Petrelis Files

ANDREW SULLIVAN: HIV STATS IN S.F.


Dear Friends:

When you have yours truly, a proud Nader voter in 2000 and a Birkenstock-wearing antiwar queer radical, and Andrew Sullivan, a Bush supporter who backed the Iraqi war, agreeing on something as important as questions about current HIV stats in San Francisco, it says a lot about how we can put aside differences to examine Department of Public Health allegations about HIV rates surging here.

My thanks go out to Andrew for calling attention to the zero recent HIV infections recorded in April at the city's STD clinic, where the bulk of HIV antibody tests are conducted, after reading an email from me about the lack of recent HIV infections detected by DPH.

So when are reporters, especially the ones who didn't believe the outrageous claims by DPH HIV epidemiologists back in 2000 that San Francisco was experiencing sub-Saharan levels of new HIV transmissions, going to revisit the issue of HIV stats here? How much evidence do reporters need before they pay attention to the fact that a queer radical and a gay conservative are saying the same thing about HIV stats in San Francisco?

I can't fathom why the press is seemingly unwilling to look at HIV in San Francisco and inform readers if the stats are surging, dramatically dropping or remaining stable.

It's also beyond my comprehension why HIV prevention groups, the DPH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention haven't said a word about the good news: Zero recent HIV infections documented in San Francisco during June. Maybe the last thing these entities want is to provide the gay community and general public with any positive development about HIV numbers here.

The AIDS industry, particularly the San Francisco division, should be ashamed about their silence regarding the mounting evidence that HIV rates in Gay Mecca are _not_ on the upswing.

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www.andrewsullivan.com

June 13, 2003


HIV IN SAN FRANCISCO: You may recall the hysterical headlines of a couple of years ago about a surge in new HIV infections among gay men in San Francisco. Here's a reminder of the rhetoric used from the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco's long-feared and often predicted new wave of HIV infection is here. After years of stability - wrought by strong prevention programs, a safer-sex ethic and powerful drugs - city health experts now estimate that the number of new infections by the virus that causes AIDS nearly doubled, to 900, in the past year. "This is a harbinger of what is going to happen all over the country," warned Tom Coates, director of the University of California at San Francisco AIDS Research Institute. "What happens in the HIV epidemic usually happens here first."

I was skeptical of the data and was pilloried by the usual suspects for being so. So was veteran AIDS activist Michael Petrelis. So it's worth taking another look at what the stats now show. In April of this year, there wasn't a single case of recent HIV infection found in city HIV testing sites, out of 843 tests. That was also true in February, March and June 2002. Total HIV infections seem completely stable from the data. There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever of a surge in HIV infection rates among gay men in San Francisco. None. Rates of gonorrhea have actually fallen. Rectal gonorrhea, a key correlate of HIV infection, is also stable. The stories were bogus. But they haven't been refuted.
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