Buyer beware, even when the item is only truth and the price is zero. The Washington Post reports (ht: Drudge):
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.
Self-interest appears to have played a role in the estimates, as we cynical economists often point out:
Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is
good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent
overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed
funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the
spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated
the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial
support for combating AIDS."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."
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{ 22 comments }
Hmmmmmm…and in ten years, will the U.N. and their climate hysteria panel be releasing a similar report detailing their overestimation of the adverse effects of global warming? And, will they release this reevaluation before, or after governments do significant damage to the world's economies?
Damn, persiflage, you beat me to it!
The UN is in the political business of selling crisis. It’s their primary product.
This should surprise no one.
crisis? where? I'll take two!
Approximately 25 million people have died of aids, there are 12 million aids orphans and 32 million people infected with HIV/AIDS.
These are staggering numbers!
I for one am happy to hear they over estimated these numbers and I suspect our worldwide response has in part made them less severe.
Regarding climate change if anything the recent reports suggest we may be under estimating its effects and degree.
muirgeo,
Reports that come from… the UN, of course. I think you are missing the point here; anyone's incompetence is rarely circumscribed to just one of their activities.
The UN…..the unadulterated truth, the universal beacon of hope, the righter of wrongs, the savior of our very planet!
Cynicism unleashed…..
Try pushing back against their other erroneous statistics like civilian casualties, climate data, health care and longevity studies, economic findings and you will find the same thing: Hyperbole to the nth degree, socialist utopian nonsense with a heavy dose of "America is the cause of everything bad in the world". In other words, their findings, studies, data and assessments are worthless.
Yeah, they almost as bad as all the domestic free market financial institutions that mispriced all those sub-prime mortgages.
muirgeo,
Reports that come from… the UN, of course. I think you are missing the point here; anyone's incompetence is rarely circumscribed to just one of their activities.
Posted by: Frederick Davies | Nov 21, 2007 3:10:04 AM
Watch yourself Frederick, at some point you'll be lumpable with the Holocaust deniers….the numbers ARE staggering!!!
muirgeo
holocaust deniers? are you serious? Unless I'm misinformed, I don't think the majority of victims of the holocaust could have avoided their fate by wearing condoms.
I'll preempt the impending shrill response about the price/availability of condoms and add that they also were not able to avoid it by abstaining from sex with multiple partners at a time.
I think that AIDS is something that has to be dealt with, but it requires as much a change in attitude as it does in contraception. I'm not the religious type (said "atheist") but I can't deny that, to people who believe that polio is a conspiracy of the west, the fear of god might limit exposure to a larger degree than the fear of an invisible thing called a virus — that only weird people in lab coats claim to see. Were I not raised in the west, I probably would have a hard time believing that slipping on a stretchy hat protects me from the evil curse, so obviously imposed on me by god, as punishment for my infidelity.
muirgeo,
Care to explain the logical path between the two statements, please? Because as written it is a non sequitur if I have ever seen one.
Fredrick, be careful what you ask for. The explanation is usually even more of a discombobulated mess than the original statement.
Frederick doesn't have to worry. Muirgeo doesn't answer questions (quack quack quack)
Fredrick,
My point was that the number of people who have died from AIDs is staggering regardless of weather its off by 5% or 20%. Do you not believe the number is about 25 million? Do you not believe its a staggering number?
Tell us Frederick what are the proper numbers and what are your sources?
You guys use the same logic here as you do with global warming, that being, since we don't have exact data the problem must not be that great…well, we don't have exact data on the Holocaust as well but indeed it was horrific and it did happen.
Translation of someone above: "What does it matter if the UN is wrong? At least they care about humanity. But you climate deniers might be wrong; and that is far worse than actually being wrong while caring."
Staggering? From a certain perspective I suppose. But then, considering that well over 6 billion people are definitely going to die over the next century, and that I'm almost certain to one of them, I don't find it particularly compelling. Seriously Muirgeo, is there any "problem" in the world that you don't believe to be "our" responsibility?
Sure this thread has devolved into a competition for who posted the stupidest comment…. I'll play.
Apparently I'm, winning so far for claiming 32 million even if its not 40 million is a big number. Also I've earned bonus points for suggesting being off by a number close to the total number killed in the Holocaust (which still leaves us with a sum several fold bigger then the total number killed in the Holocaust) is a "staggering" number that shouldn't be denied.
Now of course there are my competitors for stupidest post….. several of which have equated "being wrong" by some 20% makes the real world total equal zero. Seems like bad math to me but hey! Some have suggested that people born to parents with AIDS are stupid and should have thought about it more before acting. Some have suggested that if you "care" about the numbers then you are biased and your opinion is not that helpful. But of all the contenders I have to step down and hand the Gold medal to "Randy-we're all gonna die any way so what does it matter". Uncle….I give up I just can't compete with that.
Oh I also liked the one that said Holocaust victims for not leaving their country before the doo-doo hit the fan are as stupid as condom-less Africans….thats gotta be good for a silver in our little competition.
muirgeo,
My point is that in not keeping proper statistics and letting their scaremongering distort their data, the UN have not only lost any credibility they could have had, but caused great damage to those who they are supposedly trying to help by
1. distorting the allocation of resources to the different emergencies they are facing. For example, should we be spending so much money in AIDS research when a million people die of malaria every year? We do not know, because thanks to UN incompetence we do not really know what the numbers are, and hence a proper calculation of the best ways to save the most lives is impossible.
2. making it impossible to find out which are the best courses of action to combat the illness. Thanks again to UN incompetence, the different programs to combat AIDS can no longer calculate the differential effectiveness of their methods, and as a result we cannot know which are the most effective methods.
The end result of all this is that more people will die in the near future because the UN do not know how to bloody count!
Your expressions of qualitative "staggerness" are all well and good, but more lives will be saved by quantitative calculations on the best possible actions; and in that the UN has failed. If you do not find that staggeringly incompetent it is you who is the denier.
On the AGW front, I was just pointing out my general observation that incompetence is a general "illness", not a punctual problem, and as a result any trust anyone (except incompetence deniers, of course) may have had in the IPCC reports should be over.
In another stunning "UN body of experts" reversal, the WHO
( http://www.who.int/en/ ) no longer advocates a ban on DDT, but rather countenances its indoor use to slow the spread of malaria!
Translation of someone above: "What does it matter if the UN is wrong? At least they care about humanity. But you climate deniers might be wrong; and that is far worse than actually being wrong while caring. – Python.
Brilliant.
Since we’re on it, and now that we know the hockey stick is fake, and that temperatures in Gore’s cornerstone Really Big Chart preceded the rise in CO2 levels by an average of 800 years, and that any attempt to roll back CO2 emissions to 1990 levels is incredibly expensive and probably pointless, and that the UN IPCC is a fundamentally corrupt bureaucracy, is there anything at all on which the UN has any credibility left?