Catching your Death...

Wherein the author talks about perception of infection and the fallacies within.

I just saw a news report blaring out "Dozens killed by mystery disease!"

Puh-lease!

You've all heard about it, a new pneumonia from Asia, that has incapacItated maybe 60 people and kill about an even dozen or so. It's the new panic from the press! Death from a mysterious disease that has struck down 12/6,000,000,000 of the population or 0.0000000002% of the world's population!

Doesn't sound so dangerous now does it?

From what I've read on this disease, you really have to work hard to catch it. You have to be in close contact with the person who contracted it and be around the person during the infectious portion of the disease's life cycle, which appears to be 24 hours after contact and infection.

You have a better chance of winning the lottery than catching this disease.

We have diseases people have labeled plagues, but in the context of the plagues long past, including the disease called the Plague, modern "plagues" are nothing to be worried about.

AIDS for all it's ballyhoo as a modern day plague, is actually not even close to the plagues of yesteryear in terms of people dying from it. Yes, portions of Africa are rampant with AIDS, but only because people are having sex, not once, not twice, but 20 or more times with people with AIDS. Eventually you roll craps and contract the disease. AIDS is a hard disease to catch, you really have to work at it to catch it.

AIDS is a piker compared to some of the other STDs that "plague" mankind. More people have syphilis than AIDS. STDs in general are fairly easy to catch and to prevent.

According to statistics for the year 2002 42 million people had AIDS in the world. However, 70% of those infected live in Sub Saharan Africa. That region is hit hardest due to famines, poverty and the only way to make money to survive... selling one's body for sex. It is mainly through heterosexual sex that AIDS is spread in this part of the world, but it is unlikely to spread outside of there due to the fact that the only carrier for HIV is sex or dirty needles.

If you exclude the 70% of those unfortunates in Africa, from the numbers, suddenly, AIDS/HIV is no longer a plague. In the USA you have a 0.2% chance of becoming an AIDS statistic. And that's assuming you catch it on your first sexual contact. But if you're sexually promiscuous, you'll have a good chance at catching it, along with a host of other STDs.

Remember folks, it's dangerous out there, always wear your rubbers...