So it was bloke down the pub staistics again was it.. THATS what pi55es me off !!!
I am always up for reasonable dabate on the subject but lets keep it at least factual.. Gueswork and scaremongering does no one any good in the control of this disease..
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Now, let me re-cap here....where are we up to with this?
1. I suggested that some people were taking a head in the sand approach to Phoenix's and eurogirlinthai's posts.
2. I made the point that Patong is a sex tourism destination and that contact rates are thought to be between 1 in 30 and 1 in 50 according to data I have read. True, I didn't verify the data.
3. You then asked how there can be a discrepancy between numbers of infections and rates of infection. I answered by giving an example.
4. You then posted data that shows that infection rates are declining in Thailand. I don't dispute your data.
I'm really happy there were ONLY 19,000 - 25,000 new infections in 2004. That's so much better than the 29,000 from 2002. I'm relieved.
And to top off the good news, there are also only say, 600,000 people with the disease. Again, I'm so relieved. That's only 1 in 100 of the total Thai population. Could it be that sex workers would have higher rates of infection, say 1 in 75 or 1 in 50? Maybe.
I should also point out that your data does not mean that Thailand cannot conceivably have the highest infection rate in the world. Just because it's infection rate drops from one year to the next relative to itself, does not mean that it's infection rate can't be the highest relative to others. Using extreme statistics again, if every sexual act resulted in an infection in 2003, yet dropped so only every second act resulted in HIV in 2004, you could argue that (a) HIV infection rates had halved and also (b) that HIV infection rates were still 500 times the world average. But anyway...
Also, I'd assume those statistics would not take into account farang who present with symptoms in their own countries. Do you know perhaps that if say an Australian man presents in Australia with HIV, Australian authorities will advise the country where he picked up the disease so they can add that person to their statistics as well. Phrased another way, if someone picks up HIV in Thailand and is diagnosed in his own country, who adds another patient to their list. Thai or farang government? Exactly.
So one infected woman in Thailand could possibly infect multiple partners from elsewhere and this data will not show up in the local statistics.
Again put another way, it could well be that maybe 40,000 people get infected each year in Thailand but only 20,000 get reported in Thailand's statistics.
Yep, you may be right, mine might be just an argument based on doomsday and scaremongering hearsay from drunks in bars. It might not be too!! Funny though, Australia has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in the world despite having a huge gay population in Sydney, (and not just per-capita but actual numbers of gay people), and average drug injection rates. The reason? A withering advertising campaign based on fear and ignorance way back in the 80's.
Then the gay community got complacent in the mid 90s and the infection rates spiked a bit. More scaremongering and things settled back down again.
So scaremongering and shock tactics have been proven to work.
My point only ever was that to shove your head in the sand about HIV is stupid. Putting your uncovered c*ck into hookers anywhere in the world is fraught with danger. To do so in the world's predominant sex tourism destination is playing russian roullette.
I'll put in a disclaimer here and say this is only IMHO and is not backed up with any specific facts, just based on a hunch and feeling I get from talking with my mates at the bar and from what I can observe with my own two peepers.