A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) contains a staggering new statistical finding: roughly half of the gay black men in the country will be infected with HIV in their lifetime. As if the high rate of incarceration and poverty found in the black communities is not enough, this epidemic appears to be racing through the ranks of gay black men. The CDC also found that a quarter of gay Latino men in the United States will be infected with HIV in their lifetime.
The findings were the first of their kind as projections for lifetime infection rates in the United States and were disclosed at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.
The good news is that there is an improvement in the overall risk rates which currently stand at 1 in 99. That is much improved from 1 in 78 ten years ago.
There remains a huge racial disparity. overall african-Americans have a lifetime HIV risk of 1 in 20 for men and 1 in 48 for women. For whites, that rate is 1 in 132 for men and 1 in 880 for women.
Source: CBS
Jim22, I remember how the media in the early 1980’s was predicting that everyone who had unprotected sex, and many who used protection, would be dead from AIDS by the year 2000. Their advice was to abstain entirely. I called it “media hysteria” at the time. I did the math statistically and found that if you weren’t a homosexual male or an intravenious illicit drug user, your chances of getting AIDS were less than 1 in 3000, at worst, no matter how many sex partners you had or how often you had sex. Only a very small percentage of individuals in certain types of social groups were infected, so if you were heterosexual and selective with whom you had sex, the odds went up to 1 in tens of thousands. Of course, and I realized this even way back then, the media sensationalizes every potential problem to scare people, which increases their number of readers and viewers and makes more money for them. That’s about the time I stopped believing much of what the media (and the government) said.
Law school is the worst thing i ever did. Ignorance was bliss. I won’t watch the video. I dont want to know. Three felons a day. Fine if bliss. Reason for suicide if not. Dont let your kids go to l aw school.
@J
Well, if you really want to get mad, and totally dismayed, at the same time, spend an hour with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_tHrCFnrGs
I posted the link a lot last year, but it has been a while since then. This is sooo bizarre, once you start you can’t hardly stop. Like watching a train wreck. Morbidly fascinating.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I feel so guilty….someone please make the tax collector take more money from me. A married straight white mom of four. It’s all my fault that gay men get aids. I caused that disperity because i wasn’ t attractive enough. If it wasn’t for me….and equally ungly black women….there would not be such desperate impact on gay black men. Or Stfu women dont care. You sit in the sun you get a sunburn. Not my problem.