If Swine Flu Makes Us Use Masks, Why Can't AIDS Make Us Use Condoms?

Amount of people in the U.S. diagnosed with swine flu: 253

Amount of people in the U.S. diagnosed with AIDS: 468,578

Amount of people who have died from swine flu this year in the U.S.: 1

Amount of people who have died from AIDS this year in the U.S.: 5,000 (est.)

Amount of people worldwide who have swine flu: 4,600

Amount of people who have HIV/AIDS worldwide: 33 Million (est.)

Amount of people worldwide who have died from swine flu:
101

Amount of people worldwide who have died from AIDS this year: 1 million

If swine flu is a "pandemic," then what the hell is AIDS?

Despite all chatter to the contrary, AIDS remains the true, legitimate pandemic. In some parts of the U.S., the rate of AIDS in Black women is as high as it is in sub-Saharan Africa.

If the people who run the nation's media really truly know the difference between an important story and a sensational story, they would still be paying as much attention to AIDS as they do the swine flu.

AIDS education and prevention must be a priority for this country. If swine flu can make people wear masks and wash their hands 10 times a day, shouldn't AIDS make people wear condoms?

Maybe if the U.S. bordered Africa instead of Mexico we would care pay more attention to the real pandemic that is going on there. Health problems are global problems. We cannot ignore a pandemic because it affects a lot of people who don't look like us.

SARS, avian flu and now swine flu. The media seem to go to great lengths to expose possible threats to our health rather than exposing the continuing and exponentially more deadly threat of AIDS. Is AIDS out of fashion now? While we must be on the guard for new viruses and diseases, we can't forget about the ones that are still killing us.

Swine flu is covered by every newspaper, every news show and blog. When was the last time AIDS made the front page of a newspaper or the 6 o'clock news? Are diseases like movies? They come out, everyone gets excited, and then forgets about them a month later? Diseases are not entertainment. They are real problems that pose a threat to people across the world. As compelling and scary as a new disease is, we need to put things in perspective.

If AIDS could get some of the media attention and government resources that swine flu has been getting, we might be able to stop some of the thousands of AIDS deaths in our community. Simple things like education, condom distribution and testing could drastically reduce the amount of people with HIV/AIDS.

Reverend Calvin Butts recently spoke about AIDS in the Black community, saying, "This is more dangerous than the swine flu, and I hope that the country will recognize that if we can solve this, then we can move forward in addressing other health disparities."

H.R. 1964, sponsored by Harlem congressman Charlie Rangel, called on President Obama to declare HIV/AIDS an epidemic in the Black community. Surely if we can spend time distributing gloves and masks for the swine flu, we can distribute condoms and brochures on AIDS at the same rate. Swine flu may get worse, or it may go away. But AIDS is as virulent as ever, and we must make sure it kills as few people as possible.

Show support to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, which strongly affects the African-American community. Learn more here.

Comments

[ChangeSupporter]

"If Swine Flu Makes Us Use Masks, Why Can't AIDS Make Us Use Condoms?"...because people will continue to make unintelligent choices. I am not sure what % of people in the US is unaware that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, but I am wagering it is small. Yet people continue to treat their lives and bodies as worthless by having unprotected sex with random people. I know that the disease may be brought into the household by a cheating spouse, but how many of our population continue to have sex without protecting themselves?

Regardless of what the government or media does or how many condoms and brochures are distributed, the job of protecting oneself lie with the individual. People need to make more conscious decisions on protecting themselves. Condoms are readily available, but the condom can't put itself on a pen*s and a brochure can't say no to a man who is "ungloved" on behalf of a woman.

[sssteverrr]

Good artcle, bad headline

[Barnaby Dawson]

The article also argue that the government should be investing much more in AIDS education, that the media should be focusing much more on AIDS and that the government should be applying more resources to combatting AIDS. I agree with the article on all these points.

One note of caution. Your figures with regards to swine flu are already out of date. The figure is now 2,254 laboratory confirmed cases in the US alone. The deaths so far are also pretty meaningless. It is misleading to compare the early stages of a new disease with an established disease. If this turns into a pandemic the figures involved could grow by a factor of 10,000 or even 100,000 and that would make your comparisons look less one sided.

Many articles comparing swine flu to existing diseases make the mistake of doing this to triavialise swine flu. This article takes the opposite tack of using it to wake us up to huge health care issues that are currently seriously underfunded. This thinking could also be applied to Malaria. Here's to the dream of a press with a sense of perspective!

[Barnaby Dawson]

Great article. I'm not sure about the advisedness of declaring AIDS a pandemic. The main utility in declaring a pandemic is to deal with the spike of demand for healthcare and the sudden reduction in the workforce caused by everyone getting ill at once. A flu pandemic would cause a short and sharp period of demand for health care provision which, without any preparation, would allow many people to die because the healthcare system could not cope with such high demand (for example antibiotics might run out, intensive care units may not be ready and there may not be efficient diagnostic facilities in place). The reduction in the workforce could have serious knock on effects if it causes crucial services to be interrupted. These can be prepared for by activating business, services and government pandemic preparedness plans. But for these counter measures to be used and to be effective a pandemic needs to be declared and the government and health care system needs to coordinate their response. I don't claim that swine flu yet meets the requirements for declaring a pandemic.

On the other hand a slowly acting and slowly transmitted disease such as AIDS doesn't cause a short sharp increase in demand for healthcare and does not suddenly and unexpectedly reduce the available workforce. The utility of declaring a pandemic (or epidemic) then is mainly political and symbolic and one must be careful of a potential backlash against perceived government scare tactics.

[stevefromkelso]

Ya know, this really is a brilliant point/analogy. Breathing feels so much better without a mask. AIDS goes back to the early 80's, but swine flu is the 70's, so it can't be new-ness of the story.