UN Revises (coughpoliticallymotivatedcough) Apocalyptic Estimates

[Overpaid Slacker]

Hmmmmm... Might there be a lesson here, for those willing to learn it? From CQ:

The United Nations grossly overestimated both the scope and direction of AIDS infections, its scientists will admit later this week. The actual numbers in almost every theater have proven to be much less than UN reports indication, in some places less than half of that asserted. Outside researchers say that their demands for government funding motivated them to essentially lie about the gravity of the situation:

The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year's estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV -- estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising -- now will be reported as 33 million. ...

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

So where did the estimates go awry? They relied too heavily on pregnant women as a leading indicator, not taking into account the obvious fact that pregnant women were more sexually active than others in the population. New studies show that India has less than half of the AIDS cases originally assumed, and even in sub-Saharan Africa, the UN overestimated the epidemic. They will retract previous estimates in Nigeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Former WHO AIDS expert James Chin thinks the numbers are still too high. He said 33 million puts the UN in the ballpark, but that his research indicates that the actual number of cases is no more than 25 million. That means that the UN overshot the entire epidemic by almost 40%. They wouldn't be retracting the 40 million if it hadn't been for Chin and other researchers like him, who saw the exaggerations for what they were -- a mechanism of guilt to force Western nations to pony up more money for UNAIDS. (JP: They're still ignoring IGPCC scientists whose names and cred they've co-opted and put on the Report against such scientists' wishes.)

This kind of scientific work casts new doubt on other issues that the UN champions as well. Their panel on global warming will publish a new position, insisting that the situation is critical and that nations need to act now in economically-crippling ways to curtail emissions. As Scott Ott (JP - see scrappleface.com) notes rather trenchantly, they're basically saying that all of the people who don't really have AIDS will drown in the rising ocean levels instead of dying from HIV infections.

Why should we trust their scientists on this when they've consistently fibbed about AIDS? They have a track record of hysterics and exaggerations for political purposes. They've turned themselves into an advocacy group for statist policies, and any UN report on impending disasters should come with a five-pound sack of Morton's Salt in the future.

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The UN's only authority to do most anything is "moral", and it lacks even that, to any serious observer. So it's got to politicize and super-nationalize issues which it might leverage to claim (and perhaps receive, though treaty or otherwise) actual authority. Who, in their right freaking mind, wants the UN to have any authority? As a relief valve for various shytbag nations' posturing gasbaggery, the UN serves its only truly effective purpose... which means we don't have to host it in our largest city, subsidize its operations or suffer its twat delegates' presence. Let Toronto have the UN -- Canada's policies are more aligned with the UN's, so everybody'd be happier.

Given the recent litany of corruption, unaccountability and statistical gamesmanship as part of a raw power grab, it's time to jettison the UN and create a League of Democracies, so that the parts of the world that have capital can decide how to use/invest/disburse it w/o having to deal with the shytbags.

MHO for Tuesday.

JP

[legion]

Originally Posted by Overpaid Slacker

Outside researchers say that their demands for government funding motivated them to essentially lie about the gravity of the situation...

This can't happen! Only researchers who work for oil companies lie. All other researchers only tell the truth, never build bias into their models, and are doing their work for the good of the planet.

[Nathans_Dad]

First it was Farm Aid, then all the concerts for the AIDS epidemic, now global warming.

As soon as one crisis dries up people seem to go looking for another one.

Make no mistake AIDS is still a huge worldwide health problem (more so in 3rd world countries) but it isn't the species wiper everyone thought it was going to be.

[M.D. Holloway]

I read a report that AIDS and HIV are separate and that the reason the African nations have such high AIDS is because they engage in anal sex as a means of birth control and that you get AIDS from anal sex and that anyone can spread it to anyone else - the virus is present in the rectum of us all. This is why homosexual men get it more than straight (unless you knock one inside her dirt hole).

Hay, I don't make this up I just report it!

[Nathans_Dad]

Lubby I don't know what you've been reading, but I wouldn't be too confident about that info...

What IS apparently true (although hopefully education has helped some) is that African men believed that if they had sex with a virgin it would cure their AIDS...

[jyl]

If what we are doing about global warming is a 1 and the UN's assessment of global warming is a 10, then if the future reality ends up as a 5 and we actually step up our efforts to that 5, perhaps that will be about right. Right now our efforts are so tiny, it hardly matters if the UN's assessment is 2X or even 3X too high.

[livi]

HIV is the virus that cloggs and kills a very important type of our white blood lymphocyte cells. These cells are like the supervisors of our immune defense system. Without them our defense brakes down. When it finally collapses, the compact, continuos attack from microorganisms meets no resistance. We get infected and sick even with organisms that we usually never fall ill from with a normally working defense.

When we finally get sick with these different infections from other microorganisms - that is defining the AIDS diagnose.

Carrying the virus for many years feeling well is being HIV positive.

Finally suffering from the immune defense breakdown and become sick from OTHER microorganisms is having AIDS.

Whether the initial infection with the HIV virus came from buggering, streight sex or any other way - is irrelevant.

[sammyg2]

The United Nations' top global warming scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the catastrophy, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

global warming remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global threat.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the temperature increase at 1/2 degree, a cut of more than 40000 percent from last year's estimate, documents show. The worldwide temperature -- estimated a year ago at nearly a zillion degrees and rising -- now will be reported as stable. ...

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein,""I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

[Overpaid Slacker]

Further to livi's point -- we carry around all kinds of viruses and other pathogens all the time, every day, that our immune system just "handles" as part of its daily routine.

When AIDS was first being parametized as an epidemic, one of the confounding things about the epidemiology was that it expressed itself in a variety of apparently unconnected ways -- a number of usually rare opporunitistic infections were themselves the evidence of the underlying immunodeficiency pandemic.

Two of the most notorious were Kaposi's sarcoma (a herpes virus (HHV8) that until then had predominantly affected old Jewish or Mediterranean men) and pneumocystis carinii (one of the most widespread fungi in the environment, especially prevalent around cats, which is not a pathogen to healthy people). Many of us carry HHV8, and I'd venture to say most of us have pneumocystis carinii hanging around in/on our bodies, and our immune system just handles them, and scores of others, every day.

So you had a number of otherwise healthy, young, fit people (by and large men -- anyone remember GRID?) showing up with all of these bizarre afflictions.

As an aside: my inexpert guess is that more than 30% of the sexually active (read: unmarried) men on this board would test positive for HPV at least once in the next 2 years. I'm willing to be educated by the physicians, epidemiology and/or infection control gurus hereon.

JP

[livi]

Sexually active = unmarried

That is how life goes, is it ?