Yes, Virginia, HIV is still out there. How many people have it? I don’t know, honey, nobody knows. Probably a lot. You see, the newspapers, the magazines and the television aren’t talking about this at all. Even on Jeopardy, it isn’t a category. I guess the media thinks that if we ignore this it will go away. Yes, I know it’s a real stupid way of dealing with the problem, but if you look at all the stupid TV shows, well, you might get the impression that a lot of real stupid people are in charge of public information.

The thing about HIV is that you can’t see it spread. Ten thousand virus particles would line up on the head of a pin. It’s microscopic in size. Secondly, there may not be any symptoms for 8 – 10 years. It’s not like Ebola, where you break out in sores after a week and a few weeks later your body turns to jelly. In that case, you know who has it and who doesn’t. With HIV, you can’t tell.

The good news, however, is that it’s preventable.

If you have a lot of intimate relationships, that’s called promiscuity. If you are faithful to your partner, that’s called monogamy. HIV isn’t airborne; it’s basically spread blood-to-blood. It’s not that easy to get. But if you have a fatal venereal disease loose among the population, unless everyone has become monogamous, it is going to spread.

The doctors, however, aren’t calling it a fatal disease; they are calling it a “manageable chronic condition,” based on the fact that the medications (ARVs) they prescribe can add 8 – 10 years of life. Of course, there are side effects to these drugs. They are also failing to list HIV when they are filling out death certificates because death certificates become public information. So we really don’t know how many people have already died from it.

You see, it’s called a “stigma.” Do you remember when that famous pop star died? Even if he had been infected with HIV, the doctors wouldn’t have listed it. Can you imagine what would have happened? People would have been shocked and, of course, their profits would have plunged. So the family is happy paying off the doctors and the doctors are happy taking the money and prescribing medications. The fact that they are more interested in making money than in protecting the population is shameful, but I don’t think they really care.

Honey, I don’t want you to get this disease. From the moment it enters your body it makes plans to destroy your immune system. Still, it isn’t HIV that actually kills you; it’s the next infection that comes along, which the healthy immune system can normally repel. So you can see how the cause of death could be listed as pneumonia, heart attack, or what-have-you. In any case, it’s still out there and it’s not going away until more people start being concerned and talking about it.