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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / AIDS / November 2005San Francisco gun ban vs. HIV
I live in the Bay Area and yesterday the residents of San Francisco voted to ban handguns within the city limits. The reason of course is guns are dangerous and kill people, so I wonder how they justify banning guns while permitting the uncontrolled spread of the HIV virus. I set out to compare the annual number of gun deaths with the annual number of HIV infections and discovered that while the former data is publically available, even exaggerated (e.g. cops shooting suspects is included), the number of HIV infections seems to be an official state secret. I did find a figure for 1999, guns killed 44 people in San Francisco, and I'm willing to bet the number of HIV-related deaths far surpasses that, not to mention the number of new HIV infections. So my question is why a city so concerned about public health and safety prohibits the most responsible person from carrying a gun to protect himself, yet allows the most irresponsible person to spread HIV? A typical handgun could kill a few dozen people at most, but a typical HIV patient has enough virus to potentially infect everyone on earth. If you want the most unreadable and uninformative website on HIV/AIDS in California, try the following link: California Dept. of Human Services: http://www.dhs.ca.gov/aids/statistics/default.htm Links to mind-numbing but meaningless HIV info: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/PUBL/guide10.html Mind-numbing but meaningless graphs #1: http://uarp.ucop.edu/prevention_indicators/1_BriefReport_HIV_PreInd.pdf Mind-numbing but meaningless graphs #2: http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/PHP/RptsHIVAIDS/annual99.pdf Finally, the mind-numbing info links on this site must consume 90% of the state HIV budget paying the salaries of the otherwise useless researchers who compile the data: http://www.dph.sf.ca.us/PHP/AIDSSurvUnit.htm That final site is fun, as it provides a pretty graph showing the geographical distribution of the city's HIV/AIDS cases in the sense of residential address, but does not bother to graph the areas the virus was contracted in. Any other epidemiological graph attempts to pinpoint Ground Zero (hint: it's the Crisco Disco on Castro Street). > I live in the Bay Area and yesterday the residents of San Francisco voted > to ban handguns within the city limits. > > The reason of course is guns are dangerous and kill people, so I wonder > how they justify banning guns while permitting the uncontrolled spread of > the HIV virus. You might read <http://www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=113417&Class CD=CL104>. The infection rate in 2005 seems to be a bit over 1/2 of what it was in 2001. While public health officials are being cautious about such apparent good news, those numbers are not consistent with a claim of an "uncontrolled spread." If you really need to rant about a handgun ban, I'd suggest a comparison to the reckless use of a very large weapon---the SUV. All too many drivers of those vehicles seem to confuse these vehicles with battering rams. :-) Bill Z. wrote... >>I live in the Bay Area and yesterday the residents of San Francisco voted >>to ban handguns within the city limits. [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > too many drivers of those vehicles seem to confuse these vehicles with > battering rams. :-) Yes, I already read that report elsewhere and I believe it to be false. HIV infections are not reportable in California, only diagnosed AIDS cases, something the CDC is getting on California's a.s about (though California and New York states have some of the highest rates of HIV cases, they are not included in the CDC statistics so the national rate appears lower than it really is). The statistics are false, probably rectified to justify the trillion dollars spent on those useless studies I provided in my final link. An alternative explanation is that the apparent decline in new HIV infections in San Francisco is indeed true, but the reason is that almost everyone in the city has already been infected, so there are fewer new people to infect. Oh, and notice that the link you provided me does not give an actual number for new HIV infections, it simply mentions a rate that is purported to have declined. As I said, the actual number seems to be an official state secret. The following quote is relevant but lengthy, please bear with it: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as 62 million. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to 57 million, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfilled. In any case, 62 million was no nearer the truth than 57 million, or than 145 million. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain." -- George Orwell, "1984" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Bill Z. wrote... > > Yes, I already read that report elsewhere and I believe it to be false. To be blunt, I'll take the opinions of public health officials in San Francisco over yours. "Bill Z." wrote in a message > The infection rate in 2005 seems to be a bit over 1/2 of what it was > in 2001. While public health officials are being cautious about such > apparent good news, those numbers are not consistent with a claim of > an "uncontrolled spread." Right. In real numbers, it's about 500 new infections per year. "Alfonz Mephesto" wrote in a message > The reason of course is guns are dangerous and kill people, so I wonder > how they justify banning guns while permitting the uncontrolled spread of [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Francisco, and I'm willing to bet the number of HIV-related deaths far > surpasses that, not to mention the number of new HIV infections. I couldn't find an easy to read, chart type link, but digging through a Google search I was able to glean some estimates. In 1999, new HIV infections were surging (somewhere around 700). 2000 was somewhere around 800-900. The CDC in early 2001 or so estimated an annual average of 500 new infections per year. The numbers weren't as easy to find as percentages - about 25% of the gay population in SF is HIV infected. Baltimore was at about 40%. Miami, NY & LA turned in some pretty large numbers as well. > So my question is why a city so concerned about public health and safety > prohibits the most responsible person from carrying a gun to protect [quoted text clipped - 28 lines] > graph attempts to pinpoint Ground Zero (hint: it's the Crisco > Disco on Castro Street). |
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