Written and published on 25 February 2019; updated on 25 April 2020
Statistics below are from 2015 unless otherwise indicated.

• UNITED STATES: STATES WITH HIGHEST HIV INCIDENCE
• GREATER INCIDENCE OF HIV IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES
• STATISTICS FOR RECIPIENTS OF RECTAL SEX
• STATISTICS FOR MEN HAVING SEX WITH MEN, AND THE ISSUE OF SECRET MALE BISEXUALITY
  • Impact of Secret Bisexuality on Life Expectancy of Wives and Children
• THE GREATER HIV INCIDENCE AMONGST HISPANICS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS
• THE VERY HIGH TRANSGENDER HIV STATISTICS
• DIAGNOSED HIV INCIDENCE VERY DIFFERENT FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
• CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN, AS WELL AS MEN, TESTING FOR HIV ANNUALLY
• HOW TO GET AN HIV TEST
• THE DANGER OF YOUNG CHILDREN CONTRACTING HIV
  • Is the Drug Trade Targeting Young Children?
  • Are Youth Contracting HIV from Drug Peddlers?
  • Likelihood of ‘Blooms’ of HIV amongst Youth in Communities Nationwide
  • Increase in After-School Petty Crime May Forewarn of Youth HIV ‘Blooms’
• LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE HIV
• HOMELESS AND OUT-OF-WORK CITIZENS AS A MANPOWER RESOURCE FOR TOWNS HARD HIT BY THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC
• THE IMPORTANCE OF NURTURING HIV POSITIVE NEWBORNS
• 300-YEAR PROJECTION WITH REGARD TO MINIMUM VIABLE HUMAN POPULATION
• THE OUTLOOK FOR HUMANKIND
• MORE INFORMATION

Dear Ones,

Those of you who have been reading my Community Health blogs on the global HIV-AIDS pandemic may know that I have felt for some time now that HIV-AIDS incidence in the United States has been underreported, partly because of the AIDS stigma, and partly because of insufficient testing in the United States, including testing of men, women and children, regardless of their perceived sexual orientation; or, in the case of young children, of their perceived degree of sexual activity.

I have come across new statistics from Truvada on the HIV-AIDS pandemic in the United States. According to Truvada, currently 1 in 100 Americans are likely to be diagnosed HIV-positive in their lifetime …

Link: “Truvada” … https://www.truvadahcp.com/retrospective-impact-analysis ..

That page is full of information and very long. I see Truvada’s source for this information is …

Link: “2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections,” by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published 2016, accessed 8 June 2017 … https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2016/croi-2016.html ..

UNITED STATES: STATES WITH HIGHEST HIV INCIDENCE

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UPDATE as of 28 April 2021

It looks to me like the prevalences (aka ‘risk’) below should have been per 100,000 people. That would make the statistics far lower. I say that because of this recent article …

Link: “Estimated HIV Incidence and Prevalence in the United States 2014-2018 pdf icon[PDF – 3 MB].” HIV Surveillance Supplemental Report 2020; 25(1) … https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/library/reports/surveillance/cdc-hiv-surveillance-supplemental-report-vol-25-1.pdf ..

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According to the Truvada website, the statistics vary greatly from state to state, here in America. For instance, in Washington, DC, the lifetime risk of HIV diagnosis is 1 in every 13 people. In Maryland, the risk is 1 in 49. Other states with risk ranging from 1 in 51 to 1 in 97 (which is to say, among the highest in the nation) are Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, New York, Texas, New Jersey, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Delaware, and Alabama (the first listed being the states with higher incidence).

States with risk ranging from 1 in 402 to 1 in 670 (which is to say, among the lowest in the nation) are South Dakota, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Vermont, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota (the last listed being the states with lower incidence).

GREATER INCIDENCE OF HIV IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES

Here is a map from the Centers for Disease Control CDC), using 2018 data, indicating that the Southern states, together with Nevada, New York, and Maryland have the highest rates of HIV diagnosis annually … https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/nchhstpatlas/maps.html … Among southern states, I see that Alabama has a little lower than the highest category of rates.

I note as well that many of these states have voted not to offer expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act …

Link: “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion by state,” by Kurykh, 19 September 2013, in Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid#/media/File:ACA_Medicaid_expansion_by_state.svg ..

That might affect availability of healthcare for HIV and AIDS in some low per capita income Southern areas. It looks like the Centers for Disease Control have recognized the need for more HIV and AIDS health resources to be dedicated to the South, and have begun providing these …

Link: “HIV Prevention in the South: Aligning CDC’s Funding with Current HIV Trends” (2010 and 2015 data) … https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/policies/cdc-hiv-south-graphic.pdf ..

STATISTICS FOR RECIPIENTS OF RECTAL SEX

According to the Truvada statistics, among men who have sex with men, receptive rectal sex partners are at high risk of contracting HIV … 13 times more so than are insertive partners.

Truvada does not have statistics on this, but I feel the risk may be just as high (and for similar biological reasons) for women who are receptive rectal sex partners. For more on this, from an energetic and intuitive point of view, search my site for the word: rectal

STATISTICS FOR MEN HAVING SEX WITH MEN, AND THE ISSUE OF SECRET MALE BISEXUALITY

Again according to the Truvada statistics, the risk of HIV infection is 83 times greater amongst men having sex with men, than it is amongst heterosexual men. This brings up the question how many men are bisexual, passing for heterosexual? As an intuitive, I feel this number to be a good deal higher than the socially accepted notion.

For a married bisexual man, passing as purely heterosexual for the sake of social convention, I feel the likelihood of HIV infection might be close to that for purely homosexual men.

Impact of Secret Bisexuality on Life Expectancy of Wives and Children

As well, I feel the likelihood would be high that a secretly bisexual man might not share a positive HIV status with his wife. The results of this secrecy would be decreased life expectancy for the wife, due to her ignorance of the need for antiretroviral treatment (ART), and the risk of the wife passing on HIV to her newborns, and to her older children, through bodily fluids contact (due to her ignorance of the need to take precautions).

THE GREATER HIV INCIDENCE AMONGST HISPANICS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS

The greater Truvada-reported incidence of HIV infection amongst MSM Hispanics and African Americans may have to do with socioeconomic status and affordability of condoms; this is just an intuitive thought … I have no way to back it up factually.

THE VERY HIGH TRANSGENDER HIV STATISTICS

According to the Truvada statistics, of the 1.4 million transgender Americans, about 1 in 5 are HIV positive. Truvada estimates the risk that a transgender woman will have HIV is 34 times more than that for adults who identify with their birth sex.

Intuitively speaking, this may have to do with a greater proportion of transgender Americans being polyamorous, or maybe being employed as sex workers? For instance, in Wikipedia I read that about 13 percent of transgender women have participated in the sex trade …

Link: “Transgender sex worker,” in Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_sex_worker ..

… compared to 1 percent of American women overall …

Link: “How Many Prostitutes Are in the United States and the Rest of the World? (General Reference: not clearly pro or con)” in ProCon.org, 11 January 2018 … https://prostitution.procon.org/questions/how-many-prostitutes-are-in-the-united-states-and-the-rest-of-the-world/ ..

My thought on that is, it could be that the greater the number of sexual partners, either through polyamory or through sex work, the greater the likelihood of contracting an STD, including an increased likelihood of contracting HIV. This is just a thought; I do not have the statistics on it.

DIAGNOSED HIV INCIDENCE VERY DIFFERENT FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

Again according to Truvada, the risk of men being diagnosed as HIV positive is more than three times greater than that for women. I believe this may be because men are more aware of the need to test, and if they test positive, are unwilling to let their wives know that, because of the social stigma.

CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN, AS WELL AS MEN, TESTING FOR HIV ANNUALLY

I cannot overemphasize the importance of everyone in America testing annually, provided they have not yet been diagnosed HIV-positive. This includes women and children as well.

HOW TO GET AN HIV TEST

A while ago I read that, here in California, physicians were required to report social security numbers of AIDS patients to Sacramento, the reason for this being that documentation of the social security numbers would prevent duplicate reporting and consequent false inflation of the AIDS statistics here. Whether this also applies to positive HIV results here in California, I do not know. And no doubt, required documentation on the progress of the pandemic varies state by state.

Intuitively, I feel that the thought of being reported to Sacramento may cause people to avoid testing. They may feel, possibly because of the earlier social stigma of AIDS, that something just awful might happen to them if Sacramento finds out. Maybe their friends and neighbors will find out. Maybe they will lose their jobs because of it. Maybe they will not be welcome at church anymore. Maybe their children will be expelled from school because of it.

These kinds of fears may needlessly prevent Americans from testing for HIV, here in California, even though Medicaid and Medicare provide for annual HIV and AIDS tests: People may delay in testing, through concern that positive results here in California might be reported to Sacramento, and that they might be subject to community disparagement because of test results.

For those concerned about the social stigma of a positive HIV diagnosis, it is good to know that the large drug stores such as Rite-Aid, Walgreens, and CVS carry HIV diagnosis kits on the shelves near their pharmacies.

My understanding is that the saliva test available from the large drug stores is about 90% accurate, provided the test is done a month or more after sexual contact. Ninety percent is not such a good rate of accuracy, but the advantage, for those concerned about the AIDS stigma, is that if you pay cash for the kit at a pharmacy where no one knows you, then no one will know you took the test, and no one will know your diagnosis. And also, you will know the test results immediately.

There is another test available at some of the large pharmacies … a blood test for HIV. My understanding is that this type of test is about 98% accurate, for those who wait a month after sexual contact before testing. That is a pretty good rate of accuracy, but as I understand it, the blood sample must be sent out to a lab, which means that the lab will know the results of your test. Further, it will take time to get the test results back from the lab.

It is also possible, in some cases, to go to a Family Urgent Care clinic and pay cash for an on-the-spot HIV blood test. This would be a good alternative, I feel, for those in communities with Family Urgent Care clinics so equipped, and for whom time and accuracy are of the essence.

Once a person tests HIV positive, then the thing to do, I feel, would be to ask their physician about available antiretroviral treatments (ART). According to what I have read, ART is very helpful in delaying the occasional outbreaks of AIDS sickness that occur amongst those Americans with the virus. I have also read that Medicaid and Medicare insurance will cover medical treatment.

THE DANGER OF YOUNG CHILDREN CONTRACTING HIV

Is the Drug Trade Targeting Young Children?

Intuitively, from the clair plane, I feel that the drug trade is now targeting preschool children, with 8-year-old children as drug peddlers. Young children have insufficient money to purchase drugs, once addicted, may turn to petty theft from cars and homes to pay for continued drug use.

Are Youth Contracting HIV from Drug Peddlers?

Pertinent to the global HIV pandemic, and again, intuitively speaking, it seems to me that adult drug peddlers sometimes may offer drugs to young children in exchange for sex. Adult drug peddlers are higher risk for HIV and AIDS; thus the danger exists of young children getting HIV because of drug addiction.

Likelihood of ‘Blooms’ of HIV amongst Youth in Communities Nationwide

Because of permissive sexual practices among young people today, it seems to me likely that, once one sexually active child in a school contracts HIV, the likelihood will be that most of the children will have HIV with six months or a year.

Increase in After-School Petty Crime May Forewarn of Youth HIV ‘Blooms’

Again in clair vision, I feel this is creating ‘hot spots’ of youth pandemic nationwide. My feeling is, youth testing, again because of the AIDS stigma, is woefully lacking in most locales; I may be wrong about this, though. If my intuition turns out to be true, then a way to predict HIV blooms amongst youth in America would be to tabulate after-school petty theft from automobiles and homes … These might indicate that drugs are being sold to school children.

LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE HIV

As you may know, to date there is insufficient research on antiretroviral treatment (ART) for youth; the difficulty being that the drugs used for adults may prove damaging to the bodies of growing children. Thus, infection with HIV is more dangerous for young children, than for adults, and has a much greater impact on their life expectancy.

The data on life expectancy for children in their teens who contract HIV are better than for newborns and toddlers who contract HIV. My feeling is, this may be because teens have less length of time to wait before antiretroviral treatment can begin, than do very young children.

There is, as I understand it, a high likelihood that people with HIV will have newborns who are diagnosed HIV positive. Most newborns so diagnosed, as nearly as I can tell, are not surviving to puberty. Thus a young local population that has a ‘bloom’ of HIV infection is unlikely to have viable offspring.

HOMELESS AND OUT-OF-WORK CITIZENS AS A MANPOWER RESOURCE FOR TOWNS HARD HIT BY THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

The life expectancy of people who contract HIV in adulthood is much greater than that for those who contract HIV in youth, because of the availability of antiretroviral treatment for adults, and the relative lack of availability of ART for youth.

Thus the likely scenario of blooms of HIV incidence amongst youth in communities here and there, across America, to do with the drug trade, and resulting in inability of youth to have viable offspring. Towns with such HIV blooms amongst youth will, in the coming decade, most likely experience a projected demographic of stagnant or declining workforce.

In situations where American towns experience such a demographic because of the pandemic’s effect on their youth, the nation’s homeless and out-of-work population may be seen to be a resource for manpower in the decades to come. These homeless and out-of-work citizens may take the place, in the work force of towns hard hit by the pandemic, of the children of today’s children that cannot be anticipated to survive.

Even those of the homeless and out-of-work sector who test positive for HIV may provide many years of manpower to their communities, provided they have access to current antiretroviral treatments (ART).

THE IMPORTANCE OF NURTURING HIV POSITIVE NEWBORNS

In every plague past of humankind, there has emerged a population of plague-resistant remaining human beings. I have no doubt but what that will be the case with the worldwide HIV pandemic.

The issue is, to preserve the health of as many newborns as possible, even if they are HIV positive, as some of these newborns may survive, and may have HIV-resistant genes that allow their immune systems to be healthy, despite the infection. I see from this article that about 1 percent of Caucasians may be HIV-resistant …

Link: “Is Anyone Immune to HIV? A genetic mutation that blocks HIV may hold the key to future treatment and, perhaps, a cure,” by Elaine Mendus and Trudy Ring, 23 March 2016 … https://www.hivplusmag.com/research-breakthroughs/2016/3/23/anyone-immune-hiv ..

I feel certain that other races and cultures will be found to have individuals with HIV-resistant genes as well.

Thus my own estimate for an HIV-resistant group of people worldwide, who are able to produce viable offspring, is in the more hopeful range of 10 to 20 percent of the current world population

300-YEAR PROJECTION WITH REGARD TO MINIMUM VIABLE HUMAN POPULATION

The world population is now 7.53 billion. Were this population to be reduced to 1 percent over the next 300 years, the world population will have declined to 75.3 million. From my reading, this is well above the minimum viable population for humankind …

Link: “Minimum viable population,” in Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population ..

If my more hopeful estimate of 10 to 20 percent HIV-resistant people worldwide were to prove true, then the prospects for continuance of humankind on Earth would be all the better.

Thus my intuitive projection, going forward, is that there will be a decline in population over the next few centuries, and a strengthening of the human gene pool. There is, I feel, an excellent likelihood that humankind will retain a firm footing amongst Earth species, and with a lesser ongoing negative impact on the ecosphere.

THE OUTLOOK FOR HUMANKIND

This is a pandemic like any other. Infection is not a mark of disparagement or a social put-down; no more so than was the case with other pandemics in human history. The more compassionate understanding and loving kindness each community can bring to bear in regard to this very difficult situation, the better it will be for everyone.

As the pandemic continues on a global scale, our best hopes for humankind lie, in the short term, in increased awareness of the prevalence of the pandemic, in lowering of AIDS stigma consciousness, and in voluntary annual testing by men, women, and children of all ages, with medical treatment for those who test positive.

In the mid term, there is hope for healthwise changes in sexual practices, and for new medical regimes. And in the long term, our hope as humankind lies in the presence in our gene pool of HIV-resistant populations.

I ask God’s blessing for each of us, in these difficult times. May we all be blessed with good health, abundance, and happiness in the coming years.

In love, light and joy,
I Am of the Stars

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MORE INFORMATION

Link: “2016 HIV Lifetime Risk Statistics from Centers for Disease Control,” by Alice B. Clagett, published on 30 March 2019 … https://wp.me/p2Rkym-c3f ..

Link: “Compendium: HIV / AIDS Pandemic,” by Alice B. Clagett, published on 2 March 2019; revised on 3 April 2020 … https://wp.me/p2Rkym-bPl ..

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Community Health, HIV, AIDS, homeless, MSM, M2M, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, children and HIV, newborns and HIV, Truvada, HIV resistance, AIDS resistance, social stigma, homelessness, vagrancy, joblessness, work force, manpower, drug war, transgender, HIV tests, California AIDS reportability, minimum viable population, one-upmanship, workforce, societal expectations,