I'm reading How To Survive a Plague

About the AIDS epidemic.
It’s horrifying, heartbreaking and fascinating.

Disease, discrimination, society, government, the media - all huge players just like many issues today. 

As always, humbling.

What has struck me in this moment to stop reading and write, is that two years in they still didn’t know if it was sexually transmitted. The doctors, who had it themselves, and researched it exclusively knew, but it wasn’t official and it wasn’t yet common knowledge.

I hate to always bring things back to Lyme, but that’s where my body lives. I’m reminded of an infectious disease specialist I met with who said, “can you imagine if all these people with positive tests from Armin labs, actually had Lyme disease??” (My first thought was “how many people is this lady refusing to see/treat??”. My referral to infectious disease was cancelled because they don’t “see Lyme patients” anymore).

This imaginary scenario she’s referring to, is reality. They do all have it, in varying degrees. Because what is not yet official, is that the bacteria that causes Lyme is sexually transmitted. It’s been proven here.

While we can get a Covid-19 Rapid Test from any drug store, the ability to rapid test Lyme, or even adequately test for Lyme has always been a controversial and problematic issue. I wonder if their hesitancy to create a rapid test is the rise in cases, (current testing is so flawed, some studies think it only catches 50% of Lyme cases) is for fear of lawsuits. 

Anyway, nothing about disease in the modern world is as cut and dry as I used to believe. It's all dependent on the current science, politics play a huge role, professionals can't always be trusted (which was an eye-opening part of this book as well) and sometimes it's the activists and the patients themselves that create the systems that make the change. And historically, all of this needs to be documented.