Yet another tool to measure Jackson County’s nightmarish HIV rate

If you’re interested in how bad the HIV rate is in KC – and it’s pretty fucking bad, let me tell you – there’s a new tool online to help you compare. Last week the National HIV/AIDS Atlas

was launched as a sort of relief map of suffering. The atlas shows counties in different hues from yellow to red to measure how bad the HIV/AIDS infection rate is. It’s supposedly the first map of its kind to let users examine the data all over the United States. The techonolog is cool and all, but it sucks that you have to create a user account (free) to access it. I’ll save you the trouble and give you the basics. It’s mostly young, black men, that are infected, and since the map shows a redder county the greater the ratio of people living with the disease is, Jackson sticks out like a festering pimple on America’s face.