According to the CDC...
* More than 2 million U.S. baby boomers are infected with hepatitis C, accounting for more than 75 percent of all American adults living with the virus. Baby boomers are five times more likely to be infected than other adults.
* More than 15,000 Americans, most of them baby boomers, die each year from hepatitis C-related illness, such as cirrhosis and liver cancer, and deaths have been increasing steadily for over a decade and are projected to grow significantly in coming years.
* CDC estimates one-time hepatitis C testing of baby boomers could identify more than 800,000 additional people with hepatitis C, prevent the costly consequences of liver cancer and other chronic liver diseases and save more than 120,000 lives.
Hector
Let see there's the hidden secret about Vietnam vets getting it from airjet gun innoculations.
http://hcvets.com/index.html
But I assume it's like everything else, a calculation based on other information.
Alot of my old friends have been dropping off like flies, within the last few years. I dont think they run a Hep C test post-humously, but I guess they do examine the condition of the liver, etc
ALD (Advanced Liver Disease)
Dr. Zalesak and colleagues aimed to determine the annual rates at which HCV-infected populations progress to ALD by age cohort, and to project the ALD prevalence to 2015, assuming lack of treatment. They used the commercial PharMetrics database and the Medicare database to identify HCV patients with and without ALD, using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Edition (ICD-9) codes. Future ALD prevalence was projected using progression and mortality trends from these databases.
The number of patients diagnosed with ALD was tallied over a 3-year interval. Of the 1.1 million patients diagnosed with HCV infection, 16.1% were 16 to 44 years of age, 38.8% were 45 to 54 years of age, 36.4% were 55 to 64 years of age, and 8.6% were 65 years or older.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/764095
I was just reading this a little while ago
Records Show Deaths Associated with Hepatitis C Have Overtaken Deaths Caused by HIV
http://www.aasld.org/lm2011/press/Pages/presssix.aspx
http://blog.colloidsforlife.com/health-conditions/liver/what-is-hep-c-doing/