HIV Scare

A high school in the St. Louis area is having to deal with a HIV scare. The media is reporting that as many as fifty students may have been infected with the AIDS causing virus. I spent a good part of my life as a volunteer EMT. I have taken many training and safety courses that deal with the spread of infectious diseases. And you just do not have a scare like this without something being terribly wrong about the situation.

The HIV virus cannot live outside the human body. Once it receives air it is dead. That leaves only a few ways that the virus can be spread. That is from direct contact through sexual intercourse, infected needles, open wounds contacting each other, and a few others like blood transfusions and infected mothers breast feeding a child. In which none of these should be going on in a school. And they say at least fifty may be infected. Now something does not add up. Either someone is have a whole lot of sex with an outrageous amount of people, or there are a lot of drug parties going on.

Now matter what the cause of the scare is, it really should be looked into further by law enforcement officials. Because this many people should not be exposed to this by accident. I remember a few years ago, the pornography industry was shut down because of a scare like this. That is understandable considering the amount of people they have sex with every day. But they brought it upon themselves.

Are we teaching our children about how to protect themselves? Or are we hoping that someone else will do it for us. There are many things that we need to step back and take a look at. Because I am afraid that America has gotten lazy. We cannot just sit back and hope that things will just run it course. We have to stand up and continue to teach and continue to lead not only our children in the right direction, but lead ourselves in the right direction also. I really hope that nothing comes out of this and that it is just a hoax.