It’s unbelievable to think that less than half a century ago, 44 years ago, to be precise, approximately 330,000 people were killed by a mysterious disease that we now know was treatable…
The first case(s) of aids were reported on June 5th, 1981, and involved five young homosexual men in Los Angeles. The first UK cases were identified six months later, in December 1981.
Initially, the disease was dubbed the ‘gay plague’ and formally known as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), owing to its prominence in gay men. It was renamed aids a year later, in 1982. Unfortunately, by then, however, the damage inflicted upon the LGBTQ+ community had already been done…
Fearmongering in the media, a phenomenon that we still see being used all too often today, saw gay people being wrongfully discriminated against for a disease that we now know does, in fact, affect heterosexual people more so than it affects homosexual people.
It is estimated that nearly 38 million heterosexual people are currently infected with HIV (of which aids is a later phase) worldwide. And while we have a treatment for HIV today, the question must be asked: Why did it take until 1996, 15 years and millions of deaths after the initial cases were reported, for effective treatment to be found to protect the immune systems of those who contracted the disease?
It’s God’s punishment. Judgement day has come.
The reason for the delay was undoubtedly due to the ingrained prejudice that existed, and still does exist, in many places, toward gay people.
It’s not a coincidence that a treatment for what was once dubbed an ‘incurable’ disease was only found after it became common knowledge that aids didn’t just affect homosexuals…
The media conceals that which it doesn’t want the masses to know about.
Not only was the media’s reporting of aids being a ‘gay disease’ inaccurate, so too was their lack of reporting on where aids originally came from…
In Africa, HIV–the virus that causes AIDS–had jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime early in the 20th century. It is believed to have jumped from these animals to humans through direct contact with infected blood, likely through hunting or handling bushmeat. Alas, the media didn’t tell us this. They didn’t tell us that before AIDS was first mentioned in 1982 in the New York Times, people had already been dying of it for at least a decade. Instead, they made homosexuals the scapegoat for the errors of capitalist-driven hunters.
And it’s always due to capitalist-driven hunters…
The HIV/Aids crisis of the 1980s originated from great apes, the 2004–07 avian flu pandemic came from birds, and pigs gave us the swine flu pandemic in 2009. More recently, it was discovered that severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) came from bats, via civets, while bats also gave us Ebola and COVID-19.
Human behaviour is to blame for the transmission of diseases from animals to humans.
Humans are tearing down forests and hunting, eating, and selling wild animals at unprecedented rates. Each exotic animal shipped across the ocean to be sold as a pet is an opportunity for a new pathogen to take root on a new continent. Each tree ripped from its roots increases interactions between humans and wild animals, therefore increasing the odds that viruses will find new populations to infect.
The bottom line is that the more we change the environment, the more likely we are to disrupt ecosystems and provide opportunities for disease to emerge. It is only when the people in power can live a life that is less about greed and more about peace that our risk of disease will be limited. Until then, all we can do is refuse to remain blinkered.
It’s not enough to just ask the questions anymore. We must, instead, demand the answers.
Portfolio of Hope 