"I think the statistics for
San Mateo County are fairly good health-wise, but there are pockets in the county that are
really bad. Because overall it looks good, when they look at the statistics people in
general can say, ‘Oh, we don’t really have a problem here.’ That’s
true whether you’re looking at teen pregnancy or you’re looking at chronic
diseases, with the exception of the number of AIDS cases."
— Social Services Representative
"I think that we don’t
have a lot of data for San Mateo County, but there’s data in San Francisco County
with regard to HIV, and the fact that the day when safe behavior existed is disappearing,
and the rates of infection among young gay males, the new HIV infections, is very, very
high. It’s not as high as it was at the beginning of the epidemic because nobody knew
what the hell was going on, but it’s increased markedly and there’s been some
suggestion that… the rate of new infections had fallen below the rate of deaths. In
other words, now there’s essentially a replacement factor—partly due to
decreasing deaths,
but also due to increasing acquisition of new infections."
— Physician
"I think there’s still
a tremendous problem of HIV in injection drug users…"
— Physician