It would also have made it more difficult to detect HIV (if having HIV means compulsory quarantine, then if I suspect I have the disease I am less likely to get tested).
How so? Perhaps their much lower incidence of HIV was caused in part by people never getting tested. Eventually, they are classified as dead of pneumonia, rather than dead of pneumonia caused by AIDS.
That seems like a testable hypothesis. If statistics on deaths by pneumonia and similar illnesses are recorded, and aren’t so high as to dwarf HIV deaths, then there should be a noticeable spike in those deaths during the HIV years. One could compare that spike to the U.S. to see if Cuba’s HIV deaths were underreported relative to the U.S.
I think, anyway. I’m not a statistician, but it feels like it should work.
Cuba basically disproves this doesn’t it?
How so? Perhaps their much lower incidence of HIV was caused in part by people never getting tested. Eventually, they are classified as dead of pneumonia, rather than dead of pneumonia caused by AIDS.
That seems like a testable hypothesis. If statistics on deaths by pneumonia and similar illnesses are recorded, and aren’t so high as to dwarf HIV deaths, then there should be a noticeable spike in those deaths during the HIV years. One could compare that spike to the U.S. to see if Cuba’s HIV deaths were underreported relative to the U.S.
I think, anyway. I’m not a statistician, but it feels like it should work.
I’d guess that in poor non-African countries that’s a very big if.