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Now it’s Greek bug-chasers

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UPDATE: (thanks Peter in the comments): The WHO has reversed itself on this:

“The [offending] sentence should read, ‘Half of the new HIV cases are self-injecting and out of them few are deliberately inflicting the virus’.”

“This was just a gross editing error for which the WHO apologises,” said its spokesman, Gregory Hartl.

Good for the Greeks! Now, if the other reports about bug chasers in the UK and the US have been retracted or disproved, that would also be interesting and please let us know in the comments.

As if to follow-on to my earlier post, “UK bug chasers: America’s future?”, comes this sad report from the World Health Organization, page 112:

Case study: countries’ experiences of financial crisis – Greece

Suicides rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009 and to 25% in 2010, according to unofficial 2010 data (398). The Minister of Health reported a further 40% rise in the first half of 2011…Homicide and theft rates have doubled. HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with *about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month* and faster admission on to drug-substitution programmes. Prostitution has also risen…

Emphasis added. In pursuing the cradle-to-grave Welfare State, Europe has created a society of smothering government regulation, taxes, “benefits” and controls where:

  • People can no longer get ahead, or even survive, in the private economy.
  • People can survive if they qualify for government-paid benefits.

Is it any wonder that economic crisis results? And that, in the midst of the crisis, some people will do anything to qualify for government-paid benefits?

To escape the trap, Europe must do the opposite. It must dismantle the Welfare State, creating a society of freedom where most people can’t get money from government, and can survive, or even get ahead, in the private economy.

Via New Scientist and ZH.

Comments

  3. How did “the Gay Plague” that scared most of the Gay-community sh*tless 30-years ago transmogrify into something in-between type-II diabetes and “the heartbreak of psoriasis” among the less-prudent and witless?

  5. Fading into oblivion, day by day Bastiat Fan, day by day!

    Takes a very desperate person to want to infect themselves with HIV. Takes a wholly evil societal system to drive them to do just that.

  7. Takes a wholly evil societal system to drive them to do just that.

    No.
    It’s a choice freely made by the people engaging in the behavior, regardless of the perverse incentives presented to them.
    On the upside, it could end up having a very welcome Darwinian effect.
    You know: actions —->consequences.
    And in light of present (and likely future) circumstances, I don’t think that it will be so easily “papered quilted over” this time around.

  8. It’s a choice freely made by the people engaging in the behavior, regardless of the perverse incentives presented to them.

    Not to take both sides of this, but I agree.

    Societal incentives do matter, because people exist on a spectrum of different inclinations. Societal incentives will push the person who may be “on the margin” of making (or not making) some choice. BUT, where there is a free choice to be made, it is no more than a “push”; each individual person still makes the choice.

    So, hypothetically, if 1 in 100 people is inclined to make choice X, society could set up incentives which push 2 in 100 into making it, or 9 in 100. And if it’s a bad choice, then that is bad policy – a very unwise thing for society to do. Having said all that, each individual person who chooses the bad thing is still the party who is responsible for his own choice.

    Society can be blamed for its unwise arrangements. But unless the individual is being forced by violence (or threat of it), the individual can choose to go against any incentives society is giving him.

  9. Does incentive lower or raise the cost to society, both the incentive itself and its outcomes and also in terms both financial and moral/ethical? If society rewards bad behavior, not only is that behavior encouraged, the concept of ‘bad’ is necessarily changed due to the nature of direct and indirect participation.

    So, conservatives: Don’t let your rhetoric be tempted into morality; focus on the subsidy and not what is being subsidized — the morals will largely take care of themselves.

  10. …the morals will largely take care of themselves.

    Sure they will.
    Just the way they have for the last 40-50 years of ‘conservative’ capitulation to the “don’t be so judgmental” idiots.
    Nice to see the strategy is working so well.
    If you can’t speak about morals, then you’re not interested in morals.
    And it is just that simple.

  11. Jman, re: morality. Leftist progressives look at religious law as a set of rules set up by meanies to stop people from having fun and assert their power. Conservatives look at them as rules of behavior that have proven beneficial over thousands of years of human civilization.

  13. Thanks Peter! I’ve added it as an update to the main post.

    I mean, since I took the WHO’s word for it going in, I will certainly take the WHO’s word for it going out. And the WHO’s retraction doesn’t affect the indications of US and UK bug chasers, like the ‘breedingzone’ link at #2. I would love it, if those stories were also untrue.

  14. Thanks for that link, Peter! (Summary: It should have read that about 50% of new HIV cases result from people self-injecting with heroin — a MUCH higher proportion than in the US, incidentally — not that 50% of cases are deliberately self-inflicted.)

    Mind you, a lot depends on how you define “deliberate.” As I’ve argued before, many (not necessarily all) of the men who become infected by bareback futtbucking might as well be categorized as “bug chasers”, even if they never literally said to themselves “I think I’ll go out and try to become Poz™!”