PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY
nificantly, albeit in the absence of a “miracle” drug. It is altogether realistic
now to envisage a near-future discovery of a vaccine or alternative
effective medication.
Ten Years Later
When I plotted the evolution of the disease in terms of its
share of all deaths in 1989, I obtained the mirror image of
diphtheria, and estimated a microniche for AIDS in the U.S. of
about 2 percent of all deaths.
I had obtained the data on deaths from AIDS from “The
AIDS Surveillance Report” issued by the U.S. Department of
Health. They, as well as many other agencies worldwide, had
been graphing and monitoring the spread of the disease by
looking only at headline statistics. What was different in my
analysis of AIDS was that by considering its share of all
deaths we were looking at the relative strength of the disease,
thus revealing the competitive struggle between AIDS and
other diseases.
The S-curve I fitted on the data up to and including 1988
had indicated a growth process that would be almost complete
by 1994. The ceiling for the disease’s growth, projected as 2.3,
should be reached in the late 1990s (Appendix C, Figure 5.3).
In other words my conclusion was that a place had been reserved
for AIDS in American society just above the 2 percent
level of all deaths.
At that time AIDS claimed a progressively bigger share of
the total number of deaths every year, and other forecasts
ranged from pessimistic to catastrophic; alarmists worried
about the survival of the human species. At the end the AIDS
“niche” in the U.S. turned out to be far smaller than that feared
by most people. The little circles in the figure confirm the S-
curve trend and the completion of the microniche by 1995, and
indicate a significant decline afterward. By the late 1990s
questions were being raised why forecasts had overestimated
the AIDS threat by so much.
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