HIV / AIDS Needs To Change Its Name.
Whoever is in charge of "naming the baby" when it comes to viruses/ infectious diseases needs to seriously consider naming HIV the HIV Flu. Adding "flu" to an epidemic of epic proportions such as the spread of HIV will make people actually scared of it. "oh shit, i had the flu, and had to stay in bed for a week". People identify with "FLU". Take the Avian Flu, for instance. Even our President has called for special attention to this "epidemic". Less than a handfull of humans have died from Avian Flu.
So, maybe this administration will wake the hell up and accept that HIV is in our "backyard". It is here. It is everywhere. Killing numerous children all over the world every day.
Maybe it is all in the name.
HIV-flu. Catchy isn't it? Yes it is.
posted by Shelly @ 10:02 AM
18 comments
18 Comments:
Interesting point. While I'm not sure if I agree with your idea of renaming it "flu", I do agree that people spend way too much effort on relatively less significant things.
Like the bird flu...I'm not a bird. Are you? =)
In all seriousness though, I do think HIV is in a little different category, having a much more limited and specific transport medium (sexual contact and sharing drug needles being the big two). So dealing with it requires a fundamentally different approach, but I think you're quite right with respect to energy and attention that should be spent on said plagues.
I am not in any suggesting that HIV is in the same category as your every winter-time epidemic flu. I am saying that people IDENTIFY with flu. When you say Avian Flu, they actually think they are going to GET IT. (I am not saying they won't.) But when you put something like AIDs/HIV out there, people just have empathy. They think just like you do "sex and drugs". It isn't.
Thinking like that make people complacient thinking it can't happen to them. When you say "FLU" people quickly Id and then they become aware, that they too can get it.
Hightening awareness and eduction is paramount in eradication.
Identify. Okay, that makes more sense with what you said, and I agree.
At the same time though, while I don't think there's anybody that will deny HIV has other means of transmission (bad blood transfusions, giving CPR to someone who's bleeding, infection of a fetus, etc.), Those factors are small when compared to sex/drug related activity, and even more so to the point of insignificant if you eliminate the above mentioned infections that are only one generation removed from a sex/drug related infection.
Or in other words, if you remove all cases of sex/drug infection, AND all cases who are infected directly by a person who in turn was infected by sexual/drug activity, the HIV/AIDS "epidemic" would all but disappear without any major medical intervention necessary. Same goes with all STD's. The most effective solution isn't complicated, it just happens to be one that almost nobody is willing to embrace, and few are even willing to discuss.
Condoms?
The Bush administration says Abstinance. Good luck with that.
my only response drifts off topic, so I won't post it here, but here's a link
OMG...i went to your link mike and then the phone rang..it was 1845, they want their way of thinking back.
Sex is here, it is more here than EVER...video games have sex in them for crying out loud!!! All I had was Atari, they didn't have sex scenes in Pitfall...
Shelly, I am not debating politics with the Hottest Couple of 2005 pic on my site....there is no debate....they are just so darn cute.
Their love child would be adorable...
Nelita.....
"What are you going to do today Napoleon"?
"Whatever I want to gosh..."
Could you please bring me some chapstick? My lips hurt real bad.....I shall marry Napoleon in my next life.....he reminds me so much of the LOSERS I dated in high school. But at least he can dance.
LOL. Well, at least your response was only ten years out of date =)
All the same though, while it might not be possible to ever actually get to that point, wouldn't the benefits be nice though? Seriously. Imagine...there would be nobody killing each other over abortion, heck, the economic benefits alone would be nice. I don't think it's unreasonable to set high goals. Just because sex has become a way of life doesn't mean people can't work to reverse or slow the trend.
A more morbid part of me wonders, when sex pervades every part of life so completely that the world becomes essentially an optional nudist colony, where does it go from there? Human nature always wants more and more self satisfaction, and on a macro scale, we see that as pushing the "line" a little more every day...so...is there a limit?
Nelita and I share many memories. We delivered pizza together, we dated some of the same losers, we hustled guys at spades in the boy's dorms, we toiletpapered many a Geo Tracker, we toiletpapered many a little arab pizza shop owner's house, we invented a distance resistant liquid transport device for drinking (aka "super straw"), we developed the fine art of the ritual of desecration of pictures after you break up with someone, we started "drive by tromboning", we started planning our financial future by saving various coins in the ashtray of a Dodge for the sole purpose of Seltzer Zelter, we mastered the greatest paper mache parrot heist in our schools history thus spawning our creativity for making ransom notes, we found that big wheels go really fast the hall in front of the principal's office, we found that not all long haired sexy male hairdressers are GAY, we (actually I) found that she can hit really hard...and on and on..
Nelita is the best.
(clink) here's to you...
Mike, when it comes to abortion...even people who are committed and even married have abortions. Abortion clinics are not full of crack heads and teenagers. Sometimes they are normal everyday women who just made a mistake or can't make good choice.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
mmm. A tragic truth. What waste... of something so precious...
I am just not sure FLU wouldn't make the average american (already lulled by effevtive meds and lack of shrunken specters of AIDS in the news) a little more apathetic.
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