Thanks vinod for blogging on this issue.
No wonder Bill gates donated 100 million dollars way back in 2002 recognising what a big problem AIDS is in india.
sometime in August sixty minutes ran a program on AIDS in india about why AIDS is spreading so fast in india and how it is going to be the worlds number 1 problem even surpassing terrorism..
Now finally people like Revati are making movies on AIDS (phir milenge) and rich people in india are finally helping AIDS victims in india (like salmankhan who recently donated one or two crores for AIDS eradication in india).
Most people in india dont even admit that they have AIDS because of scare of social alienation and sixty minutes showed interviews of girls with arranged marriages getting AIDS from their husbands and their husbands hiding the disease and marrying innocent girls.
One good thing is lucky for people in india, tripple cocktail AIDS medicine is made by just one pharmaceutical company in india and is much cheaper than it is in US where one needs to buy three seperate AIDS medicines from three different pharmaceutical companies here in US (Loose patent laws in india are working out as an advantage for india)
here is 60 minutes transcript on AIDS in india
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/08/60minutes/main610961.shtml

the guy's statement is based on hope and unbuttressed by numbers.

in any case the % of infections in India are nothing like those in South Africa. We're talking the difference between .5% vs. double digit numbers that significantly affect mortality estimates.

it reminds me of the people who go on and on about how there's going to be an AIDs epidemic in China though - that's even *more* improbable than an Indian epidemic on the scale of the African one.

GC: why do you think that an epidemic in China is unlikely? My understanding is that claims such as these are based on an underlying model of sexual behavior derived from studies of other venerial diseases.

Right now, the fastest increase in cases in the world is Russia. Sure, that's b/c it started with a small base, but it looks like it's gonna spread. China has a fair amount of promiscuity these days, as well as alot of sex for money, and not that much condom use. It's a dangerous combo.

GC: He was only talking raw numbers, not %ages. But in South Africa they have a very good sense of how bad the epidemic is, b/c it is a smaller population, and one that is far more closely studied concerning HIV. Indian statistics, on the other hand, probably have a far higher margin of error.

I should have numbers on this, I don't, I'm just speculating.

GC: why do you think that an epidemic in China is unlikely?... the fastest increase in cases in the world

it's funny. i always tell razib that the way the "AIDS is a universal disease" people make their case is by citing a derivative or a second derivative rather than an absolute value. You inadvertently present yet another example :)

A derivative amplifies noise and tells you nothing. Russia has one of the highest rates among mostly white countries and is around .6%. Compare this to sub-Saharan countries. The *lowest* rate on the continent is in Mauritania, at .6%. The median/mean is considerably higher - roughly 7.5% of sub-Saharan Africans have AIDS.

We can go into chapter and verse, but the point is that not all groups are at equal risk for AIDs. It is, obviously, a disease that disproportionately strikes the sexually promiscuous. In the US, that means gay males (who have the highest rates) and blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics. It doesn't mean straight whites and Asians (who have the lowest AIDs rates).

For a number of reasons, the median ethnic Chinese is not promiscuous. Fecund? They used to be, but not promiscuous. You'll find that pattern worldwide - Japanese, Koreans, ethnic Chinese generally have low AIDs rates. This is why Northeast Asia has by far the lowest HIV rates in the world at .1% - one in a thousand - and why Northeast Asian expats have low rates as well.

Now, if you want to play a minimax game you can cite Thailand or Russia vs. the most successful sub-Saharan country, squint, and find an overlap. But a) Thailand is not primarily ethnic Northeast Asian, b) Russia is an outlier relative to most white Euro states, and c) overlaps do not change the median.

Bottom line: there is no way that Russia or China are ever going to have an Africa level AIDS epidemic. India is probably not going to either, though it's slightly less of a sure bet.

Now, the PC people who want to deny that different groups have different behaviors and thus different risks for infection will keep playing the minimax game. Don't play it :)

Actually, I want to dispute the idea that (a) Chinese promiscuity is consistently low over time and (b) Chinese promiscuity is currently low.

From what I know about Chinese history, sexuality was strongly controlled under the communists. When you have 1 monitor for every 10 people, and they're watching fertility, that makes it very hard to screw around unless you're Mao himself. But now things are very different. My friends who live in the big cities say that it's not that far different from Europe or the US amongst the educated. Prostitution is way up, as are various other sex for money arrangements.

Like I said, they have evidence about promiscuity in both Indian and China based on the spread of other venerial diseases. I wish I had a link to some of the things I've heard summarized, but I don't.

Just, on the empirical matter, hold 5% of your conclusion open, and if you happen to see other evidence about STDs, take a look. I know I can't convince without them, I'm just appealing to your notions of scientific fairness.

So why do Chinese currently have a low HIV rate? Well, it's not clear they do, given government denial of AIDS even when the west was counting many cases. The Chinese numbers are not accurate, the question is how big or small are the numbers in real life and that we don't know. But you, GC, should know better than to rely on numbers from a communist government!

Ennis:

It's not just China that I'm basing this on. See Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Northeast Asian expats. They all have low AIDS rates. There is *never* going to be an Africa-style epidemic in China.

Just, on the empirical matter, hold 5% of your conclusion open, and if you happen to see other evidence about STDs, take a look. I know I can't convince without them, I'm just appealing to your notions of scientific fairness.

Sure. If someone shows me 10% AIDS rates in Taiwan, yeah, I'll eat my hat. I'd be just about as surprised as I would be by a sub-Saharan Singapore (though in the latter case the surprise would be pleasant).

In the absence of such evidence, and given all the other data points, I think the idea that China or India or Russia is going to have an Africa-level AIDS epidemic is wishful thinking on the part of the "all humans are equal!" people, motivated largely by the sort of minimax & first/second derivative (as opposed to absolute value) arguments I criticized above.

If it ever reaches close to epidemic proportions in China the government will simply round up the afflicted, place them in camps and tell the rest of the population that they'll execute anyone else who does not come forward voluntarily or is responsible for spreading the disease.

But I have to agree with gc, there won’t be an African-level AIDS epidemic in China, India or Russia. Abject poverty, apathy of the government, lack of hygiene, socially accepted promiscuity, absence of national pharmaceutical companies, ignorance, etc. have led to the epidemic in much of Africa.