World AIDS Day

December 1^st is the Day set aside for World AIDS Day. A day to mark not just the deaths for 35+ million people worldwide, but also to recognize how far we’ve come in managing the disease and its awful outcomes.

In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic has sickened 62.2 million people and 1.2 million died of the virus globally. In the USA alone, we are 13.5 million cases and 268,000 deaths.

Back to AIDS, over 70 million infections have been diagnosed since 1981 when the disease was first identified in the US. The root disease occurred earlier, at least 20 years earlier. Today, 40,000 new infections occur annually in the US alone. The scourge remains at large globally.

Over 675,000 American have died from AIDS since 1981. Once an annual death rate numbered 40,000; by the end of 2017 the number of AIDS deaths had dropped to 16,350. Medical treatments and protocols have been a Godsend. Still, young gay men practice unsafe sex and contract the disease. They seem oblivious to the manifestations and suffering of the disease, preferring to believe the disease is in the past and manageable if contracted. They are partly right; but where they are wrong carries a heavy price tag of suffering for themselves and loved ones.

I know HIV/AIDS has become passé in America. We have a new pandemic to worry about and politicize. So why worry about AIDS?

Because it continues to march across the globe destroying millions of lives as it has in the past. Just because the ‘victims’ are gay, doesn’t mean society at large suffers no loss. Just imagine the creativity, intellectual strengths, and social value of so many dead people, let alone gays? Or any other selected niche group in society? What would we be missing because of their demise?

And what other costs are incurred that we all absorb one way or another?

But then, there is the toll of suffering. Loss. Pain. Sickness. Stigma. Of the patient or family and friends, the loss is horrendous. And very personal.

Think of the attention COVID-19 has gained. Now, compare it with the AIDS pandemic. That cold draft you notice is named stigma.

May we never forget. And realize we are in this together. Pandemics are uncontrolled. That is their nature. Be grateful you do not have it. Do all you can to avoid spreading it. AIDS or COVID.

December 1, 2020