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from two free months of valuable education imagine being told you are
going to die maybe not today maybe not this week maybe not even this year but
something inside you nobody understood was going to kill you then imagine your
partner your family and your closest friends were also going to die many of
them already have I know you know what I'm dancing around because YouTube
doesn't let you tease things but I want you to really imagine how that feels and
imagine in the midst of this the government even society at large doesn't
seem to care whether you or the people that you love die maybe some even say
it's justified God's wrath or whatever what do you do what do you do next when
you find out that disease is inside you hi I'm Tristan Johnson and this is step
back HIV the virus behind AIDS exposes when a society doesn't value all its
citizens lives through Herculean scientific endeavors it's become a
disease that is quick and easy to detect and can be managed through medications
it just requires societies to agree to spend the resources to fight it I want
to preface this history video when we talk about HIV it's not just history it
is a virus that still affects millions today the lgbtq+ community people of
color drug users sex workers and the poor on the globe of the prime targets
where the state camped in the case of many developing countries or won't in
the case of developed ones give these groups the resources needed to fight the
virus it says a lot about who does and does not have power in this world so
let's rewind back to when HIV first made itself known the situation looked not
only dire but apocalyptic something capable of wiping out huge numbers of
people brought the specter of tragedy and death to so many community
relationships and families and those who held the keys to the world's resources
they seemed content to let people die rather than lift a finger to help it
seemed like an impossible situation communities faced oblivion and no matter
how hard they voted nothing changed for a long time the brutal fight against
AIDS led by grassroots activists and organizations was nothing short of a
miracle born of necessity and this is the story I'm telling today let's start
with the facts what is HIV and why is it such a
debilitating disease that even today we have not found a true cure for now most
of you know that I'm not a scientist so I grabbed one off the internet to
explain what HIV is welcome Patrick Kelly from the channel coporis your
immune system is kind of important it's one of the reasons you're not dead right
now but people infected with HIV or the
human immunodeficiency virus have much weaker immune systems this makes it way
easier for them to catch a life-threatening bug or even develop
certain types of cancer no all virus is spread by hijacking a host cell
replicating themselves in it and then destroying that cell an HIV infects cd4
or t-cells one of those important cells in the immune system the lower the
somebody's cd4 count is generally the weaker their immune system is and if
that cd4 count gets really low like less than 200 cells per cubic millimeter of
blood then that person is diagnosed with AIDS they can also get diagnosed if they
catch an opportunistic infection a disease that they wouldn't normally
catch if they had a healthy immune system unfortunately once you have HIV
you have it for life treatments in the form of antiretroviral therapies or a
RTS can help suppress the virus but won't get rid of it so keep that in mind
no matter who catches this disease it's something they have to deal with for the
rest of their life so how did HIV spread so far and fast to answer that we need
to go back even farther than the 1980s when people first noticed something was
going on the virus like many that have plagued us over the years was
transferred from animals to us the ancestor of HIV is a similar virus found
in primates called SIV or simian immunodeficiency
virus HIV x' lineage can be mapped through some fantastic detective work
that would make a great future video these medical detectives traced HIV s
likely origin to a version of SIV found in one of our closest animal relatives
the chimpanzee the transfer is thought to have occurred because of the bushmeat
or wild game trade it is possible someone prepared a chimpanzee for food
something not unheard of in Africa and some infected chimpanzee blood made
contact with a cut the butcher had this transfer from animal to human was not a
one-time exchange researchers think it has happened several times
HIV mutates more than the average virus and those detectives have traced
different versions to multiple crossovers over the years creating
different strains of HIV the strains tied to this crisis come from a single
crossover and scientists have estimated the time and place have happened
somewhere in the African nation of Cameroon a little more than a hundred
years ago around 1908 from this first transfer the virus spread to the major
Congolese city Kinshasa where it flourished at the time the city was
colonial and called Leopoldville and yes the horrors of this period of Congolese
history will be an upcoming video there the virus spread through prostitution
and the fact that in back in 1908 disposable syringes hadn't been invented
that's right doctors at this time used glass syringes and they clean them
between patients only with alcohol as you may have guessed this wasn't enough
to kill the virus and may have in fact spread the virus to other syringes from
Kinshasa the virus spread around the globe in the 1960s a bunch of Haitians
move there for work because of the common French language however after a
nationalist movement turned Congo into the nation of is a year many of those
immigrants were pushed back to Haiti and HIV went along for the ride
back in Haiti there was a blood plasma donation center in their capital Portal
Paz and it was especially effective at spreading the disease around because
I've mixed all the blood together a big no-no HIV made it to the US around 1969
via either a bag of infected plasma or a person the whole patients hero story
about the French Canadian airline worker is not true
HIV takes about a decade to develop into AIDS so the disease went unnoticed until
about 1980 suddenly healthy young gay men started
getting rare cancers and infections these are the kinds of infections or
cancers your immune system can typically be easily but in this case they were
deadly one of the most common was something called Kaposi's sarcoma which
is unique because it creates these odd purple blotches on the skin these purple
marks in the skin became grim icons of AIDS later on the root problem is they
all had a sudden drop in their immune system they didn't know it yet but all
these people had AIDS in these early days doctors were clueless as to what
was going on all they knew was young gay men were losing their helper t4 cells
and then dying they had no clue how its spread or how to protect themselves many
close to these early AIDS victims remember elaborate biohazard procedures
both to protect the immunocompromised patients and the healthy doctors friends
and family see at this time no one knew if touching people could spread the
infection in these days HIV was called grid or gay-related immune deficiency
and quickly got the empathetic nickname a cancer for all these reasons aids
could be an isolating lonely death many gay people in the 1980s and even today
were rejected by their families for who they were laws surrounding visitation
meant their partners and chosen families were often unable to visit add in the
protective measures and you can imagine the horror and sorrow someone might
experience there alone on a bed two emaciated in week to even move let alone
walk although AIDS was associated with gay men other people started exhibiting
symptoms of the disease especially people with haemophilia a condition
which prevents your blood from clotting people with haemophilia require many
blood transfusions and at this time blood wasn't screened for HIV so they
began contracting the disease then it showed up in infants who got it from
breast milk IV drug users who shared needles and
heterosexual women and men showing this wasn't just a disease confined to the
gay community after seeing these cases doctors concluded that AIDS spread
through blood breast milk and unprotected sex by 1986 two separate
teams of scientists converged on HIV and discovered it was causing AIDS let's
zoom out to the broader American society in the 1980's Americans were at the peak
of Reagan mania people wore big shoulder pads big hair and were excited to hate
the poor openly again so in this bold decade what bold action
to the United States take to fight this disease oh right they did nothing Ronald
Reagan didn't even say the word AIDS until 1985 after 5,000 people had
already died of the disease when asked about it the White House would respond
with laughter pointing out Americans don't really approve of that lifestyle
people were dying and because of politics hatred bigotry and the cold
black heart in every conservative they laughed when people died alone and
emaciated in a hospital bed 300,000 people in the US had the disease in the
most powerful country on earth mocked them ok I'm repeating myself this is
just so baffling and from a presidency that's looked upon positively finally in
1985 after a teenager with hemophilia named Ryan White was banned from school
for having AIDS activists had a story they could tell Ryan White was just an
innocent kid and this kid at long last convinced the u.s. to act the Food and
Drug Administration released a commercial blood test and blood banks
began to screen for the disease and the Department of Health and Human Services
in the World Health Organization held the first International AIDS Conference
so I asked earlier what do you do when the government is can
tend to let you and the people you care about die well I guess asking politely
doesn't work in this chaotic period many grassroots AIDS groups emerge to help
the dying prevent further infection and fund necessary research to fight this
crushing disease the biggest organization was the AIDS coalition to
unleash power or act up founded by Larry Kramer they raised money for AIDS
research at a frantic pace since then they've become the model for fighting
for disease research money if the government wouldn't acknowledge AIDS
victims voluntarily activists would force the issue act up and other group
stage protests placing a large AIDS quilt in the National Mall they trashed
the New York Stock Exchange bell ringing ceremony one of the most hardcore
actions I found was activists through the ashes of dead AIDS victims at the
White House and demanded they be seen before I get into the major scientific
breakthroughs that prevented HIV from becoming a death sentence I want to
point out even today the most significant factors preventing HIV from
spreading aren't expensive pharmaceutical inventions of social
programs act up did the necessary work setting up needle exchange programs
creating education campaigns and distributing condoms to those that
needed them the effectiveness of the programs I mentioned earlier are exactly
why I said that HIV is a disease that affects those without power
those who the wealthy have determined are unworthy of the necessities of life
activists hard work turn this disease around now I'd be remiss if I didn't
talk about some significant scientific breakthroughs that made spreading the
disease harder and most importantly make living with a disease more manageable
with activists research money and eventual big grudging support of the
government several major medications and therapies turn HIV from a death sentence
something manageable the first significant breakthrough came in 1987
scientists developed a medication called azita thymidine that are known by it's
easier to pronounce acronym a said t AZT was a true marvel of pharmaceutical
research it could not stop but could slow the disease's progression
buying people precious years but they said T was also profoundly expensive
which meant many couldn't afford it despite going on the market in 1987
deaths from AIDS peaked in 1995 in 1997 a new combination of treatments called
highly active antiretroviral therapy or heart became a standard cutting aids
deaths almost in half over the next three years in 2003 the FDA approved HIV
test kits which can detect the disease in just 20 minutes
today medical science has progressed to the point that while you can't cure the
disease you can make it basically untraceable in your system and prevent
you from spreading it another drug option called prep can help people who
might be at risk of contracting HIV from getting it in the first place okay to be
able to tell these lesser-known stories from history I need to pay the bills so
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helping me give attention to histories that sometimes get forgotten after a
heart became the standard treatment deaths from AIDS plummeted
at least amongst those who could afford it as it affected them less many
middle-class white people in the lgbtq+ community moved away from AIDS activism
to fight for civil rights specifically the right to get married though the
ghosts and trauma of so many dead partners and friends still haunts many
older lgbtq+ people to this day this didn't mean however that HIV was gone
interest and resources for fighting the disease did but the disease is still
prevalent around the globe to this day though there have been some improvements
the global South still suffers huge HIV infection rates the spread of HIV is
preventable but the legacy of colonization and
current colonization under the rebranding of neoliberal global
capitalism leaves these people in massive debt to rich countries and
without the resources to give those of HIV the medicine education and social
programs necessary to control the disease some initiatives to help control
HIV in the global south have occurred but they are nowhere near sufficient and
even in the first world HIV is still around those live Society doesn't value
people of color the poor injection drug users sex workers in the trans community
struggle with disproportionately high numbers of HIV infections in some places
such as Mississippi the HIV epidemic is actually getting worse rather than
better it's gone to the point where almost half of black men who have sex
with men will contract the disease in their lifetime this is a state that
voted against expanding their minuscule public health care service Medicaid as
I've said before HIV is a disease that we can beat but to do so we need to
establish that health care is a right for everyone we need to value the
injection drug dealers life the same as the CEO and it seems the free market
just isn't up to the task we all drop the ball you mean everyone
but we can't just rely on a political solution because anything established by
the government can just be undone by the next administration we need to like when
act-up was founded realize that in health injustice and inequality we can't
just toss in a ballot every few years and wipe our hands and say we did
our job we need to build the things to make the world better now in your
community in my community with our own efforts no act or change in government
is going to make a solution that can't just be taken away the only solution to
the world's problems that can't be voted away by the next administration is when
we make ourselves and when you think that the problems of the world are just
too big or too hopeless think of these people who faced literal death and
Armageddon and had no allies in power but with hard-fought victory after
hard-fought victory they forced the world to listen they didn't ask nicely
but demanded their right to exist