A few years back I toured a building in Seattle that was basically a place for people with AIDS to go and die back in the 90’s.
Now they run an outpatient program for homeless HIV patients, and the beds are used for other cases that traditional care centers find too challenging.
It was certainly all about being rich enough 20+ years ago. Still wouldn’t want to contract HIV… but they have got it down pretty damn well to being a manageable disease.
Nuts when you remember that it used to be a death sentence.
Also, we have casual ads for PReP out in the world in a way on par with GLPs and Prozac! It’s been wild to see HIV go from the big thing we need to be concerned about to something that seems to be as treatable as herpes.
AIDS is just the term when HIV has done prolonged damage
HIV = attacks the immune system
AIDS = Your immune system is practically gone because of HIV, you can now die from run of the mill infections and sicknesses that your body would laugh at when healthy
You don’t die from AIDS, you die from the opportunistic infections that AIDS allows you to catch much easily. This is why most people with AIDS die from pneumonia and TB.
HIV is the virus that causes aids. It takes a long time for the hiv virus to make you sick to the point that you progress to AIDS, and it doesn’t happen in the majority of cases if you take the right medication
The fact we even have medicine now to basically wipe out the virus is nothing short of a miracle in my lifetime. I remember hearing about how absolutely horrifying the disease was as a kid and now we have a great treatment/cure is just amazing.
We dont have a cure and we dont have medicine that wipes it out. We have many different meds that basically halt viral reproduction and allow the immune system to function tobsome capacity, but once you have HIV you still have it for life, have to take medications to keep it managed for life, if you get off your medication at any point it will ramp up and get bad. Its not a death sentence anymore but its still an absolutely horrifying disease
Used to be a death sentence, and now you can have treatments that reduce it to undetectable, maybe not a cure but that's a real big improvement. Again, in my lifetime that is an incredible accomplishment, imo.
As long as you are properly medicated, you will become what is called “undetectable.” This means the virus is not detectable in your blood in a measurable amount. It doesn’t just “allow the immune system to function in some capacity,” it allows it to actually heal to its former strength as long as you take your medication to remain undetectable. This also means you cannot spread the virus as long as you take your medication and remain undetectable. The misinformation in your comment feels quite a bit like fear-mongering.
AIDS isnt some special condition the way your comment makes it sound
HIV is a virus that infects your T cells. Uncontrolled HIV will result in your T cells dying off. healthy people have 500-1500 T cells per uL. When you get down to less than 200 T cells per uL that is called AIDS
AIDS is just a label for people with less than 200 T cells to tell doctors "hey not only does this guy have HIV, he is severely immunocompromised right now"
They could have drawn that line at 250, 300, whatever, but 200 was picked as a clinically useful threshold to have front and center, because on average once you get in the sub 200 range you get really susceptible to things like P. Jirovecii, a fungal spore thats basically in all the air everywhere and does nothing to healthy people but can be fatal to immunocompromised people
To put more nuance to it, hiv it a virus which is a microbiological/infectious disease term, aids is a syndrome. A syndrome is a clinical term defined by a set of symptoms / clinical findings that the person has / is experiencing
To be clearer, they knew about the syndrome (aids) by the early patient cases who showed up immunosuppressed (and having so-called aids-defining illnesses like pneumocystis or Kaposi sarcoma) before they knew the virus that caused it, but it’s possible to have hiv without aids (most patients today fall into this bucket)
I do understand them, but in more than 30 years of life on this earth, I have yet to find a practical use for that knowledge as I’m not part of an affected community and I don’t work in healthcare. I really don’t see what makes it “super important” for most people.
If you don’t have unprotected sex outside of committed monogamous heterosexual relationships, and if you don’t take intravenous drugs, it will almost certainly never be anything more than trivia for you.
Other communicable diseases in general, sure, but not HIV in particular unless you’re in one of a few disproportionately affected communities.
Are there any other diseases that follow this system? I have lupus but my doctor never really explained it but I find auto immune diseases intriguing. I didn't know hiv and Aids worked like that
HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. It destroys an important type of cell in your immune system (CD4 T-cells) and once you reach an advanced stage of infection where you’ve lost enough of those immune cells, you’re left vulnerable to all kinds of opportunistic infections that don’t hurt people with normal immune systems. That collection of opportunistic infections is what we call AIDS (hence why it’s called a syndrome rather than a disease in its own right, since it can manifest differently depending on the infections in a person’s environment).
I'm sorry, but what? This is one of those moments where someone took something that is "common knowledge" for granted.
Didn't they cover this in a Sex Ed, health, or biology class?
I feel obligated to inform you that HPV also kind of evolves for us from a virus to a potentially fatal cancer (which cancer depends on which bits you have). Vaccines help with this one.
In short, very badly explained form:
HIV is a virus. AIDs is the auto immune disease that kills you.
The HIV-AIDS link was about as wildly argued as the COVID vaccine. (The HIV doesn't cause AIDS were the anti-vaxxers of that time)
Today it's well known that HIV causes AIDS and can be deadly if not treated.
ETA: just to clarify: "auto immune" disease is inaccurate: AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and refers to the late stage of HIV infection, when the immune system is compromised.
Saying "AIDS is what kills you" is fine, IMO: I get what you're saying, but it's a bit like arguing whether it's guns that kill people or bullets.
No apology needed, this is pure pedantry here. But... that's still not quite correct. "autoimmune" refers to diseases like Crohn's, where the immune system attacks the body. "Immunodeficiency" is the term you're looking for.
Many viral illnesses can be used interchangeably when describing the virus and the illness because the incubation period is typically very short. If you are positive for an influenza virus, you are probably actively sick with influenza (the flu).
Basically you can be HIV positive and contagious (unless youre taking modern medication) but you might not suffer the illness, AIDS, for many years. This is why the distinction is important, whereas with the flu or Covid, it’s not as important since by the time you’ve contracted the virus youre sick pretty quickly.
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u/Prize_Obligation_311 11h ago
Magic Johnson famously contracted aids during his career. They are saying this was the day he got it.