believe the actual figure to be much higher). So
their priorities are way off if their goal is to protect the public
health and safety.

Alfonz Mephesto <amephesto@geneticengineeringranch.com> writes:

Someone else mentione a figure of 500 infections per year. The number
showed you to be 100% wrong in what you claimed, as the number of new
cases per year had dropped by nearly a factor of two since 2000 or
so (and the rate then was down by about a factor of 10 from 1990).

You claimed the rate was exploding and the data simply does not
support that claim. I'm still waiting for you to retract your
statement.

A quick google search turned up
<http://www.lcav.org/about/gun_violence.asp> which states,

"In the United States, gun violence claims close to 30,000
lives each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. For every person who dies from a gunshot wound,
two others are wounded. Nearly 100,000 Americans are victims of
gun violence each year."

For San Francisco, there were 56 gun-related homicides out of 87
total by December 2004, according to
<http://www.stopsanfranban.com/atstake/additionalreadingdetail.aspx?T=1&ID=183>,
but note that these were homicides, which would exclude accidental
deaths.

So again, let's just say that you are posting questionable numbers.