Public Health Emergency! New HIV Positive Diagnosis Declines
Oh my, the CDC’s recent report indicates that after declining no more than 3 percent annually since 2016, HIV diagnoses dropped 17 percent from 2019 to 2020, to 30,403 new positive test results.
That is a foreboding sign, experts stress.
😧
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/due-to-covid-2020-was-a-lost-year-in-the-fight-against-hiv-report-suggests/ar-AAXFe2A
You cant make this up. Of course, they blame the lack of testing for the drop and not the fact many young men were locked down and or scared of COVID and making do with their “HIV free” hand.
Of course, now that immune systems are being suppressed with the COVID vaccines we should start seeing more asymptomatic and untreated HIV persons progressing to AIDS.
I suspect we will be hearing a bit more about HIV and AIDS to go along with Monkey Pox (funny how both viruses were said to be linked to promiscuous homosexuals before expanding the list of those susceptible).
Anyways, lets review the recent history of HIV/AIDS News to get an idea what their up to.
If you recall there was a bit of talk about HIV/AIDS a few months ago . Remember news of the more serious variant? Then the Moderna Vax trial, a push for more testing.
An HIV vaccine has been a long term dream. COVID mRNA vaccine breakthrough paves the way for a mRNA HIV vaccine that will have cells expressing designated HIV peptides.
Dont forget Faucis 1-11-99 patent for HIV related peptides used in HIV vaccines (granted in 2005)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6911527B1/en
2015-On October 8, , Gallo’s Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine announced the launch of its Phase 1 human trials of Gallo’s latest HIV vaccine candidate.
A consortium led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $23.4 million to Gallo’s research on this vaccine.
Other money came from Redfield’s pals in the US Military HIV Research Program.
Gallo launched his clinical trial in collaboration with Profectus BioSciences, a biotech firm that he recently spun off from IHV to allow him to monetize the research he conducted with tax-deductible funding from Gates and taxpayer dollars from NIH and the milita
2016-The Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine announced a $14.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to tackle a significant scientific global challenge in HIV vaccine research – the inability to produce long-lasting antibodies to protect against HIV infection. The announcement was made by Robert C. Gallo, MD,
2018-Dr. Robert Redfield becomes CDC Director. His partner Robert C. Gallo, MD: “A close colleague for more than 40 years, is an excellent choice to be head of the CDC,” said Robert C. Gallo, MD, the Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine, co-founder and director of the IHV and co-founder and scientific director of the Global Virus Network (GVN). “While it will be a big loss for the Institute, we are at a time in our nation’s history when Dr. Redfield’s skills will best be utilized as head of the CDC.
2019-Feb 5 . In his State of the Union address President Donald Trump surprisingly included a plan to eliminate HIV/AIDS in his budget: “My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years. Together, we will defeat AIDS in America.” The inclusion of HIV/AIDS in his address came as a surprise to many because one of President Trump’s first actions upon arriving at the White House was firing all 16 members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Though President Trump reinstated this council 15 months later, his initial actions were indicative of his longer record on HIV/AIDS. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)--New York held many direct-action protests, including one at Trump Tower in October 1989. Roughly 100 protestors gathered to protest the 6.2 million-dollars in tax abatements Trump received to build the mixed-use, high-rise property at a time when those stricken with AIDS were increasingly vulnerable to homelessness. Protestors saw Trump Tower as a symbol of corporate greed and argued that state monies could have been used to build more housing facilities for those impacted by AIDS.
During his State of the Union addressin 2019, Trump announced that his 2020 budget would “make the needed commitment to eliminate the H.I.V. epidemic in the United States within 10 years.” That pronouncement was backed by a plan, “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America,” and Trump’s budget proposed $291 million in spending for that initiative.
The plan also callsfor diagnosing people as early as possible and expanding treatment so that people who are HIV-positive have only very low or even undetectable amounts of virus in their blood. That allowsthem to stay healthy and makes them far less likely to infect others.
2019-May 9 -Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II announced that, as a result of discussions between the Trump Administration and Gilead Sciences, Inc., the pharmaceutical company has agreed to donate pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication for up to 200,000 individuals each year for up to 11 years.
PrEP is used to reduce the risk of HIV infection in individuals who are at higher risk for HIV. It has been shown to reduce the risk of new infection by up to 97 percent when taken consistently.
The agreement between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Gilead will last until at least December 31, 2025 and possibly through December 31, 2030, and will provide medication to treat individuals who are at risk for HIV and who are uninsured.
This donation will deliver Gilead’s PrEP medication Truvada, which currently carries a list price of more than $20,000 per patient per year, to up to 200,000 people per year, including in the states and counties identified as priority areas in the Trump Administration plan[PDF, 634KB] to end the HIV epidemic in America.
2019-June 11: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force) gives A-level recommendations for HIV screening and prevention, stating that clinicians should screen for HIV in adolescents, adults, and pregnant people and offer PrEP to people at high risk for HIV.
2019, Dr. Fauci made a surprise announcement: he finally had a working HIV vaccine. While the inoculation had demonstrated a bare-bones 30 percent efficacy in human trials in Thailand, data from the Phase III trial in South Africa looked promising, and NIAID was getting teed up to test the vaccine on Americans.
Dr. Fauci added some deflating caveats: While his new vaccine didn’t prevent transmission of AIDS, the nimble technocrat jauntily predicted that intrepid souls who took the jab would find that when they did get AIDS, the symptoms would seem to be much reduced.
Lol-where have we heard that before?
2020 Feb 4 -A clinical trial testing a promising HIV vaccine in more than 5,000 people in South Africa has been halted because it failed to show a benefit, U.S. health officials said on Monday.
The study, known as HVTN 702, built on results from the 2009 RV144 vaccine trial in Thailand, which was the first to show it was possible to prevent HIV infection in humans. In that study, the vaccine cut the rate of HIV infections by 30% compared with people who got a placebo.
“It is very disappointing that this vaccine candidate does not work, but the trial was well-conducted and got an answer as quickly as possible,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an HIV prevention advocacy group, said in a statement.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-hiv-vaccine-idUSKBN1ZX2QO
June 2020-President Donald Trump suggested that scientists have developed a vaccine for AIDS, the late stage of HIV infection in which the virus badly damages the immune system.
“They’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine,” Trump said during a press conference on police reform, referring to scientists. “As you know, there’s various things, and now various companies are involved
August 2020-Trump administration requested $450 million in new funds to ramp up the “Ending the HIV Epidemic” initiative, the Democratic-controlled House — faced with budget caps limiting its appropriations for discretionary programs — approved on Friday a total of $65 million in new money for the plan as part of FY-21 minibus legislation.
The Trump administration, as part of its FY-21 budget request in February, had sought $716 million for the HIV initiative, a PrEP-centric program aimed at containing new HIV infections where they are most prevalent in the United States.
The funds were requested for major health agencies — the Centers for Disease Control, the Ryan White Program, the National Institutes for Health, HRSA Health Center Programs and Indian Health Services — to deliver PrEP and HIV treatment.
2020-November 19-CDC publishes a new study showing that the age-adjusted rate of HIV-related deaths among people with HIV in the U.S. fell by nearly half from 2010 to 2017.
2021 May 28, the White House published President Biden’s Budget of the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2022(October 1, 2021-September 30, 2022), which includes a request for $670 million for continued implementation of the
Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. initiative.
A section on investing in public health infrastructure highlights the funding requestfor the EHE initiative:
Commits to Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic.
To help accelerate and strengthen efforts to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, the Budget includes $670 million within HHS to help aggressively reduce new HIV cases while increasing access to treatment, expanding the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, also known as PrEP, and ensuring equitable access to services and supports.
Details of the $670 million proposed for the EHE initiative are provided in the FY2022 Budget in Brief for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also published on May 28, 2021.
EHE is highlighted in the budget overview discussion early in the document:
“The budget provides $670 million across HHS to continue efforts to end the HIV epidemic in the United States by working closely with communities where HIV transmission occurs most frequently to implement effective prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies, and to address the disproportionate impact of HIV and Hepatitis C infections in Tribal communities. HHS programs have already made major progress in combating this epidemic. HRSA ensures equitable access to services and supports for low-income people with HIV through Health Centers as well as the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.
In 2019, 88.1 percent of Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program clients were virally suppressed, a record level that exceeds the national average of 64.7 percent. HHS will build on this work to end the epidemic once and for all.”
The budget proposes the following amounts (in millions) by HHS agency for EHE in FY22:
Dec 2021-President Joe Biden commemorated World AIDS Day by announcing his administration’s commitment to ending the HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus) epidemic. The disease has claimed the lives of more than 36 million people globally and 700,000 people in the United States.
The president intends to double down on efforts that averted access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment.
The new HIV/AIDs strategy includes:
Incorporating the latest data on HIV trends, incidence, and prevalence
Addressing the social determinants of health that impact an individual’s HIV risk and outcomes
Advocating to reform laws that criminalize HIV
Catalyzing collaboration with the private sector
In an effort to increase access and support, the Biden Administration awarded $2.21 billion in funding to support Ryan White HIV/AIDS programming, which provides HIV primary medical care, medication, and other essential services to low-income people with HIV.
The President has also requested $670 million from the fiscal year 2022 budget to support the HIV initiative coupled with $250 million in American Rescue Plan funding to support the President’s Emergency Plan for AID Relief.1
Coupled with that funding, President Biden proposed an additional $450 million to provide stable housing that will enable people to stay in medical care and adhere to medical treatment.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/biden-hiv-plan-5212634
Dec 2021
A new government report has found that new HIV infections have fallen by 8% over the last decade. But that decline was seen among White gay and bisexual men. Cases have stayed consistent among Black and Hispanic gay and bisexual men.
The December report, which is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vital Signs, found that from 2010 to 2019, the number of new HIV infections remained relatively stable in Black (from 9,000 to 8,900) and Hispanic (from 6,800 to 7,900) gay and bisexual men. However, cases declined significantly for White gay and bisexual men (from 7,500 to 5,100).1
The report found that Black and Hispanic men were less likely to be diagnosed with HIV, undergo treatment to suppress the virus, or use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent it, compared to White men.
CDC: New HIV cases in the U.S. Are Dropping–But Not for All
Dec 2021
An experimental HIV vaccine based on mRNA—the same platform technology used in two highly effective COVID-19 vaccines—shows promise in mice and non-human primates, according to scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Their results, published in Nature Medicine, show that the novel vaccine was safe and prompted desired antibody and cellular immune responses against an HIV-like virus.
Rhesus macaques receiving a priming vaccine followed by multiple booster inoculations had a 79% lower per-exposure risk of infection by simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) compared to unvaccinated animals.
The research was led by Paolo Lusso, M.D., Ph.D., of NIAID’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation, in collaboration with other NIAID scientists, investigators from Moderna, Inc. and colleagues at other institutions.
“Despite nearly four decades of effort by the global research community, an effective vaccine to prevent HIV remains an elusive goal,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., chief of the Laboratory and a paper co-author.
“This experimental mRNA vaccine combines several features that may overcome shortcomings of other experimental HIV vaccines and thus represents a promising approach.”
The experimental vaccine works like mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
However, instead of carrying mRNA instructions for the coronavirus spike protein, the vaccine delivers coded instructions for making two key HIV proteins, Env and Gag.
Although the doses of mRNA delivered were high, the vaccine was well tolerated and produced only mild, temporary adverse effects in the macaques, such as loss of appetite.
If confirmed safe and effective, we plan to conduct a Phase 1 trial of this vaccine platform in healthy adult volunteers,” said Dr. Lusso
Feb 1, 2022-Moderna, the biotechnology company responsible for one of the COVID-19 vaccines, has begun its phase 1 trial of an experimental HIV vaccine that utilizes the company’s mRNA technology used to create the COVID-19 vaccine.
The first participant in the trial took their first dose on January 27. The trial, called IAVI G002, is testing a vaccine that delivers HIV-specific antigens to the body with the intention of inducing an immune response. In a “proof-of-concept” trial last year, the research team found the HIV antigens produced the desired immune response in 97 percent of participants. The new trial is being conducted in partnership with IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization.
https://thegavoice.com/news/moderna-launches-trial-testing-new-mrna-hiv-vaccine/
2/10/22-The French virologist Luc Montagnier, PhD, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in isolating the human immunodeficiency virus, has died at age 89, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today.
2/10/22-As the UK’s annual National HIV Testing Week continues, the UK Health Security Agency (HSA) recently reported heterosexual people are now diagnosed with HIV at a higher rate than gay and bisexual men.
The Independent reports in December 2021, 50 percent of all new HIB diagnoses were in both heterosexual men and women, while gay and bisexual men accounted for 45 percent.
2/10/22-The Duke of Sussex has urged Britons to “go and get a test” for HIV as he told former rugby star Gareth Thomas how he feels a responsibility to carry on his mother’s “unfinished” work.
Harry and ex-Wales captain Thomas, who are friends, chatted in depth on a 30-minute video call to mark National HIV Testing Week.
The duke described himself as “a typical guy” who just wants to “fix things”, and said he feels an “obligation” to try to continue Diana, Princess of Wales’s bid to remove stigma surrounding the illness.
They discussed how normalising HIV testing could help achieve the goal of ending new HIV cases in the UK by 2030.
The duke, speaking from California, said: “Every single one of us has a duty, or at least an opportunity, to get tested ourselves or to make it easier for everybody else to get tested. And then it just becomes a regular thing like anything else.
https://www.aol.com/harry-every-single-one-us-000122126.html
Feb 11, 2022-According to the new study, a cluster of more than 100 individuals infected with a recent subtype showed exceptionally high viral loads, rapid CD4 T cell decline, and increased infectivity. While the findings show that the HIV lineage likely arose de novo around the turn of the millennium, extensive changes in its genome make it hard to discern the mechanisms that underlie its elevated virulence.
Monitoring the virulence of HIV is an important endeavor as roughly 38 million people currently live with the virus. However, outside of recent studies on SARS-CoV-2 variants, an understanding of the evolution of virulence in viruses beyond theoretical analyses is lacking.
Within the ongoing BEEHIVE (Bridging the Epidemiology and Evolution of HIV in Europe) project, Chris Wymant and colleagues identified more than 100 individuals with a distinct strain of subtype-B HIV-1 – the “VB variant” – which was characterized by high viral loads and nearly double the rate of CD4 cell decline compared to individuals with other subtype-B HIV strains.
According to Wymant et al., by the time these individuals were diagnosed, they were vulnerable to developing AIDS within 2 to 3 years. Further analysis of the VB variant showed significant changes across the genome affecting almost 300 amino acids, which make understanding why this particular variant is so virulent difficult.
2019 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and about 13% of those don’t know they are infected.
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics
150 k infected but don’t know so aren’t being treated in 2019. About 65.9% who know they have HIV received some HIV care so of these 1050k about 1/3 receive no treatment (350k)
The total receiving no care is 500k (350k + 150k). If they only live 10 years we should see 50k deaths per year
If 700k with treatment live as long as non-HIV people as claimed how many deaths should we see? Mean age at dx is 40, which is about same as population. So thats about 1% per year. Lets call it 7000 deaths per year in greater population
In 2019, CDC reported there were 15,815 deaths among adults and adolescents with diagnosed HIV in the United States
https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-deaths-americans-hiv-aids-united-states-2021-10?op=1
So assuming the treated population accounted for 7000 of those deaths that means among those 500k receiving no treatment we only see 8800 deaths and not the 50,000 deaths expected
It seems untreated HIV persons are living too long. They are dying at rate of <2% per year, not the 10% per year you would expect if they got no treatment
Of course, maybe they got treatment after they got sick enough and lasted a bit longer
In any event, having HIV and not being treated seems to lead to a doubling of the mortality rate compared to the population at large (and perhaps the treatment group )
However, there may be an explanation for that. Those most likely to not get treatment are those who may be too poor or have lifestyles that are not as healthy as the treatment group (drug addicts, alcoholics, etc)
For some reason CDC does not seem to report AIDS cases or deaths, just HIV cases or deaths . At least, if they do have it, its not found easily. I may be wrong on this but DuckDuckGo isn’t letting me find it
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html
We have all heard stories of HIV ELITE controllers who live 30 years or more with no treatment. Maybe they are more common than we are being told.
The mortality rate for HIV positive people early on was calculated based on AIDS deaths due to KS (now its rare) and high doses of AZT. This served to inflate the mortality rate and reduce life expectancy to generate fear.
Maybe thats why CDC does not seem to be tracking AIDS cases in a transparent fashion and determining time after HIV dx to AIDS for both treated and untreated populations. It might be longer than they care to admit for untreated patients.