seroprevalence ---- Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) . . .

Further, imo, interesting tid-bits found when researching seroprevalence:

"Elsewhere in the world, a similar chronological association between HIV and AIDS has been noted. . . .

Serologic data have suggested the presence of HIV infection as early as 1959 in Zaire (Nahmias et al., 1986). Other investigators have found evidence of HIV proviral DNA in tissues of a sailor who died in Manchester, England, in 1959 (Corbitt et al., 1990). In the latter case, this finding may have represented a contamination with a virus isolated at a much later date (Zhu and Ho, 1995)."
niaid.nih.gov

I question a lot of the statistics that I hear regarding anything...but that doesn't mean they can't be true. Would it surprise any of us to learn that many of these claims are way off the mark? These are some of the claims I have heard in the news just recently, some from credible sources others not. There are 2 million homeless in this country...somebodys identity is stolen every 3 seconds(lmao at that one), 1 in every 5 adults has genital herpes(probably high), we have 10 yrs. to reverse global warming(ok, not a statistic but you know what i mean), sorry to say a lot of people believe this nonsense and never stop to question anything.

The Wall Street Journal way back had an interesting article on how the government "massaged" inflation figures to fool the public. Reading the genital Herpes stats, I wondered if similar "massaging" was taking place to fool the public.

Doesn't seem to matter how absurd the numbers or how much dishonesty was recently uncovered the majority it seems greets the official information with a presumption of correctness that is very difficult to disturb.

"massaged" numbers? I guess if you hear something you don't like it's time to roll out the conspiracy theories, huh?

There's been tons of studies showing how wide spread HSV-2 is. For instance pregnant women will get tested for it to prevent complications during delivery.

What exactly would be the agenda behind someone (some entity? some cabal?) trying to promote that the numbers are higher than they are?

"specificity" is a measure of how many tests which indicate "positive" correspond with someone truly having HSV-2. For typical HSV-2 tests these days the specificities are in the 95% range. Depending how good your local clinic is, these might just be used as a screening test, then if you test positive they will pass it along confirmatory test with specificities in the 99% range.

Perhaps the reason it "feels" like the numbers are so high is that HSV really isn't a big deal. It's most often asymptomatic or the symptoms are so minor that most people don't even notice.

So my question to the conspiracy theorists we have in this thread is: Why would there be a conspiracy to fudge the numbers, and why are you so surprised the numbers are so high?

Why would the inflation numbers be "massaged"? If in fact, that is the case. I guess I could come up with ideas on why, but I'd be more interested if in fact the numbers were "massaged." Yes, I love conspiracy theory . . . first you need to find if there is anything somewhat reasonable to have a conspiracy over. :)

Maybe the numbers ARE so high? Maybe the actual infection rate is way less than 55.7 percent?

One reason for a "conspiracy" could be to generate fear for either an abstinence campaign or to sell pharmaceuticals to combat the disease or stop the spread. I'm so surprise because 55.7 percent sounds like a huge number especially when compared with white women's alleged rate of 18.7 percent. cdc.gov ---- Of course, could be very different sexual practices between white women and black women on average-----perhaps one way to test that is to see if with other STDs there is a similar HUGE disparity.

'VERY TROUBLING' | African Americans may be 5 times more likely to lose limb suntimes.com

Now see, I don't know if there is any "conspiracy" here or not. I don't even now if the news report is true. I tell you one thing I'm not afraid of the word "conspiracy" even an itsy bit! :) Sorry, especially where blacks are concerned (I'm white, btw) it is EASY for me to believe there is some evil "conspiracy" perpetuated usually by whites against blacks. But, hey that is just what I get to see first hand and it may not be representative. And, if it's not representative then that is wonderful news, imo. :)

Now going a little further do you think that I should just blindly trust whatever the government message happens to be on a given day? I mean if President Bush says that Iran is building a doomsday device and he has incontrovertable proof, then I should believe him or even a goverment spokesperson? I mean why would they lie??? And, if I don't believe then I must believe there is some massive "conspiracy"???

Looking at the government numbers again and there may be a very sound explanation it shows: 1. White men 14.1 percent and white women 18.7 percent. 2. Black men 37.5 and black women 55.7 percent. The difference between white men and white women seems fairly narrow. The difference between black men and black women seems fairly wide.

I don't trust the government's numbers regardless of what the numbers are supposed to represent. Doesn't mean there is a "conspiracy," but a conspiracy wouldn't surprise either. And, it wouldn't surprise if there was some reasonable explanation.

My (incredibly un-PC) guess is that black people are just genetically more susceptible to most STDs (including HIV) than white people. (On the other hand, black people have greater genetic immunity to certain other diseases than whites.)

18.7/14.1 = 1.32 while 55.7/37.5 = 1.48, so the difference in ratios between both men and women isn't that far off, either black or white. But while we are on it, I don't see why the difference in percentages or the ratios should be same between blacks and whites. You would need some kind of mathematical model before you could conclude there was something remarkable amiss here. The one thing we do know is that, like most STDs, women are more susceptible to HSV-2 than men.

I don't see anything odd about the numbers, so I'll just go with Occam's Razor, and say they are reported to be what they are, b/c that's the way things actually are.

As I would say, pregnant women are routinely tested for HSV, so if the numbers were way off and due to a government or pharmaceutical company conspiracy, some family doctor not on their payroll would have raised their voice by now. In fact, maybe that's a good way to resolve it. Go talk to a doctor you know and see if the numbers reported are consist with his/her experience.

Someone asked why would inflation numbers be massaged? Maybe I missed what you were talking about. Taking the question literally, this article here spells out why. worldnetdaily.com

The above link details why US inflation numbers are massaged. Now if you think our government only reports the straight truth, that sounds pretty amusing to me. :) Actually no it doesn't because that means you're just one of the sheeple our government can manipulate with ease.

"Someone asked why would inflation numbers be massaged?"

No, I asked why HSV-2 number would be massaged.

Try to keep up here, CG.

Hi casualguy,

Interesting article, but I wonder about the source e.g. perhaps it isn't mainstream or whatever. Anyway, The Wall Street Journal's concern about the "massaging" of the inflation numbers centered on properly adjusting for "improvements." For example, if your Whopper got sprayed with a "pesticide" that could be viewed by government as an "improvement." So, if the new "improved" Whopper goes from 99 cents to 299 cents that is actually deflation i.e. the real cost is going down even though you're paying more than a 200 percent more. :) Now once the adjustment to the Whopper has been made to account for the "improvement" it is easy to see that you're actually now only paying 75 cents in "real" terms even when you give the cashier 299 cents and she burps moron you forgot the sales tax and gratuity. Oh, and we don't take pennies!

Speaking again of conspiracy: "In Don't Start The Revolution Without Me!" by Jesse Ventura @ page 54:

"My most basic reasoning is this: If Oswald was really who we were led to believe----a disgruntled little Marine private who got angry with capitalism and became a communist, tried to defect to Russia, came back and thought he'd make a name for himself in history by shooting the president----then why would any of the evidence need to be withheld and locked away in the National Archives for seventy-five years because of 'national security'? As a Navy SEAL, I had top-secret clearance. That was higher than Oswald's, and I know a few secrets, but not enough to jeopardize national security."

For the sake of argument let's say former governor Ventura is factually correct, then is his logic, logical? NO, imho. The reason that I think his reasoning isn't logical is because his expectation that the government will act with a clear logic, while reasonable, is expecting too much or maybe naive. For example, if a murdered man is found with his wallet emptied on his body and there is a little over a thousand dollars along with credit cards and government ids and pictures and etc., then is it therefore logical to state that the murder wasn't financially motivated?

"In fact, the research published by the Boskin Commission, which studied the impact of "quality changes" on consumer prices, concluded that inflation was overstated by 1.1 percent each year."

redtape.msnbc.com

Inflation is overstated by 1.1 percent each year? Well, that is one solution to the deflationary spiral . . . anyone else recall the dire warnings of deflation?