DaBaby’s Comments And Our Evolving Understanding of HIV
Famed rapper DaBaby stirred up controversy last July when he talked about HIV during his set at the Rolling Loud music festival. While performing his song “For The Night,” he addressed the audience, saying “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, or any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that’ll make you die in two to three weeks, then put your cellphone lighter up…Fellas, if you ain’t sucking d**k in the parking lot, put your cellphone lighter up.”
DaBaby’s offhanded comments are indicative of greater issues: the stigma and misinformation that still surround HIV and AIDS.
HIV is not the ultra-mysterious virus it once was. Over the decades since the virus’s discovery, we have learned a lot about it and how it affects those living with it. When the epidemic first swept the US throughout the 1980s, doctors, scientists, legislators, and the general public knew very little. Unfortunately, in those early days without proper knowledge or treatment, an HIV diagnosis likely meant that the person affected would succumb to the disease in little time.
Homophobia was also running rampant at the time of the epidemic. Some even wildly speculated that the virus was manufactured purposely to eradicate gay people. Dr. Joseph Kulkosky, former researcher with the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said of his time in New York City during the 1980s, “Every once in a while at the bus stops you would see these posted diatribes about how the U.S. government is intentionally curating this virus to purge the country of homosexuals.”
Homophobic remarks about AIDS would also appear in newspapers, on television, and just in everyday conversation.
Marissa Leahy, former disease intervention specialist for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, says that contracting HIV is not all about what someone’s demographics are, but their behaviors:
Today in 2021, while there is no known cure, we know more about HIV than ever before. Scientists and healthcare workers have a better grasp on HIV and how it affects the body, and public knowledge has improved over the years. Still, though, the public could definitely afford to be more informed. HIV is a virus that can affect anyone, and new cases still pop up continuously.
Not everyone may know that by taking medication regularly, people can live many years with HIV. With proper care and upkeep, HIV will not — as DaBaby put it — make you die in two to three weeks.
Dr. Kulkosky says that today’s various enzyme-inhibiting pills that treat the virus can be used in different combinations to help different people’s bodies keep their viral load low, low enough that the virus within their body even becomes untransmissible to others.
Leahy says that taking the daily pills to manage HIV can enable the affected person go about their life healthily. She is disappointed that — despite the breakthroughs made through the years — there is still such a stigma about HIV:
DaBaby’s misinformed comments remind us that there is a lot for the public to learn about the virus.
