Awareness Doesn’t Cure AIDs

Luciana Rodrigues ‘12
Entertainment Editor

December 1 is the national HIV/AIDS awareness day. That’s just it, awareness. It’s not the national cure AIDS day, nor is it the national raise money for AIDS day. So if you ask me, what’s the purpose of December 1 if it’s just for “awareness”? What does awareness really do, except leave people “aware”?
You want statistics? An estimated 56,300 Americans are infected with HIV every year, according to AIDs.gov. An estimated 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS currently. About 23% of those with HIV don’t know they are infected, so that means about 231,000 people could be transmitting the disease without even knowing it. The statistics go on and on and I’m sure we’ve heard many of them all before.
So now that you know all of that, what are you going to do? The exact same thing you’re probably doing now, continue sitting in the same spot you’re in, checking your Facebook and tweeting. Face it, now that you know all the facts, you’re still not doing anything about it.

There are 1,100,000 Americans infected with HIV/AIDS, and there are 310,852,659 Americans in total according the the last U.S census taken. Let’s look at this closely — there are about 309 million people not infected with HIV/AIDS in America. About 56,300 Americans become infected every year, so it will take another 20 years if this trend continues for 1,126,000 more Americans to be infected with such said disease. Twenty years may seem like a large amount of time, but really, chances are you’ll still be alive. You could be one of these 56,300, and all you’ll be able to say is “I was at one point ‘aware’.”
So, think about it like this, by wearing the color red, you are not in any way understanding what it’s like to go through living a life with HIV/AIDS. By putting statistics
out there, you are in no way benefiting those who are living those statistics. And by being aware, you are in no way at all curing this disease.
Go out, raise money, gather all the profit and send it towards HIV/AIDS research facilities. Arrange a “free get tested day.” Go talk to someone living with HIV/AIDS. Don’t claim to be saving the world, when all your doing is wearing the color red and claiming the importance of “being aware.”
So now that you are “aware” what are you doing about it? I hope that sometime soon it’ll be a little more than just sitting around updating your Facebook status and tweeting about Chipotle.