Hey, I came across some newspaper, LA Times article that they work over at Dusty's. I'm not thinking about it, I'm going to stop calling it work. I'm going to start calling it serving over at the place where I serve. The whole point I don't like calling it work because then I think it turns, it want it turns it into your, I have aspirations to do more than weight tables. And if I talk all the time about how my job is weighting tables, then it will remain to be my job. But if I just accept that I do it, don't label it, I like doing it, but I have other things that I want to do to it. Well, that was a long-winded introduction. I came across this article about AIDS. You see that? UN's steeply lowers AIDS estimates, and I'm going to read the article. That's pretty interesting. Better sampling shows that years of data were inflated and reveals that the disease's growth has slowed for the first time. By Gia Rui Chong and Thomas H. Mao II, the writers for the Los Angeles Times. The United Nations on Monday radically lowered years of estimates of the number of people worldwide infected by the AIDS virus, that's a misnomer. AIDS is an aviress, it's a syndrome. Okay, I'm not going to stop in the middle of this. I'm just going to read what it says. The United Nations on Monday radically lowered years of estimates of the number of people worldwide infected by the AIDS virus, revealing that the growth of the AIDS pandemic is waning for the first time since HIV was discovered 26 years ago. The revised figures, which were the result of much more sophisticated sampling techniques, indicate that the number of new infections peaked in 1998 and the number of deaths peaked in 2005. The new analysis shows that the total number of people living with HIV has been gradually increasing, but at a slower rate than in the past. Hints of those trends were present in the older estimates, but at much greater numbers. Oh, oh, it used to be increasing a lot greater now. It's the new analysis shows that it's been increasing at a slower rate than in the past. UN AIDS, which is all in caps, I think that's the name of the group. Estimated in a report to be issued today that about 2.5 million people will be infected with the AIDS virus. Again, that's a misnomer. Called HIV, so they're calling the AIDS virus HIV. So we'll say that 2.5 million people will be infected with HIV this year. That's a horrible thing to say, even for a company that's like the whole point of the company is to get rid of AIDS. So I say that 2.5 million people will be infected with HIV. So we'll say that 2.5 million people will be infected with HIV. So we'll say that 2.5 million people will be infected with it this year. Okay, but anyway, these 2.5 million people are a 40% drop from the 2006 estimate. The report also says that about 33 million people worldwide are infected with the virus compared to the last year's estimate of almost 40 million. Reports over the last decade or longer have portrayed a disease spiraling out of control. But improving methods of counting people with AIDS have unveiled a different picture. For the first time, we're seeing a decline in global AIDS deaths since Dr. Kevin DeCoc, director of the AIDS department at the World Health Organization. That's right, his name is Dr. Kevin DeCoc. UN AIDS executive director Dr. Peter Pio, PIOT, says the new estimates also reflected improved treatment rates and changes in sexual behavior in some affected regions of the world. These improved data present us with a clear picture of the AIDS epidemic. He said, unquestionably, we are beginning to see a return on investment. The data represents some of the first good news in the battle to control the pandemic, particularly coming after recent reports indicating that promising HIV vaccines are ineffective and perhaps even dangerous. That's because the vaccines were going after the HIV virus itself, the RetroVirus tried to kill it and killing a lot of other things in the process. This new one, IDC-16, is able to circumvent the splicing process of the RetroVirus. It's not a vaccine, it's a different way of looking at the situation. Take away their ability to fight, don't try and kill them, take away their ability to fight. The numbers have been highly politicized because they are used to govern the numbers of HIV and AIDS, have been highly politicized because they're used to govern the distributions of the billions of dollars in aid, aid that is being poured into the problem by industrialized countries. It has estimated $10 billion this year. Some critics viewed the change estimates as a remarkable admission by World Health authorities. That they made a mistake. Dr. James Chin of UC Berkeley, a former WHO AIDS expert, who is the World Health Organization, who has been tracking the disease since the first emerging California in the 1980s, has been arguing for years that the UN AIDS figures have been inflated. It's getting closer to what it ought to be, but it's still high, he said. It's the means that high rise, house of numbers had to crumble. This is Dr. James Chin of UC Berkeley. Chin estimated the total number of cases worldwide of 20 million to 30 million. UN AIDS has been, quote, overemphasizing and exaggerating numbers in an effort to get more and more money. Chin said, quote, a lot of people say the ends justify the means. It's going to come back and bite you when the real numbers appear. Dr. Paul Delay of UN AIDS said that he considered it absurd to think his agency would exaggerate the data. It would be technically impossible to somehow rig the numbers, he said. Delay said the revised numbers would only have a small effect on the budget. The agency is recommended for treatment programs with the downward revisions. The 40 billion recommended for 2010 would drop to 38 billion, he said. Dr. Roger details the UCLA epidemiologist cautioned that the reduced numbers should not be used as an excuse to dismiss concerns about the pandemic. Even though the estimates are lower than we previously thought, they're still pretty significant. Details said, you're still talking about prevelances in sub-Saharan Africa where you've got over 20% of adults infected with HIV. I think the danger here is to say, oh my lord, you know they overestimated. It's not a very serious epidemic. I would say 33 million is a pretty serious epidemic. Yeah, but you're not looking at AIDS, dude. You're looking at the 20% of adults infected with the HIV virus. That is something to be focused on. HIV treatment is something to spend money on. Not how to heal AIDS or take care of people that have AIDS because, okay, I digress. Details noted that getting accurate numbers is difficult in any epidemic. You want to raise public concern enough so they'll do something, he said. On the other hand, you don't want to overestimate because people get fatalistic about the possibility of doing something. Health officials say that the rate of new infections has legitimately declined in several countries, and both Eastern and Western Africa, due to widespread changes in sexual behavior. But the bulk of the apparent decrease comes from improved techniques for counting cases. In the early days of the pandemic, researchers studied primarily women receiving prenatal care because they were more likely to encounter the medical establishment. Analysts then projected those AIDS rates to the entire population. Such women tended to be more urban, wealthier, and more likely to be sexually active. Factors that appear to have skewed the data. The new prevalence numbers in contrast were based on data obtained at house to house surveys in 30 high prevalence countries. The surveys included extensive, and then expanded to its inductive reason, its inductive logistics. It's not as effective as de-ductive logistics because they're not going to every person. They're taking a small percentage and they're expanding it and saying that that's what the world is. That's a dangerous way to go about it, particularly for a government agency or a world government agency. The surveys included extensive questionnaires and the drawing of blood samples. Results from one such study in India released earlier this year cut the estimated number of cases from 5.7 million to 2.5 million. That's more than half. Their researchers interviewed members of 120,000 households to arrive at the new prevalence data. Researchers had previously said that India had the majority of the world's cases. The revision effects passed prevalence numbers as well. The revision effects passed prevalence numbers as well. 2002 UN AIDS report, for example, estimated worldwide total of 42 million cases. The new report says the actual number that year was only 30 million. 12 million people were misdiagnosed with AIDS in that in 2002. 2,000. Thanks. Fuck off! Somebody has not been paying attention to this. People are pouring money into it and not paying attention to it, and that is changing right now. Chin believes that the numbers have probably been wrong since at least 1997. He argues that if the number of new cases peaked in the late 1990s, the total number of cases could not keep climbing. He said the infection would max out in the high-risk populations and then begin a natural decline as people who were untreated begin to die about a decade later. He says the prevention programs such as condom use for sex workers are also helping to decrease the numbers. That's different than AIDS though. That's because it's preventing the viral transmission of HIV. Delay of UN AIDS said Monday that accurate figures have been hard to get because of the high cost of households surveys, about 2 million to 3 million per country. Means they cannot be done every year. They are big, expensive time consuming studies. He said, well then spend the fucking money on the studies and stop spending the money on AIDS treatment. AIDS is a fucking fantasy. It's a degradation syndrome. That's all. So that article is pretty interesting. I'm reading the fandom told with them, probably going to put it on the Crossback channel. So I'll put a link to that, check it out.