From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: AIDS Sweeps Asia is Bogus
Organization: The Turing Project, Public Access Internet Host
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 09:50:40 GMT

In article <71709@cup.portal.com> Arthur_T_Hu@cup.portal.com writes:
>AIDS Sweeps Asia?
>
>Until recently AIDS was considered to be nonexistent in Asia, with only 
>413 cases of AIDS recorded by 1989. But now the World Health 
>Organization (WHO)  and Doctor Jonathan Mann of Harvard's International 
>AIDS Center  predicts that Asia will soon overtake Africa with nearly 
>half of all HIV infections worldwide by the year 2000.   However, some 
>of the scarier predictions just don't match up with the facts. And when 
>Dr. Mann is ready to declare Indonesia is on the verge of a national 
>epidemic on the basis of only 12 known cases.

Don't forget the 25% of new recruits to the Thai army testing HIV+.
A disease with a period of 5-10 years from infection to appearance
certainly gives people like you a great opportunity for distortion.
Your house is on fire, one person says 25% of the house is engulfed in
flame and you had better call the fire department, you respond that it
can't be that bad, after all only the ceiling in the kitchen has caved
in so far!

>Since Asians are just over half of the world's population, their 
>infection rate would have to nearly equal the world average to match 
>these projections. But estimates released by Harvard's same AIDS center 
>puts the annual incidence of AIDS in Asia at only 1 / 15th the level of 
>North America (which is about 34 cases per 100,000 population annually), 
>and about one-tenth the world rate of 19. 

Oh boy I bet China is almost as honest as cuba when they report disease
statistics.

>If we break out Southeast Asia 
>with India and Thailand separately, there are only 3,500 cases in all of 
>Northeast Asia, which includes China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and 
>one-third of the world's population.

I bet China and Vietnam have great medical systems and extremely
honest politicians to report statistics...

>That is as many AIDS cases as are 
>diagnosed in a single month in the United States, with an incidence rate 
>150 times less.  This year, Asia only accounts for 6 percent of new 
>infections and 3 percent of AIDS cases worldwide by these same 
>supposedly pessimistic estimates. 

Where do they get the Thai army recruits? 
OOps I forgot Thailand doesn't count, after all heterosexual prostitution
couldn't possibly spread AIDS...

>If their gay or IV drug user community were anywhere near as risky or 
>prevalent as they were in the US during the 80's, their epidemic would 
>have been an extension of our epidemic, which is exactly what happened 
>to Europe. 

Don't forget Thailand, oops I forgot heterosexual prostition doesn't
fit in well with your theory..

>But even Japan's largest gay organization claims 0.3 percent 
>of the Japanese are gay, and nothing resembling the massive drug 
>shooting galleries of the Northeast exists anywhere in Japan. The 
>Japanese do love sex, and extramarital sex is not uncommon, but 
>heterosexual transmission outside of drug use is all but nonexistent 
>even in the US, condom use is the most common form of contraception, and 
>nothing like the 60's ethic of loving as many neighbors as frequently as 
>possible exists there. 

I wonder why 5% of pregnant women in some parts of Florida are HIV+?
Hint its not IV drugs...
Get your head out of the sand before a bird nests in your ass.

>Interestingly, Dr. Mann's estimates for all of Northeast Asia appear to 
>be about the same as that of Japans reported cases. But that means 
>they're applying Japan's AIDS rate for China, 50 percent foreigners 
>included. Yet in all of China, they've only hit the one-thousand mark 
>for AIDS cases this year, and a good proportion there are foreigners as 
>well. High estimates are of maybe 10,000 HIV infections.

Only 1000 died of AIDS the rest where killed by bullets....

>However, over 
>half of Chinese cases come from a tiny district call Ruili near the 
>Burma drug trade . The 467 cases there gives an annual incidence in the 
>ballpark with San Francisco's 252, but the rest of China comes out to a 
>mere 0.007 which would put it at least ten times less than even Japan. 

Of course Heterosexual Communism is the way to go :-)

>Indonesia has reported just 12 cases of AIDS, but we've got 6 cases of 
               ^^^^^^^^
>Indonesians here in California, and nobody is worrying about them here. 

Reported is the key word.

>Malaysia has 1212 cases of AIDS, and 4000 cases of HIV infection,

4000 known cases of HIV infection...

>The truth of the matter is outside of a few problem areas, AIDS in Asia 
>is still not much bigger than the fact it does exist, and still has a 
>long way to go before it is even minor compared to other health problems 
>like starvation, diarrhea and our old friends like TB. Fortunately the 
>extreme practices that spread AIDS throughout Africa and West just 
>aren't very common in Asia. 

Oh and the Thai army recruits picked it up from there blood transfusion
habits?

-- 
------          Join the Pythagorean Reform Church!               .
\    /        Repent of your evil irrational numbers             . .
 \  /   and bean eating ways. Accept 10 into your heart!        . . .
  \/   Call the Pythagorean Reform Church BBS at 508-793-9568  . . . .
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american,alt.discrimination