A Little Scarier Than Cholesterol Or Even Syphilis

Just saying is all:

At this moment, one in four gay men in New York City is infected with HIV, an incurable disease that has infected more than 100,000 men in New York City, 20,000 of whom have no idea they have even been infected.

In the last six years, new diagnoses of the disease among gay men in New York City under the age of 30 rose by 33 percent.

Among gay males between the ages of 13 and 19, the rate of infection has doubled.

The disease has spread across the nation — where government estimates put the total currently diagnosed at over one million — but nowhere has it taken hold more than in New York, where its incidence is four times the national average, with more cases than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Washington, D.C., combined. In Manhattan, the incidence of the disease among gay men has more than doubled since 2001.

. . .

Indeed, the facts that appear in the first three paragraphs of this article — stunning developments worthy of the attention of every breathing New Yorker — were reported in only a single paragraph buried in the metro section of the September 12, 2007, New York Times.

“Yes, people have forgotten,” said Sara Markt, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Health, which put out the report on September 11. She sounded surprised that the statistics didn’t attract the attention they should have, given the alarming growth of HIV among young, gay New Yorkers — precisely the group that first faced the alarming threat of AIDS in the early 1980s.

Now, more than a quarter century later, the eyes of a concerned world focus almost exclusively elsewhere when HIV and AIDS are mentioned. The epidemic in Africa has, by some estimates, cost 25 million lives, with millions more likely to die over the next several years.

But in New York City — where aggressive drug treatments have slowed the death rate from AIDS to a trickle, and heightened protections have reduced the number of infections caused by needles, or passed from mother to child — a different sort of crisis has emerged. While few die from a diagnosis of HIV, many thousands of New Yorkers who engage in unprotected gay sex find themselves living with the painful consequences, a catastrophic illness that they mistakenly believed had passed them by. Their lives are still forever transformed by a disease that rarely finds itself in the pages of The New York Times — except in coverage of pharmaceutical developments — or discussed openly by public officials outside the halls of the city’s impassioned health department. “We’re headed in the wrong direction,” declared Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, in his September 11 announcement. “Unless young men reduce the number of partners they have, and protect themselves and their partners by using condoms more consistently, we will face another wave of suffering and death from HIV and AIDS.”

If You’ll Be My Bodyguard I Can Be Your Long Lost Pal

The Post story the cops want you to read this morning . . . if true, is actually really smarmy:

A key witness in the sensational police killing of Sean Bell told cops after being collared for slugging his girlfriend that he doesn’t work because he gets money from the Rev. Al Sharpton, a law-enforcement source said yesterday.

“Whatever I need they give me,” Trent Benefield, 24, told detectives Tuesday night after he was brought to the 113th Precinct station for questioning about the beating of gal pal Nyla Page Walthrus, 19, the source said.

When Benefield said he was unemployed, a detective asked him why.

“Sharpton and my lawyer don’t want me to work,” he replied, without naming the attorney, the source said.

Then how does he get by, the cop asked.

“Whatever I want they give me — whatever I need. Every month they give me whatever I need,” he boasted.

He said the amount could reach $3,000 a month.

This Makes Perfect Cents . . .

. . . to the MTA at least in a case of man versus machine:

The MTA can’t nickel-and-dime straphangers — but it has no problem taking their quarters.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged yesterday that one BIG reason it wants a 25-cent bus and subway hike is because its vending machines can dispense only dollar coins and quarters.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin defended the increase as fair and said upping it by a nickel or dime wouldn’t be enough.

“The limitations of technology would make a $2.10 fare extremely costly to implement and would provide a much poorer quality of service,” Soffin said.

. . .

Riders weren’t buying it.

“It’s an outrage,” said Anthony Thompson, a Queens engineer. “Our money is being spent because of a hardware defect?”

Recruiter Jisele Lazo, 22, of Queens, said: “It stinks. Why don’t they just leave it at $2? Why are they making it easier for the machines? There are far more commuters than machines.”

. . .

Soffin said smaller change would mean longer lines and riders being saddled with pockets full of silver.

He said the size of the fare hike was not unreasonable because the $2 base fair had remained steady since 2003.

A 25-cent jump would amount to a “cost-of-living” increase for the system, Soffin said.

A rider buying a single-ride ticket priced at $2.10 with a $5 bill would be carting away 11 quarters and three nickels, or 58 nickels, he pointed out.

The machines also would likely run out of change more quickly, have to be filled more often and likely need more frequent maintenance, he said.

Out-of-service machines would result in longer lines at token booths, he said, estimating the added costs to be millions of dollars.

Scoliosis Sufferer And Hanna-Barbera Aficionado Detained Following “Misunderstanding”

Not sure what Fred Flintstone has to do with it but whatever:

A troubled student wearing a Fred Flintstone mask and carrying a .50-caliber rifle was arrested at St. John’s University in Queens yesterday afternoon, prompting the authorities to lock down the campus for three hours while they searched for a possible second gunman, the police said.

The student, Omeash Hiraman, a 22-year-old freshman, was walking through the campus carrying a black plastic bag with the gun’s barrel sticking out of it when a campus security guard approached him and grabbed at the weapon, police said.

A struggle followed, and another student, Chris Benson, came by and helped subdue Mr. Hiraman. Mr. Benson and campus security guards restrained him until the police arrived.

The police later determined there was no second gunman. There were no injuries.

The police said Mr. Hiraman’s gun contained one round of black powder-charge ammunition. His lawyer, Anthony J. Colleluori, described the gun as “kind of like a Dick Cheney hunting rifle.” Charges are pending, the police said.

Mr. Colleluori said Mr. Hiraman had graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and enrolled at Cornell University, then transferred to St. John’s, a school he “happens to love.” He said his client was “very tired, he’s confused,” and surprised to hear that his arrest had caused an uproar on the campus.

“He’s not a person who would walk into Columbine and shoot people up,” he said.

Mr. Hiraman’s father, Pat, said his son had recently undergone surgery for scoliosis and may have been reacting to medications. “We believe this is a misunderstanding,” he said.

Then there’s the report in the Cornell Daily Sun (where the suspect was enrolled) quoting a former roommate and Stuyvesant grad who “totally saw it coming.”

Update: Who Was That Mask, Man?; result inconclusive.

We Are All 9/11 Survivors Now

The pathology of 9/11 victimhood, writ small:

Tania Head’s story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.

She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Center despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower.

Crawling through the chaos and carnage on the 78th floor that morning, she said, she encountered a dying man who handed her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow.

Her own life was saved, she said, by a selfless volunteer who stanched the flames on her burning clothes before she was helped down the stairs. It was a journey she said she had the strength to make because she kept thinking of a beautiful white dress she was to wear at her coming marriage ceremony to a man named Dave.

But later she would discover, she said, that Dave, her fiancé, and in some versions her husband, had perished in the north tower.

As a matter of history, Ms. Head’s account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. As a matter of emotion, her story deeply moved audiences like college students to whom she spoke and visitors at ground zero, where she has long led tours for the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center for visitors including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

“What I witnessed there I will never forget,” she told a gathering at Baruch College at a memorial event in 2006. “It was a lot of death and destruction, but I also saw hope.”

. . .

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who truly died in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the gripping immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met with in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

. . .

In recent weeks, The New York Times sought to interview Ms. Head about her experiences on 9/11 because she had, in other settings, presented a poignant account of survival and loss. But she canceled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. During a telephone conversation on Tuesday, she would not explain her reticence, saying only that she had not filed any claims with the federal Victim Compensation Fund. “I have done nothing illegal,” Ms. Head said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her. Also on Tuesday, in response to a question about the accuracy of Ms. Head’s account, Ms. Adwar said in an e-mail message, “With regard to the veracity of my client’s story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment.”

(The Times likes this sort of thing, doesn’t it?)