, from selective samples, from people who are sick or who likely already have the condition. I'm arguing that the longitudinal, population-level view is essential for understanding the arc of HIV in this community and disease patterns broadly. The data we collect from clinical samples enrolled in HIV care is important, but it's insufficient for understanding the epidemic.
"High levels of uncertainty or ambiguity about one's HIV status is actually a characteristic of the epidemic; it's not a problem of ignorance," she says."One stereotype that circulates widely is that Malawians don't want to know their HIV status, or that they won't get tested because they don't want to face reality. That's completely wrong."
The second surprise, she says, was how stable uncertainty was in the population. While Malawi experiences a particularly severe HIV epidemic, most people don't have HIV. At epidemic levels of around 10% prevalence, about 40% of respondents, at any given time, said that they didn't know their HIV status.