This Week's Sneak Peek

The Trump maladministration won't tell you, but today is World AIDS Day.

Last week's cartoon mused that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Health and Human Services Department could use the occasion to spread unscientific garbage about HIV/AIDS. Instead, the State Department has issued a directive that forbids anyone in the executive branch from even mentioning World AIDS Day.

The state department has directed its employees and grant recipients not to use US government funds to mark the event – which falls annually on 1 December – and not to promote the day publicly. The news was first reported by the journalist Emily Bass and confirmed in an email viewed by the New York Times. ...

[T]hey should “refrain from publicly promoting World Aids Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging”.

The email also reportedly said the government’s policy is “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day”, even though Donald Trump has issued proclamations for dozens of other observances, including Anti-Communism Week and National Energy Dominance Month.

As Emily Bass notes,

[U.S. Government] personnel may attend external, locally organized World AIDS Day events but may not speak at these events or promote their attendance via social media or media channels.

I suppose it's better than promoting the sort of half-baked crackpot fantasies that are the hallmark of the present regime.

But yes, Silence = Death.

Q Toon: Set in Boldface Hype

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), a leader in his party's fight against the fight against global pandemics, was on Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade's podcast on World AIDS Day last week. He acknowledged the occasion by accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, of exaggerating the danger from COVID-19 as well as from HIV/AIDS.

“Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it,” Johnson told Kilmeade.

“He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population when it couldn’t,” Johnson said, without citing scientific evidence. “And he’s doing, he’s using the exact same playbook with COVID, ignoring therapy, pushing a vaccine.”

Update: And now, Johnson has told a "town-hall" phone call, “By the way, standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus. If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?” Do I really need to tell you that no medical professional or mouthwash company agrees with him?

Anti-vaxxer Johnson should, by all rights, be an embarrassment to the state of Wisconsin, except that there are vast expanses of the state where folks think that a background in business entitles one to spew bullshit at will. PolitiFact has no problem coming up with over a dozen "Mostly False" to "Pants On Fire" statements by him.

In March, he told radio host Joe "Pags" Pagliano that the Capitol rioters on January 6 "were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law. Now, had the tables been turned, and Joe — this is going to get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa, I might have been a little concerned."

And, yes, he doesn't think January 6 was an armed insurrection, but he does want Hunter Biden investigated.

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Johnson hasn't yet announced whether he'll run for a third term next year, although his full-throated endorsement of Trumpism, conspiracy nonsense, and COVID denial has convinced other Republicans to stay out of the race. On the other side of the primary ballot, twelve Democrats to date have launched campaigns to unseat him.

Democrats think Johnson's is the one Republican Senate seat they can flip in 2022, and a group called "Opportunity Wisconsin" has been advertising heavily here all year urging us to tell him to stop doing bad things. For much of the fall, its ads starred a former employee of Hufcor blaming Johnson for a tax break that rewarded Hufcor for moving overseas. The current TV ad features a navy submarine veteran accusing Johnson of voting for tax cuts that resulted in Johnson doubling his wealth.

The Opportunity Wisconsin ad blitz started last February by telling Johnson to stop blocking COVID-19 relief checks. No wonder he thinks the pandemic has been overhyped — relief checks only encourage people not to work. Tax cuts encourage employers to lay them off.

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Meanwhile, here are the facts about HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, just in case anyone out there actually thinks they have been overhyped:

New HIV infections have been reduced by 52% since the peak in 1997. 

• In 2020, around 1.5 million [1.0 million–2.0 million] people were newly infected with HIV, compared to 3.0 million [2.1 million–4.2 million] people in 1997.
• 37.7 million [30.2 million–45.1 million] people globally were living with HIV in 2020.
• 79.3 million [55.9 million–110 million] people have become infected with HIV since the start of the epidemic.
• 36.3 million [27.2 million–47.8 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic.
  

AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 64% since the peak in 2004 and by 47% since 2010.

• In 2020, around 680,000 [480,000–1 million] people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide, compared to 1.9 million [1.3 million–2.7 million] people in 2004 and 1.3 million [910,000–1.9 million] people in 2010.

People living with HIV experience more severe outcomes and have higher comorbidities from COVID-19 than people not living with HIV. In mid-2021, most people living with HIV did not have access to COVID-19 vaccines.

• Studies from England and South Africa have found that the risk of dying from COVID-19 among people with HIV was double that of the general population.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is home to two thirds (67%) of people living with HIV. But the COVID-19 vaccines that can protect them are not arriving fast enough. In July 2021, less than 3% of people in Africa had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

And here is the death toll from COVID-19, as of last night:

5,294,887 deaths worldwide; 813,904 in the U.S.

In just two years. 

 

Q Toon: Ugly Sweater Contest

It would have been nice if this idea had come to me last week, when it would have been in time for any of my subscriber publications' World AIDS Day editions. Sometimes the brain has no regard for deadlines.

After nearly four decades, HIV/AIDS still awaits a vaccine, although we now have mitigating treatments available. With their advertisements running on TV and other media alongside those for heart disease, diabetes, restless intestine syndrome, and erectile dysfunction, HIV/AIDS almost recedes into the background noise.

There are certain parallels between the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics. Where some gay men initially criticized health activists of being Cassandras and complained about having to wear condoms, a loud contingent of libertarian right-wingers disbelieve science and refuse to wear masks in public. 

We do not appear fated to wait decades for a coronavirus vaccine, which is a good thing. We need that vaccine to come out before the corona "bug chasers" do.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I guess my World AIDS Day cartoon will be a week late this year.

Toons for World AIDS Day

Seroback Saturday observes World AIDS Day with a look back at a rather limited selection of cartoons about HIV/AIDS drawn for the LGBTQ press.

This is by no means a comprehensive look at the complete selection of LGBTQ cartoonists. I'm not including the work of any of the character-driven comic strips, many of whom have introduced HIV+ characters either on a regular, occasional, or cameo appearance basis. Nor do I have any idea what was the first published cartoon about AIDS (although that might be interesting to find out someday).

I believe this cartoon from September, 1985 is the first one I ever drew about the AIDS epidemic*; it's at a point when I felt it necessary to spell it out in the first panel and to put quotation marks around the acronym afterward. This was well before I began drawing for the LGBT press, however; this appeared in the student newspaper at UW-Parkside.

(Had the Homosexual Agenda added the "T" yet in 1985? I forget. I think folks were still squabbling about what order the first three letters should be in.)

There were other cartoonists contributing to LGBTQetc. media in the early 1980's, although few were tackling political subjects. But the advent of the AIDS crisis galvanized our community like nothing before. That is not to dismiss the Mattachine Society or Stonewall, or the fundamental first step of decriminalizing our relationships. But the issues up to the 1980's were predominantly lifestyle matters; the AIDS crisis presented us with a literal life-or-death issue.

And even the gag cartoonists couldn't avoid the subject.

"The Gay Side" by Tom Rezza in Wisconsin In Step, Milwaukee WI, January 23, 1986

Within the LGBT community, there was great resentment of President Ronald Reagan for not speaking about the AIDS crisis; he was not the only one guilty of silence (=death).

"Life at the Closet Door" by David Brady (freelance), ca. February. 1987

Even though consistent condom use has been proven as the best method for sexually active persons to avoid contracting the AIDS virus, network and cable television wasted years refusing to air condom advertising on the grounds that it would offend what they call "more sensitive viewers." But when Viagra and Cialis came along, the pharmaceutical companies' deep pockets helped the networks overcome whatever squeamishness they had about discussing sex during their commercial breaks.

"I'll Only Have to Rob Small Banks" by Angela Bocage in Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco CA, February 26, 1993

Speaking of the pharmaceutical companies: once treatments were discovered for HIV and AIDS, the issue became one of cost, as expressed in this Angela Bocage cartoon featuring Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Senator David Pryor (D-AR). Pryor's interest in controlling the escalating cost of prescription drugs came as chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Waxman's district included West Hollywood and parts of Los Angeles, so he had constituents vocal on the issue; his legacy includes the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 ("Hatch-Waxman Act"), and the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990.

"AIDS: Bearing Angry Witness" by Jennifer Camper (freelance), August/September, 1993

The death toll from AIDS devastated a generation in our community — as Camper's 1993 cartoon observes, in ways large and small. LGBTQ newspapers across the country, from the serious news outlets to the "bar rags," found that they needed to add obituary notices to report the loss of so many in their 50's, 40's, 30's and 20's. These obituaries often included pertinent details omitted from obituaries in mainstream newspapers: their life partners, their chosen families, or preferred or performance names by which they might be better known.

Uncaptioned cartoon by Ben Carlson in Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco CA, August 13, 1998

Ben Carlson's cartoon above appeared in the Bay Area Reporter's "No Obits" edition of August 13, 1998. A brightly colored banner headline on page one heralded the fact that for the first time in years, the San Francisco weekly newspaper did not have a single obituary in it.

"That doesn't mean that there were no AIDS deaths in the past week; next week's issue may have more obits than usual... After more than 17 years of struggle and death, and some weeks with as many as 31 obituaries printed in the B.A.R., it seems a new reality may be taking hold, and the community may be on the verge of a new era of the epidemic ... Perhaps."

By 1998, my cartoons were syndicated to the LGBTQ press, I'll close with a couple of my own scribblings from the past 20 years. The sketch above was commissioned in October, 1998 for AIDS Action's project AIDSWatch.

I didn't draw a World AIDS Day cartoon this year. It used to be that with newsmakers often on Thanksgiving holiday immediately beforehand, there frequently would be no distraction from the topic when I sat down at my drawing board. Thanks to presidential twitterrhea, that hasn't been the case lately.

Given the Corrupt Trump Administration's record on HIV/AIDS, I could simply have reissued this cartoon from January.

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* Ed. note: Wrong. I drew at least one AIDS cartoon earlier than the one at the top of this post.

Q Toon: Flip Service on AIDS

Last week's World AIDS Day proclamation from the Corrupt Trump Administration was curiously lacking one thing.

Any mention of the LGBTQ community.

If not for his record eliminating some of the Affordable Care Act's protections of LGBT individuals against discrimination and his ban on transgender soldiers serving in the armed forces, one might cut Mr. Trump some slack here. One might suppose that perhaps Mr. Trump was trying to decouple the concept of being LGBTQ from the concept of having AIDS.

But the fact remains that here in the West, HIV/AIDS still disproportionately impacts LGBTQ persons, persons of color, the poor, and intravenous drug users.

The influence of Republican Party Theocrats upon the Corrupt Trump Administration reveals itself in petty slights such as this (which continued this week as LGBTQ and Black White House reporters were not invited to this year's White House Christmas party).

The practical effects of Corrupt Trump Administration policy on HIV/AIDS, however, are anything but petty. As former George W. Bush speech writer Michael Gerson pointed out this week,

For the first time since early in the American AIDS response, a fundamental change in approach is being debated. In its 2018 budget, the Trump administration proposes an $800 million cut in America’s bilateral HIV/AIDS programs (along with a $225 million cut for the Global Fund). Resources would be concentrated on 13 “priority” countries, while current levels of treatment would be maintained in other places. Neither South Africa nor Nigeria — which together have about a quarter of AIDS cases in the world — would be in the “priority” category.
The results? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 800,000 fewer people (compared to the current trajectory) would be placed on treatment in the first year of the new strategy, and 2.7 million fewer by 2020.

Domestically, the Corrupt Trump Administration has still not appointed anyone to head the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, whose web site has been a blank page all year. This year's White House budget proposal would have slashed nearly $1 billion from federal HIV-related programs, had not Congress reinstated the funds in a May omnibus bill.

However, Congress will be increasing funding for abstinence-only sexual education programs by $5 million, while also decreasing funding for the CDC’s [Sexually Transmitted Disease] division by the same amount.

"On this day, we pray for all those living with HIV, and those who have lost loved ones to AIDS," wrote whoever put together the White House proclamation last week. In the words of  Scott Schoettes, HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal and one of six members who resigned in protest from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in June, "Prayers are good, but we need much more than prayers from this White House to solve the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States."

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Update: The Corrupt Trump Administration's pettiness is not limited to its Christmas party. Congressional Jewish Democrats were also disinvited from the White House Hanukkah observance.

Q Toon: The Reason

The theme of this year's World AIDS Day is "Access Equity Rights Now."

Access Equity Rights Now  is a call to action to work together and reach the people who still lack access to comprehensive treatment, prevention, care and support services.
Access Equity Rights Now  is a call to action to strengthen the commitment to HIV research evidence-based interventions.
Access Equity Rights Now  is a call to action to all HIV stakeholders to unite and overcome injustices caused by violence and the exclusion of people on the basis of gender, class, race, nationality, age, geographic location, sexual orientation and HIV status.
Access Equity Rights Now  is a call to action to repeal laws that infringe on people’s human rights and deny communities the ability to participate in the world as equals.
Access Equity Rights Now  reminds us that all our gains will be lost if we do not continue to push forward and build a strong global movement to change the course of the epidemic.

On the positive side, 18 million people now have access to life-saving treatment for HIV/AIDS, and new infections were down 58%. But reading between the lines of  Executive Director for UNAIDS Michel Sidibé's message this year, that reduction is largely because there are fewer transmissions of the disease from mother to child.

We are winning against the AIDS epidemic, but we are not seeing progress everywhere. The number of new HIV infections is not declining among adults, with young women particularly at risk of becoming infected with HIV.

We know that for girls in sub-Saharan Africa, the transition to adulthood is a particularly dangerous time. Young women are facing a triple threat: a high risk of HIV infection, low rates of HIV testing and poor adherence to HIV treatment.

Because HIV+ patients are living longer, we are also encountering the new challenges of treating HIV/AIDS  in older patients, who are at increased risk of age-related illnesses compared to the general population. The United Nations is calling for a "life-cycle approach" to meet these challenges in the years ahead.

World AIDS Day, again

From 2012:

Q Toon: AIDS at 30-Something

Q Syndicate✒Nov 26, 2014

My apologies for spoiling somebody's Thanksgiving appetite, but I decided to draw a cartoon for World AIDS Day (December 1) this week.

Which presented the challenge of How To Draw AIDS. For a cartoon marking the supposed 20th anniversary of the disease (or more precisely, of its diagnosis in the U.S.), I had drawn it as a skeleton; but that was a particularly unsatisfying personification. Any  deadly disease -- or terrorism, or freeway accidents or the Republican alternative to Obamacare -- can be depicted as a skeleton.

Instead, I decided to draw whatever the virus is actually supposed to look like, which is, apparently, a bucky-ball with polyps. And, I arbitrarily decided the other virus would be the poliovirus, at the risk of alarming someone out there who knows that I got their relative sizes wrong or whatever.

Q Toon: RIP Madiba

The death of a beloved, historic figure presents editorial cartoonists with both opportunity and challenge. Our memorial cartoons tend to be our most popular works; but for most of us, it's not enough to draw something saying that, gee, it's sad someone's gone. A cartoon that is truly worth the effort should say something unique and memorable about the person eulogized. The best do so simply and directly: Joe Heller produced his tour de 46664 within hours of the news breaking that Nelson Mandela had died.

Like many cartoonists, I often look for quintessential quotations on these occasions. At first, I wanted to draw a cartoon with Mandela's quotation that "to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." But Scott Stantis and David Horsey used that statement from Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom in their cartoons on the AAEC web site the very next morning.

Not being on a daily deadline, I still had some time to find just the right quotation, so I wasn't worried about other cartoonists using all the good ones before mine made it to print. (Although I didn't foresee Keith Knight's memorial cartoon, for which one single quotation just wasn't good enough.) I spent several hours combing through his speeches on the African National Congress web site.

I settled on a 1998 speech marking World AIDS Day. Late in his presidency and into his retirement, Mandela became a campaigner for HIV/AIDS awareness; the disease had not yet claimed the lives of his son and daughter-in-law at the time of the speech quoted in my cartoon. I didn't get a World AIDS Day cartoon done in time for December 1 this year, so, tardy as it is, my cartoon this week pulls double duty.

Q Toon: World AIDS Day

I'm taking a serious turn with this week's cartoon, and a somewhat less colorful one.

My decision to colorize only the red ribbon may have been influenced by having been at my drawing board until 1:00 a.m. inking in all those itty bitty people in the lower half of the cartoon..

World AIDS Day

I chose not to draw this week's cartoon about World AIDS Day today. After 30 years, I'm not sure what new things there are to say about the disease.

And yet, after 30 years, I'm unsettled as to what image to use to symbolize AIDS. Ten years ago, I used a skeletal death figure, even though many people living with AIDS have reason to object to that as a characterization. (And, in my very limited personal experience, I count among my friends about as many living with AIDS as have died from it.)

In October, 1985, I was asked to draw an illustration to go along with an article about AIDS by Kari Dixon for the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin - Parkside. For that illustration, I chose to illustrate the pariah effect the disease had in those days, when it was new to the public consciousness and there was no treatment.

(You have heard of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I hope. I certainly expected that a college readership would have.)