World AIDS Day

By Glenn

Happy World AIDS Day!  Every year on December 1st, we think about our experience with AIDS.  This could be personal contraction or simply viewing a television/movie character who battles the disease, like in the Philadelphia Story. The day was first established in 1987 and yearly US Presidential proclamations began in 1995 by Bill Clinton, the only American President to ever have contracted HIV. World AIDS Day is now the longest-running disease awareness and prevention initiative of its kind in the history of public health, beating out even Regional Polio Awareness Day (1935-1956) and UTI Week (2002-2003).

The theme of the last five years has been "Stop AIDS - Keep the Promise."  The countries of the world (both recognized like Republic of South Sudan and unrecognized like Palestine and Western Sahara) have pledged what is needed to rid the world of AIDS, but they must follow through on their commitments.  The European Union, for example, has pledged over 3 trillion dollars to fight the epidemic and US pop star Bon Iver has pledged 3 new singles.

This year the new theme of "Getting to Zero" begins, as a team of Israeli-trained assassinations spread out over to the globe to eliminate all HIV/AIDS positive persons.  This new method of thinking was controversial at first, but nowhere near the level of 1994's "AIDS and the Family" theme that encouraged all members of an immediate family to contract the disease after the first person was diagnosed.  In the short term it drove up infection rates in the Western world but in the long term allowed families to grow a lot closer.

I would be remiss if I lavished all this attention on World AIDS Day without giving any recognition to AIDS itself, the disease that made this possible!  AIDS, come on up and accept your award for all the hard work you've done to make this day so necessary.

Thank you so much for this recognition!  From the day I was created in a CIA lab, I've worked very hard to infect and kill people - first starting with flight attendants and homosexuals, then expanding to women, children and basketball players.  It's been a wild ride, but I wouldn't be here without some very important figures in my life.

First of all, I want to thank Ronald Reagan.  Most other US Presidents would have spoken out loudly when I first began spreading across the US or at least proportioned more federal money to fight me, but Ronnie didn't.  His silence kept a lot of people in the dark about who I was or how I moved around and this let me really spread my wings.  I also want to thank the Catholic Church.  Many groups have stood opposed to condoms and other contraception but no one has the courage or influence to really fight them quite like the Catholics.  Condoms stop me from finding new hosts, but social conservatives are right there to pull them off of an erect penis and guide me on my way.

Thank you AIDS and thank you World AIDS Day!  Hopefully after 2015 (the final year for the "Getting to Zero" campaign seeking to end AIDS as we know it) we can go back to celebrating December 1st as the anniversary of the first Vietnam War draft lottery.  That was a much better way to watch innocent people senselessly die.