CRUELTY GROWS (Special Edition)
Why such lack of compassion?
Image by NIAID, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. [Note 1]
The suspension by POTUS of assistance to poor countries to combat HIV/AIDS [Note 2] made it immoral for me to stay silent.
This move is compounded by the POTUS censoring of communications to the affected countries by U S Government health professionals. International travel is commonplace, disease travels fast, and U S response to illnesses has been compromised by POTUS. This places the population of the world at risk for another HIV/AIDS epidemic.
When children, women and men contract HIV [Note 3], much suffering ensues if it goes untreated. Over 600,000 Americans died from HIV [Note 4] until treatment was developed and actively deployed.
At HIV Stage One patient symptoms include fever; tender large lymph nodes; throat inflammation; rashes; headaches; tiredness; muscle weakness; sores in the mouth and genitals. Other opportunistic infections move in, and the patient experiences diarrhea; vomiting; damage to nerves; and impairment of sensation, movement, and organ function.
At HIV Stage Two, the patient experiences weight loss and muscle pain in addition to the stage one symptoms. Inflammation of lymph nodes propagates.
At HIV Stage Three, full-fledged AIDS develops. In addition to Stages One & Two symptoms, the patient experiences pneumonia; HIV wasting syndrome; and esophageal candidiasis, which involves difficult and painful swallowing. People with AIDS are then at increased risk for Kaposi’s sarcoma, Burkitt’s lymphoma, primary nervous system lymphoma, and cervical cancer.
And untreated patients die— including our friends and next-of-kin.
Ninety percent of HIV is spread via contaminated blood transfusions. Innocent children often contract HIV/AIDS from contaminated mothers.
Why the POTUS regime would withdraw support from PEPFER is hard to understand. Americans are compassionate to the suffering in other countries. Also, an HIV/AIDS epidemic could develop and spread beyond its current locations and even reach the United States.
The United States was losing an average of 20,000 people per year [Note 4] to HIV/AIDS during the 1970s and 1980s. The POTUS’ behavior in his previous term is revealing. His inaction then caused the death of close to a million Americans during the COVID pandemic [Note 5]— and it did not affect his behavior.
Americans knew the absence of compassion in the POTUS’ last term, and the GOP voted him in again. This time he brings with him anti-vaccine activists and draconian measures to compound the current situation.
It is unusually cruel to condemn victims of HIV/AIDS to its symptoms and accompanying mental, emotional, spiritual and physical suffering.
This moment calls for the compassion and goodness inherent in the American People. Why does the POTUS not heed that call?
Cruelty in so many forms. No attempt to disguise it. Hell no. These fuckers flaunt it, spread it, augment it
You are so right. There is great evil in this administration.