SF Looks at 5-Year-Old HIV Goal
In 2004, San Francisco health officials said that in five years, they wanted a 50 percent reduction in new HIV cases in their city. Did they meet their goal?
Based on the latest estimates for new HIV infection rates in San Francisco, the city failed to reach its goal. It did achieve a roughly 10 percent reduction in HIV rates and has downgraded classifying its HIV epidemic to now being endemic, meaning rates are remaining flat from year to year.
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“We are in an era of low level incidence rates that seems like it will go on for a long time,” H. Fisher Raymond, an HIV epidemiologist with the health department, told members of the city’s HIV Prevention Planning Council last week. “It will be harder to increase the effectiveness of our reduction campaigns. We are down to a small group of people who are hard to find, and therefore, it is hard to determine what to do.”
In the meantime SFDPH has done a bang up job soft peddling a drug resistant TB outbreak in the Castro District with the epicenter being a gay bar with poor air circulation (Isn’t that all of them?). Patient zero is a bartender at this bar. They won’t release the bars name to protect its profits.
http://www.ebar.com/news/artic.....ticle=3621
HIV could be completely eradicated in one to two decades, if urban gay men switched from promiscuous random hookups (“safe” or “unsafe”) to monogamous serocompatible longterm relationships.
But that would be “sex negative.” And apparently, lots of deluded souls are literally willing to die for an orgasm. Strange stuff.
In the SF culture, which promotes youth, consumption, and frequency of hookups above all else, it’s no wonder that HIV infection rates remain so unacceptably high.
“In the SF culture, which promotes youth, consumption, and frequency of hookups above all else, it’s no wonder that HIV infection rates remain so unacceptably high.”
Brian, don’t you mean “the gay culture”?
At least there’s been a reduction here. Haven’t rates of HIV infection risen in New York over the past few years?
Brian, I do agree with you though about the random hook up thing. It is excessive, way excessive and I personally don’t understand it. I’d rather have a lot of sex with one person rather than a lot of sex with a lot of diffrent persons. But, that’s just me.
I am 45 and I have lived in SF since I was 16. The number of gay men I have met that are obsessed with sex is astounding. What they don’t know however is that they are really obsessed with self-validation. They go from encounter to encounter looking for something they haven’t even identified. One of the main reasons they haven’t identified it is they lack communication skills. More people are afraid of talking to sex partners about their needs than are afraid of visiting the dentist. Of course the unmentionable byproduct of this lack of communication skill is hideously bad sex. Which for many happens again and again with seemingly no explanation.
I didn’t know there was anyone under 40 left in San Francisco with three decades of gentrification making it older than Manhattan (Median age of gays is 42 despite the fag rags) The East Bay of the Greater Bay Area (but not San Francisco) is a whole other kettle of fish!
The problem with the take-over of ASOs by the faith-based crowd is that a White Gay Man is not going to listen to an angry harm reduction counselor wearing a big sparkly Jesus cross!
Notes to perrenialy naive Brian Miller on Gay behavior as featured by a Sims-like version of RHPS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
seitan-on-a-stick, I’m 29 and live in SF. So there are still a few of us under 40 who aren’t pulling down 6 figures who have managed to remaining living here despite the gentrification.