HIV/AIDS (1900- ), often just called AIDS, is an incurable disease from central Africa which has infected 75 million and killed 32 million. It is easily one of the worst pandemics in history. In 2018 alone it killed 770,000 people. Covid-19 has killed 480,000 so far in 2020.
- HIV = human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
- AIDS = acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, the disease itself that kills you.
It attacks the body’s immune system, destroying T cells and macrophages – the CD4 white blood cells the body needs to fight disease.
Stages:
- CD4 cell count drops below 1,000 per cubic millimetre of blood. Test positive for HIV but no symptoms yet.
- CD4 count drops below 500. Weight loss, maybe fungal infections.
- CD4 count drops below 350. Weakened immune system. Opportunistic infections.
- CD4 count drops below 200. Full-blown AIDS. Your immune system is shot. Death likely in three years if untreated.
Transmission: You get it through the bodily fluids (semen, blood) of someone who already has it, mainly through unprotected sex, used needles or the womb (mother to child). Coughing or sneezing does not spread it.
Cures: None so far. Not even a vaccine to prevent you from getting it. But there is medicine that, if taken regularly, can keep it under control.
The numbers: About 70% of those who are HIV positive live in Africa. Even within the US, 75% are Black. The stereotype of AIDS being a gay White man’s disease comes from the Whitecentrism of US media.
The horrifying history: Patient Zero is believed to be a hunter in central Africa who, in about the year 1900, came in contact with the blood of a chimpanzee. Sooty mangabeys also spread the disease. By the 1920s it had made its way to the big city of Leopoldville (now called Kinshasa), capital of the Belgian Congo. In the 1940s a cure for syphilis was discovered. In the 1950s doctors treated sex workers in Kinshasa for syphilis with reused needles – which, unknown to them, was spreading HIV!
In the 1980s it had spread to the US. President Reagan did not care, but the World Health Organization (WHO) spearheaded the fight against it with the help of Jonathan Mann, a legend in AIDS circles.
In the 1990s doctors came up with antiretroviral drugs to fight AIDS. It was no longer a death sentence. But Mann and the WHO fell out and the fight against AIDS worldwide fell by default to – the World Bank. It spoke of DALYs – disability-adjusted life years. It concluded that money spent on saving Africans from AIDS was a waste. The drugs were too expensive. And Bill Clinton, the US president, defended the property rights of the big US drug companies charging those high prices. The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa and others protested.
In the 2000s, US President Bush, of all people, pushed PEPFAR: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which helped to lower drug prices and provide billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. In 2005 almost 2 miilion died of AIDS. Now it is less than half that.
– Abagond, 2020.
Source: mainly “Pandemic: A Very Short Introduction” (2016) by Christian W. McMillan.
See also:
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Abagond 
Always dropping jewels – thank you
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Many of us believe it’s man made. Nowadays anything is possible.
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@ kushitep
I have heard that too, but I doubt humans in the 1900s knew enough to create something like this. Even as viruses go it is pretty advanced. If it is man-made, then it would almost have to be from the future.
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This disease killed and affect yet today many people, specially in Africa and more specifically in Southern Africa.
Today’s therapies turned the disease to a status of a chronic but controllable one.
One of the things that worried many people in Southern Africa was how the novel coronavirus would co-play with the HIV virus. Would it be more deadly in a community already plagued by HIV?
South Africa is an interesting case to look at. With the 2,373,053 tests already carried out (date, July, 18th, 2020) and 337,594 positive cases registered, only 4,804 died from Covid-19.
Despite a very high incidence of HIV in this country, the fatality rate of Covid-19 remain relatively low, being not higher than 1.4% (using the numbers above) what is much lower than countries with a much lower incidence of HIV like Peru (Covid-19 fatality rate 3.7%) and Mexico (fatality rate 11.6%).
I think that the widespread use of the therapy against HIV in South Africa today, seems to neutralize that virus (HIV) to the point that the new virus (novel coronavirus) does not impact the body more aggressively than we would expect because of the presence of HIV.
On a more positive note, the story of the HIV-Aids epidemic is also a story were the best of humans also came to the surface. I remember vividly the following piece of art and also of humanism which was (re)created in the 80’s, That’s What Friends Are For
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTpu6BmE88 )
That piece of art and humanism was only rivaled by another one called USA For Africa – We Are The World that was create also in the 80’s to call attention to the suffering of people in parts of Africa because of famine and other issues plaguing the continent back then,
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3wNuru4U0I )
P.S.:
Look at the artists in both video-clips. Do you recognize them? They are older now! Signs of time in their faces if you see them now. And some of them are already gone…
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It seems that the story of this bandit – HIV – soon will be over.
Thanks to the extraordinary effort to counter the challenge put by the novel coronavirus, some tools and techniques of the genetic engineering toolbox were refined and used, like the manipulations of the mRNA code in order to create vaccines.
The effort will likely kill that virus for good, but more importantly, it opened the door to news ideas of how to tackle older diseases. Here I’m referring to new tools to combat another killer – the HIV/AIDS virus. There are indeed very good news. Let’s look:
— mRNA techniques to create a vaccine against HIV, see ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIdOuJTASVc )
— a cure of HIV/AIDS by genetic editing of some portions of the DNA of the “T” cells of the immunologic system* to make them “invulnerable” to attacks by the HIV virus and therefore maintaining their role in the whole function of the immunologic system, and hence maintaining the integrity of that system, see ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrKW0Sio5Q4 )
We are entering in a wonderful new world of possibilities for human medicine!
It is even said that new treatments for some types of cancer will be possible in a near future.
In the Portuguese idiom there is a saying like “há males que vêm por bem” (translation: some bad things actually precede good things) or “Deus escreve direito por linhas tortas” (translation: God writes straight even through sinuous lines).
The novel coronavirus has been a plague for the most of last 15 months, but the challenge it puts to the homo sapiens sapiens, helped him/her make important advances in his/her technological abilities.
Hopefully soon we can say, goodbye Corona, let us in peace and take with you your old buddy HIV… and never return!
P.S.:
*Regarding both the vaccine and cure of HIV I’m fully aware that a long path stands between the new ideas and their full materialization. I think the possibility of a vaccine with the mRNA technique is really promising.
One the other hand I’m a bit skeptical regarding some aspects of the cure proposed by American Gene Technologies. A few questions I would like to have an answer from them:
— the genetically edited “T” cells which are put back in the body will not elicit an immune response against them as occurs with any other organ transplant, like the heart for example?; that will not make the whole method unworkable?
— it seems that the genetically edited “T” cells will be very numerous when put back in the body (from 1 million previously extracted from the body, the method edits the cells, then multiplies them by one thousand and put them back in the body); but what will happen next? those edited cells will work for a while but then die naturally as any other type of cell and after a while it seems that only the old unedited cells will remain because those are permanently recreated by the body whereas the edited ones are not, so the system will go back to the original point, although clean of the virus; or maybe I’m missing something here?); a cure of HIV/AIDS for one patient was carried out in Germany years ago, using a method with some similarities with this one, but they replaced the organ responsible for the creation of the cells of the immunologic system, namely the bone marrow; replacing the source of the “T” cells, as they did, seems to me, more appropriate to really obtain the status of not only “cured” but “insusceptible to the virus forever”.
— maybe somebody at this forum can enlighten us about those issues; I thank in advance.
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“In 2018 alone it [AIDS] killed 770,000 people. Covid-19 has killed 480,000 so far in 2020.”
Thought I would update this.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2020 approximately 680,000 people globally died of AIDS.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/number-of-deaths-due-to-hiv-aids
Whereas the global death toll for Covid-19 through the end of 2020 was 1.8 million reported fatalities, with the WHO estimating due to undercounts that the true number is closer to 3 million.
https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covid-19-estimating-global-excess-mortality
Abagond wrote this post about halfway through 2020. Things got a lot worse. 😞😷
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