{"id":34,"date":"2008-08-08T19:51:01","date_gmt":"2008-08-09T00:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/pov\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/2008\/08\/08\/more-from-mexico-city\/"},"modified":"2008-08-08T19:51:01","modified_gmt":"2008-08-09T00:51:01","slug":"more-from-mexico-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/more-from-mexico-city\/2008\/08\/08\/","title":{"rendered":"More from Mexico City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A bit more travelogue from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aids2008.org\/\">XVII International AIDS Conference:<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s impossible to see everything you want at such a large, sprawling conference, sometimes because of conflicting meetings, sometimes because the room is full, sometimes because of a feeling analagous to being in\u00a0a giant museum for too many hours &#8212; fatigue just takes over.\u00a0 But I&#8217;m sure glad I didn&#8217;t miss <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kaisernetwork.org\/health_cast\/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&amp;hc=2889\">Myron (Mike) Cohen&#8217;s plenary session Tuesday AM on HIV\u00a0Prevention<\/a>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s\u00a0easy to get\u00a0cynical about HIV prevention efforts given the number of recent failures in the field (vaccines, acyclovir, microbicides &#8230;), but as Cohen pointed out, <em>some<\/em> things out there are working, and he outlined a very reasonable (and optimistic) strategy for how this epidemic could be controlled.\u00a0 Plus he did it in his typically energetic and entertaining fashion, all the while maintaining absolute academic rigor.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t miss his name-brand idea for a combination product containing tenofovir, emtricitabine, and maraviroc &#8212; brilliant.\u00a0 Some web casts are worth watching, and this is one of them.<\/li>\n<li>Missing from this International AIDS Conference were the phonebook-thick abstract listings. Instead, we received the abstracts on CDs, a move that definitely saved lots of trees,\u00a0sore backs and shoulders, but made it very hard (ok, impossible) to flip through the abstracts.\u00a0 I\u00b4m sure this is a direction that more meetings will take, but will definitely take some getting used to.\u00a0 USB drives will be coming soon, as CDs as a storage medium are definitely on the way out.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of USB drives, the speaker-ready room was shut down on Wednesday for a while due to &#8212; I\u00b4m not making this up &#8212; a computer virus acquired from some rogue USB drive.\u00a0 Many jokes followed about computer condoms, vaccines, and microbicides, but I\u00b4ll leave it right there!<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve already <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/pov\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/2008\/08\/04\/drive-on-the-right-most-of-the-time\/\">written about food here in Mexico City<\/a>, but only from the Infectious Diseases perspective.\u00a0 Now I&#8217;ll be my mother&#8217;s son (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/lifestyle\/food\/2008\/08\/08\/2008-08-08_best_bites_for_less_eurotrip.html\">she&#8217;s a food writer<\/a>), and say the restaurants have been terrific, the food fresh, interesting-tasting, and reasonably priced, and\u00a0the service attentive and professional.\u00a0 <em>But <\/em>&#8212; there was one glaring exception, and unfortunately it was the food at the convention center, which consisted mostly of wilted salads, sandwiches with scary soft meat-like products (colored a disturbing faded gray), and (I think, don&#8217;t hold me to this) tuna salad.\u00a0\u00a0As lines for food during lunchtime were 15-30 minutes long, it became quite easy to skip the mid-day meal or subsist on potato chips, water, and coffee, probably not the healthiest diet on the planet.\u00a0 I got back to my hotel room absolutely famished every day.<\/li>\n<li>All of these conferences have a theme &#8212; this one is &#8220;Universal Action <em>Now<\/em>&#8221; (italics theirs).\u00a0 Pretty good.\u00a0 I suppose one could fashion a challenging trivia quiz, asking people to match the theme with the city and date:\u00a0 &#8220;Time to Deliver&#8221; (Toronto, 2006), &#8220;Access for All&#8221; (Bangkok 2004), &#8220;Knowledge and Commitment for Action&#8221; (Barcelona 2002), &#8220;Break the Silence&#8221; (Durban 2000),\u00a0&#8220;Bridging the Gap&#8221; (Geneva 1998) &#8230; Good sentiments all, but Durban wins by a mile.\u00a0\u00a0Of course if they had the conference in Boston, the theme would be, &#8220;Let&#8217;s go Red Sox.&#8221;<strong>\u00a0 <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(I guess I&#8217;m getting a bit homesick.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bit more travelogue from the XVII International AIDS Conference: It&#8217;s impossible to see everything you want at such a large, sprawling conference, sometimes because of conflicting meetings, sometimes because the room is full, sometimes because of a feeling analagous to being in\u00a0a giant museum for too many hours &#8212; fatigue just takes over.\u00a0 But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-policy"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}