Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Area Reporter - December 14, 2000
Terry Beswick
Although DPH and ARI co-hosted a secret meeting on the subject last May, resulting in the controversial proposal that between 750 and 900 people were likely to be infected with HIV in the city this year - an increase of at least 50 percent over a previous estimate - the meeting was considered preliminary, a fact that was largely overlooked when the story made international headlines after being leaked to the news media in late June Initially, a second and final "consensus meeting" was scheduled in October. It was to be convened by DPH and UCSF to review the complex methodology known as the "delphi" system used to come up with the preliminary estimates. Then, without explanation, the meeting was postponed to November.
Now, according to Mike Shriver, Mayor Willie Brown's new adviser on HIV policy, the meeting has been rescheduled for January 19, and rather than allowing the epidemiologists at DPH/UCSF to run the show again, the mayor has taken the reins, and will be hosting the meeting at City Hall.
But those members of the public with an interest in the issue should not bother to note the date in their new 2001 calendars: the mayor has decided to close the meeting to the public.
"[We] actually have been in the process of putting together the consensus meeting ... now it's going to be held in January because of the holiday season and the fact that the meeting is now going to be by invitation only," said Shriver, speaking to the Bay Area Reporter on Wednesday, December 6.
"There's going to actually be some processes that I know some of the folks in the community are going to be doing to help get people prepared for it to look at getting some more community folks to be part of the process and look at explaining how the 'delphi' [and] consensus meeting is going to be happening," he continued.
"I, of course, am hosting the meeting; it's going to be [at City Hall]," Shriver said. "And then on January the 19th, we should be able to have that harmonic convergence of everybody to be able to be in the same room together.
"It's actually quite good. I'm glad it's going to be happening," added Shriver.
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