AIDS Apathy
Epidemic still a global concern

We’ve all heard of them. Some of us may have even encountered them in some way in our years. It’s safe to say that if we never had to face HIV or AIDS in any way, we’d all be much better off.

But to show how close to home they can be, the number of HIV and AIDS cases in Tarrant County have doubled in each of the past three years.

Scary? Yes.

Alarming? Yes.

But, Brian Barron, a disease intervention specialist at the Tarrant County Public Health Department, said those numbers could be misleading because it’s only recently become law that facilities need to report cases to the county health department. He said the numbers “should start to taper off.”

Since when is “they should start to taper off” a sign of improvement when talking about something as serious as HIV and AIDS? Something is seriously skewed by a statement like that when you think about the 2.4 million adults and children in Sub-Saharan Africa who died of AIDS in 2000. In that same year, 3.8 million adults and children in South Africa were infected with the HIV virus.

To put those numbers into perspective, the population of Tarrant County in 1999 was reported by the U.S. Census Bureau at 1,376,555. That number is less than half the number of people who were infected in South Africa by the HIV virus last year.

Granted, we’re talking about South Africa which is clearly nowhere near our bubble, but the fact remains that HIV and AIDS are not going anywhere. Numbers are not tapering off.

We shouldn’t be misled to believe that things are so right with the world just because numbers “should decrease” in North Central Texas.

Father Charlie Calabrese, TCU Catholic Community priest, said he does not think the campus is aware of the worldwide AIDS epidemic.

“I think people in general might think that AIDS is no longer a threat because people in the United States aren’t dying like they were in the early years of the disease,” Calabrese said. “When I read Time magazine’s feature article on AIDS, I was blown away by the magnitude of the disease in developing countries and by what little resources they have to respond to AIDS.”

That’s what is happening in places outside our bubble. Does that sound like the numbers are tapering off?

Surely not.

We shouldn’t act satisfied.

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