HIV and ID Observations

From the latest MMWR:

This figure speaks for itself, but two sentences from the Editorial Note deserve highlighting:

The 11.4% decrease in reported TB rate in 2009 is the largest single-year decrease ever recorded. From 1953 to 1993, the single largest annual percentage decrease in TB case rate was 11.1% in 1956

Since I started my ID career in these dark days — when we were all expecting (and some were experiencing) a cataclysmic increase in TB nationwide — all I can say is … wow.

And I’m not a bit surprised that these remarkable data have thus far received such scant media coverage, because stories about Infectious Diseases are so much more exciting when they go in the opposite direction.