E
veryone treats it like a
death
sentence,
even
when it’s just a cough.
Stores close their doors, people
keep their distance. Most infected
people don’t know they have it, so it
spreads uncontrollably, eager to kill
the moment it finds a compromised
immune system. It’s not coronavirus,
it’s HIV.
The media, medical experts
and politicians alike have shown
us time and time again the federal
government’s response to COVID-19
has been unsatisfactory for a virus
of its scope. Americans expect our
government to take proper action to
protect us — as they should. Rewind
four decades or so, though, and you’ll
find that most people didn’t mind the
radio silence.
The first reported cases of HIV
in the United States were in 1981
(though an unknown number of cases
existed before the turn of the decade),
kickstarting
the
nightmarish
epidemic.
In just its first year, HIV infected 270
people and killed 121. Despite the
numbers and despite being more or
less equally fatal among everyone
— it is not the virus itself that kills
but the deterioration of the immune
system, thereby leaving everyone
equally vulnerable. The death toll
continued to rise before peaking in
1995
with
around
50,000
deaths.
Even
today, HIV kills thousands; in 2016, it
was the ninth-largest cause of death
for Americans aged 25 to 44, killing
more than 6,000 people. Despite this,
modern America seems to treat HIV
like it isn’t severe, even though the
disease is called an epidemic by the
United Nations, something that likely
won’t
change
until
2030,
at
the
earliest.
How could a disease stay this
deadly for so long in a nation as rich
and powerful as the U.S.? Simply put,
our government allowed it to.
At the outbreak of the epidemic,
it was impossible not to notice that
almost everyone with HIV was a gay
man. It was so apparent that the virus
was originally labeled GRID, gay-
related immune deficiency, by the
medical establishment (though this
often goes unacknowledged because
it subtly supports the rhetoric that
HIV is “God’s punishment” for being
gay) and the “gay plague” by the
general public. It wasn’t until 1983,
when women were diagnosed with
it, that anyone thought it could be
transmitted heterosexually, but this
knowledge went under the radar
because those cases were vastly
outnumbered by those of gay men.
Because it was a “gay plague,”
the government treated it as such.
Homophobia became increasingly
intertwined
with
public
policy
during the election of Ronald Reagan,
putting an end to the post-Stonewall
surge in LGBTQ+ civil rights. In 1982,
Reagan’s press secretary (and others
in the room) openly laughed when
asked whether the White House
was monitoring the disease, saying,
“I don’t have it, do you?” That year,
the death toll would reach 618, a five-
fold increase from the 121 deaths the
previous year. In 1984, Health and
Human Services officially discovered
the virus and promised a vaccine by
1986; the vaccine still doesn’t exist
despite successful proof-of-concept.
A year later, Reagan finally said the
word “AIDS” in public — by this time
the death toll had surpassed 12,000.
If not for the work of gay activists,
even less action would have been
taken. Community leaders formed
health centers like the Gay Men’s
Health Crisis and promoted safe
sex (a practice that even the medical
community was not yet teaching)
as early as 1982. Gay establishments
closed themselves to slow the spread.
As AIDS prevention campaigns
grew, the government suppressed
them. In 1987, Reagan signed into
law a ban on the use of federal funds
for AIDS prevention and education
programs that “promoted” (that is to
say, acknowledged) homosexuality.
Campaigns that were eligible for
funding
disingenuously
claimed
that everyone was at risk, siphoning
resources away from the masses
of dying gay men and toward the
few
heterosexual
HIV-positive
people. In theory, this campaign
could
have
destigmatized
the
virus and fought the “gay plague”
reputation, but in practice, it did the
opposite, as gay men grew even more
disproportionately affected once
resources were diverted into other
communities.
Finally, we come to coronavirus,
and the parallels are frightening. The
response of our current president
isn’t much better than Reagan’s
was. He claims that “the risk to the
American people remains very low.”
Declaring coronavirus as not an
“American” disease but a “Chinese
virus” echoes the rhetoric about HIV
being a “gay” disease and displays
xenophobia.
President
Donald
Trump has put Vice President Mike
Pence in charge of handling
the disease, a man who actively
worsened Indiana’s HIV outbreak
as governor by preventing needle
exchange programs (even his own
party supported them) and cutting
funding for Planned Parenthood, the
only clinic offering HIV tests in the
affected area. Even in the ’80s and
’90s, AIDS activists were protesting
the inaction of a certain New York
City mayor named Rudy Giuliani —
now the President’s attorney. Those
running our government have long
since proven that they cannot, or will
not, properly handle an epidemic, let
alone a pandemic.
However, just as the public was
partially
at
fault
with
HIV,
our
approach
to the coronavirus reflects the
shortcomings
present
during
the
AIDS
epidemic.
Like
HIV,
COVID-19
does
not
affect
everyone
equally;
the
elderly
are
at much higher risk for severe or fatal
cases.
The
rush
to
close
establishments
has prioritized schools and colleges
— in Michigan, every K-12 school is
closed until April 5 — despite the 0.2
percent fatality rate for college-age
people, and those under the age of
nine
not
having
any
recorded
fatalities.
Closing nursing homes has been
discussed less frequently despite the
much greater risk residents face. The
repeated failure of most U.S. nursing
homes to control previous infections
is being all but ignored — less than
10 percent of infection prevention
specialists in American nursing
homes have any sort of training or
certification. Although quarantining
youth is effective at preventing young
carriers from potentially spreading
it to the elderly, we know a certain
demographic is at heightened risk but
fail to focus our resources on helping
those
groups,
favoring
an
“everyone
at
risk” narrative.
Our
country’s
response
to
coronavirus is failing. Most know
this because they are being told so on
the news, but gay Americans know
it from lived experience. And yet,
we are making the same mistakes
and giving those who failed us 40
years ago the power to fail us again.
This has already had a hefty human
price tag. During its first year, 121
people died of HIV in America;
it is mid-March, and COVID-19
has killed at least 108 Americans.
That number will only rise until we
learn to acknowledge what we have
done and continue to do wrong:
F
or as long as I can remember, the
western basin of Lake Erie has
become coated with slick, green
slime at the end of each summer. As one of
the Great Lakes, Lake Erie experiences a
sudden increase in microbial life that festers
into coats of toxic algae that can span over
620 square miles on its surface. Although a
phenomenon of natural contamination, these
algal blooms occur mainly due to increased
agricultural runoff made possible by no-till
farming.
In a recent paper, Dr. Jennifer Blesh,
an assistant professor at the University
of Michigan, addressed the relationships
between agricultural practices and water
quality downstream in the Lake Erie basin.
She and her colleagues explain that soil
health assessments in agriculture are critical
for improving water quality because soil
properties influence water filtration and
nutrient availability, both of which contribute
to overall soil function. Given that there are
methods to assess soil health’s impact on
water quality in smaller water entities, the
University should dedicate more research
toward developing reproducible soil health
indicators that can be implemented to a
regional extent.
As of now, research teams like Blesh’s
utilize regulated modeling to no avail: The
models are insufficient and inconsistent
among ecosystems across the basin. Blesh
and her team detail the faults of the current
modeling systems: “Most modeling studies
in the Lake Erie region were validated with
limited field observations, consider a limited
range of best management practices and lack
data linking different management strategies
to changes in soil health.” This type of
modeling highlights specific issues that can
be solved with efforts by large academic
institutions, an endeavor that the University
should pursue to improve the effectiveness of
the tools used by teams in this important field
research. Furthermore, it’s worth detailing
these specific issues in order to indicate
what the University could resolve with more
allocated resources.
These models pose issues because they
lack the detailed simulation and visualization
of biological processes important to soil
function, such as microbial community
makeup and diversity. They are restricted
because they only evaluate biological
processes of interest on topsoil, leaving the
subsoil unevaluated even though these
same processes occur there. Additionally,
these models are insufficient because they
include oversimplified representations of
macropore flow that are easily manipulated
by agricultural practices when there are
other interactions between processes that
are worth noting. Given that simulation
model development is an ongoing process,
the University should work to adjust these
models using empirical and mechanistic
methods and focus on applying them as a
regulated policy tool.
In improving these models accordingly,
the University could help research teams
consolidate generalizable knowledge on
how agricultural practices affect soil health
and water quality at the regional scale.
Administration may argue it doesn’t make
sense to pursue such efforts to compile
a comprehensive understanding of soil
ecology. In essence, it doesn’t make sense to
develop an all-encompassing evaluation of
a large area that consists of several different
ecosystems with unique needs. While this
rationale could stand for areas with drastic
changes in their landscapes, it’s important
that we don’t ignore the benefits that
comprehensive evaluation could bring for the
various watershed regions of Michigan and
the Midwest. In other words, it’s essential
the University understands how critical this
research in the Great Lakes is in advancing
our understanding of watershed ecosystems
everywhere.
Furthermore, the University should
understand that advanced research efforts
toward soil health and water quality could
create advantages to academia, to Michigan’s
agriculture and to Michigan’s watersheds.
As one of the largest public institutions in
the state and one of the most influential
academic institutions in the world, the
University should allocate more resources,
personnel and attention toward research for
developing comprehensive evaluations at
watershed scales. We need this research for
the improvement of our state and the water
quality of one of the world’s largest freshwater
sources, especially since we have continued
to enable destructive agricultural policy in
Michigan.
Above all, we have a responsibility as a public
research institution to inform the public of the
benefits of imposing different management
practices on soil health and water quality. The
need for public reaffirmation is clear. “Despite
decades of awareness among stakeholders that
eutrophication presents a global sustainability
challenge, minimal progress has been made,
in large part because of social and economic
barriers within the agricultural sector,” writes a
number of authors including Thomas Zimnicki
and Yao Zhang from the American Institute of
Biological Sciences.
4 — Friday, March 20, 2020
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Alanna Berger
Zack Blumberg
Brittany Bowman
Emily Considine
Jess D’Agostino
Jenny Gurung
Cheryn Hong
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Zoe Phillips
Mary Rolfes
Michael Russo
Timothy Spurlin
Miles Stephenson
Joel Weiner
Erin White
ERIN WHITE
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN
The University should invest more in water quality
This has happened to us before
RAY AJEMIAN | COLUMN
Ray Ajemian can be reached at
rajemian@umich.edu.
Kianna Marquez can be reached at
kmarquez@umich.edu.
LEENA GHANNAM | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT LZGHANNA@UMICH.EDU
Read more at MichiganDaily.com