Marcel Winatschek

Still No Cure

December first, and MTV reminds you between every other ad what the date means. World AIDS Day—genuinely one of the last useful things that channel still did before it gave up on caring about anything.

I don’t know anyone with AIDS, as far as I’m aware. I don’t know anyone who’s died from it. That distance can make the whole thing feel like an abstraction, something that happens in statistics rather than in actual lives—but the disease doesn’t operate that way. It’s always one bad call from someone’s door. The math isn’t complicated: a condom, or an empty bed, or the person already waiting at home.

There’s still no cure. That’s the part that should stick. UNICEF has material on it if you want to do something beyond reading this and moving on.