THANKS BEV

vacant nonsense from a conservative shrew

“AIDS spreads because people are loose, slutty, it’s not rocket science. It’s the same everywhere, in every country, from Africa to the States.”

~ Bev Lahaye, Concerned Women For America

Nice to know the leading right wing step sister of the racist, sexist and homophobic Concerned Women For America thinks Africa is “a country”. But to add more stupid on stupid, she implies that HIV transmission is uniform across the world. Nothing like ignoring context, income level, dogmatic faith based regimes, individually specific co morbidity, etc. etc.

Well Bev, listen up you ignorant woman. You’re about to get schooled. The following are the minimal steps required, when looking at, and then attempting to say anything definitive about the experience of country A and country B in relation to an experience of HIV.

  1. First of all, view numbers with a healthy index of suspicion that supports more, rather than less patients as its reality. When viewing statistics of the USA and that of third world countries with a high prevalence of infection, keep the following in mind. Population should only be compared to it’s relative equivalent base. In other words, the principle of scale and the principle of relative potentiality. Regarding potentiality, we mean that which is more likely to occur, and what is the likely effect on a specific severity basis. In other words, who is more likely to be HIV positive, ten asexual spinsters, or ten inner city prostitutes.
  2. Secondly, a careful balance between HIV and its relationship to predicted life expectancy, as well as against its relationship to the reality of treatment probability, treatment competency, treatment modality, and most predictive, treatment adherence. The later being, are people actually taking their meds as required.
  3. No matter where one is on the planet, there is nowhere that HIV does not garner significant societal condemnation. Consider societal condemnation of those infected as compared to the same reality in the west, where the climate is not particularly tolerant, but a measurable advantage exists when compared with third world countries often steeped in repressive and dogmatic cultures.
  4. Measurable and demonstrated predictions of the impact of safer sex messages within a gay male community that exists in harsh and oppressive cultural conditions, cannot be established until substantive cultural and legal shifts occur. Since the reality of acting on an orientation will very likely find one in jail, gay men most at risk for HIV are the ones completely unreachable through standard and current preventive applications.
  5. Now, throw out all that I have said above. Start over. Why? Because official numbers are at best measure, a good guess. As diagnosis is still being made in some cases on clinical evaluation, not hemodynamic analysis. Then consider, 70% of HIV positive patients will show no signs other than a seropositive test result and a decreasing CD4 reference up to ten years post infection.
  6. Finally, given those realities, all of which confer negative outcome to those with HIV, the fact that the number of infected is largely unknown, is actually quite irrelevant. Yes, irrelevant! Because the ability for this disease to be contained, is always analogous to the potential one has to see their life having worth and meaning. In that case, numbers aside, we have a problem of huge magnitude that is getting worse by the day. It’s called stigma. Thanks for adding to it.

Next time, Bev, before you express your concerned opinions from the “real women of America”, try having a fucking clue what you are talking about.