Last night I started thinking about the moratorium and wondered: Has AIM ever said where this sixty day moratorium came from? I did post a query on the Jewel-Hater Forum (JHF) but they’re too busy stoning Jewel.

My thought is that there is no need to guess at what the moratorium length should be: you can calculate the length based on an estimated number of HIV+ (guess on the high side to be conservative), the sensitivity of the test used, and the acceptable risk of an HIV+ case escaping containment.

As a corollary AIM should be able to state right now what odds 60 days is buying vs. 30 days. This is a calculation (with error bars) not guesswork.

For example, assume for the moment that the sensitivity (rate of HIV+ that test positive) of PCR/DNA is 75% at 30 days (a claim from JHF). That means that if you test a group containing four HIV+ at 30 days the probability of containment is only 31% (75% ** 4). This is unacceptably poor: you’ve likely got an HIV+ escaping containment to ignite another outbreak later.

(Sorry, I’m not any good at carrying error estimates through calculations any more. Each percentage is really a +/- range)

If I assume a 60-day 99% PCR/DNA sensitivity then the odds that four HIV+ are contained is 96.1% (99% ** 4) (3.9% chance of escape). Not great either in my opinion, but it’s up to the talent to decide if that’s good enough.

I think modern PCR/DNA is much more sensitive than this but cannot find a reference at CDC or NIH. The point however is clear: this is subject to analysis and not merely gut feel, and any epidemiologist ought to be able to devise a plan to get the desired results and be able to state numerically (with large error bars no doubt) the probability that a given test plan & moratorium will succeed in containing an outbreak.

I suspect one reason why clandestine shooting is (rumored to be) going on right now is that people don’t really believe 60 days is necessary. After all, 30 days was fine at first and CDC recommendations didn’t change in April. There may be a few companies cheating more because the 60 day number has no credibility rather than because they just don’t care. If AIM explained why 30 days wasn’t enough, with a statistical analysis that showed AIM understood why 60 days really is better, some of these people might be willing to back off.

I also think the talent deserves to be told what the odds are. 60 days isn’t 100%. I’m estimating a 4.8% chance of failure at 60 days (assuming a 99.3% sensitivity and as many as seven total HIV+), and this is not a conservative estimate.

I’d like to see talent ask at one of these industry meetings if AIM will hire an epidemiologist as a consultant to make sure that the plan and 60 day moratorium really mean something. I agree with MrPoo that AIM is needed and things are far better than they used to be without AIM, but it’s unnerving to think of Sharon struggling to decide between 30 vs. 60 days...

I believe Sharon Mitchell stated that the PCR-DNA tests detect 75% of infections after 30 days and 99% or more after 60. I think its in one of the first articles on avn.com, from the beginning of the outbreak. Now where she got her info from, I have no idea.

Now she says a bunch of the talent on the quarantine list has been cleared after 45 days....when only 60 was sufficient for the last 6 weeks. I'm not an expert on the subject but I really hope they are 'cause it would suck to have just cleared one or two people with HIV who haven't tested positive yet.
I'd really like to know now why the hell they made the big stink about 60 days being 60 days only to change it at 45.

The moratorium was lifted today,not that it matters because everyone was shooting anyway.

You don't think they'd try to keep it a secret if another HIV positive was found? Obviously, they'll want to cover it up so that the government doesn't get involved.