10/85Percentage of AIDS patients in New York City who aren’t homosexual: 41
1/87Rank of AIDS among the causes of death for women aged 25 to 29 in New York City: 1
1/87Percentage of Americans who believe AIDS can be contracted by handling money: 10
8/87Estimated amount Americans will spend on bogus AIDS treatment in 1987: $1,000,000,000
10/88Number of the 90,000 Illinois marriage-license applicants screened for AIDS this year who tested positive: 11
5/88Percentage of 18- to 24-year aids who prefer President Reagan’s hairstyle to Carter’s and Ford’s: 47
Number of people who have died of measles since then: 14,000,000
10/89Rank of AIDS, among the leading causes of death of children between the ages of 1 and 4 in New York City: 1
11/89Number of the 28 states requiring AIDS education in public schools that also require discussion of condom use: 3
Number of states requiring that abstinence be stressed: 18
8/89Amount the federal government spent last year to develop a vaccine for AIDS: $53,925,000
Percentage change, from 1987 to 1988, in the number of newspaper and magazine articles about AIDS: -36
1/90Number of Americans who had died of AIDS before President Reagan discussed the issue in a speech: 21,000
3/90Percentage of journalists who say they would permit their child to have contact with a schoolmate with AIDS: 64
Percentage of scientists who say this: 39
1/91Percentage of black New Yorkers who believe it is possible that AIDS is a plot to kill blacks: 30
5/91Number of U.S AIDS deaths last year, expressed as a portion of all U.S. AIDS deaths since 1981: 1/3
5/91Percentage of U.S. hospitals that do not require that patients be told if they test positive for the AIDS virus: 25
9/94Percentage of Vietnamese who believe it is possible to recognize a person with HIV or AIDS on sight: 54
3/95Percentage of American teenagers who cite “not being in love” as the best reason not to have sex: 4
1/97Percentage change between 1980 and 1992 in the number of HIV-negative Americans who died of infectious diseases: +22
8/99Average number of Zimbabweans killed each week by AIDS: 2,500
9/99Percentage of the proceeds of an AIDS fund-raising bike ride across Texas last fall used to cover “production costs”: 85
9/99Percentage of its AIDS drugs that a 1997 agreement requires South Africa to buy from U.S. companies: 100
9/99Ratio of the price in South Africa of a month’s worth of U.S. AIDS drugs to what Indian-made drugs would cost: 7:1
1/00Year in which the New York Times first reported a “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals”: 1981
10/00Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission: $874
2/00Number of Africans used to test a U.S. polio vaccine made with primate kidney cells in the 1950s: 1,000,000
Number of the 46 Africans found to be HIV-positive before 1981 who lived within 90 miles of the vaccine trials: 45
3/01Estimated chance that an African-American man is HIV-positive: 1 in 50
3/02Chance that a U.S. case of HIV is resistant to at least one of the 16 anti-AIDS drugs in use: 1 in 2
8/02Percentage of Afghans who will “soon” get AIDS if adulterous women are not jailed, according to a government deputy: 50
12/03Amount by which the number of U.S. deaths in 2000 from lack of medical insurance exceeded those from AIDS: 967
4/03Percentage of Chinese who say they have never heard of AIDS: 17
1/04Ratio of the U.S. spending on Iraq approved last November to total AIDS spending in developing countries last year: 18:1
3/04Chance that a resident of China has never heard of AIDS: 1 in 5
6/05Factor by which the average viral load in “socially inhibited” HIV+ men exceeds that in “outgoing” men, in a UCLA study: 8
1/06Percentage by which circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection, according to a study in South Africa: 60
4/06Portion of the grants in President Bush’s $15 billion AIDS initiative that has gone to religious groups: 1/4