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World AIDS Day 2023 to honor lives lost to the disease

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LOS ANGELES – In commemoration of World AIDS Day 2023, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger held a breakfast event themed “Remember and Commit,” serving as a reminder of the global struggle to end HIV-related stigma and sending a message toward working to find a cure for AIDS and end it as a public health threat.

“We all play a part in ending HIV, not just on World AIDS Day, but every day,” Barger said in a statement. “Knowing your HIV status, getting tested, and talking about HIV are important steps we can all take to reduce HIV- related stigma.”

The event was a collaborative effort between Barger’s office, the L.A. County Commission on HIV, VIA Care, City of Pasadena Public Health Department, APLA Health, AMAAD Institute and other organizations. Paul Edmonds, one of only five people in the world to achieve full remission of AIDS, shared his story.

Edmonds was diagnosed in 1988 with AIDS, and lived for more than 30 years with the disease, taking different therapies to control the virus, according to a report from the City of Hope, where he had been receiving treatment. In July 2022, the City of Hope announced Edmonds had gone into remission for acute myeloid leukemia and AIDS as a result of a transplant using stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic condition. This condition gives a “resistance” to AIDS.

“A big reason I want to tell my story is to bring some hope for people with HIV,” Edmonds, 67, of Desert Hot Springs, California, told the City of Hope as part of their “success” story published in April. “And I want to remember all those we lost.”

On Thursday, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation recognizing World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. He encouraged “all units of government, and the American people” to join the HIV community in activities to remember those who have lost their lives to AIDS, and to provide support, dignity and compassion to people with HIV.

“We are within striking distance of eliminating HIV transmission. We have the science. We have the treatments. Most of all, we have each other,” the proclamation reads. “Let us recommit to finishing this fight — together.”

During his first year in office, Biden reestablished the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and launched a National HIV/AIDS Strategy — a roadmap for using community-driven solutions to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. by 2030.

He also requested $850 million from Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative to reduce new HIV cases, fight the stigma that stops many people from getting care, and increase access to pre-exposure prophylaxis — also known as PrEP, a drug that can help prevent the spread of HIV.

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70 comments for "World AIDS Day 2023 to honor lives lost to the disease"

      • LOL…pretty sure what got under your skin. All the times I pointed out that your posts were stupid. Your claims to being smart are pretty hollow and repetitious, so that shows the weakness.

        What happened? Smart kids tease you in school because you only got good grades through hard work? ASVAB scores stick you with some lame program in the marines? Wanted to join Mensa but failed to qualify? What’s the source of your sensitivity there?

      • LOL…I was telling that to the guy who had asked, repeatedly. The guy you didn’t pay any attention to, because he wasn’t me.

        So back at you being stupid. It’s always a relative thing. You aren’t the most stupid. You just aren’t the smartest, so it burns you when someone is smarter and not willing to pretend that they aren’t.

        You can learn though. It might take more effort than it would for me, but you can learn. The trick is that nothing can bother you if you either know it’s not true or don’t care that it is. In this case you need to focus on the ‘don’t care that it is’ part. You would be terribly unhappy living my life, so stop fretting about me being smarter than you. Focus on your materialistic measuring sticks.

        As Calvin Coolidge said: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.”

      • The only one here that hates anyone is you Templer. You’d be better off of you stopped trying to project your problems and just dealt with them.

      • You wanted to “shut my pie hole.” All I ever did was tell you how you could have the chance to do it. All of this grade school recess call out nonsense has been you. And it has been, across the board, stupid.

  2. I never “called you out.” I told you that if you really thought you wanted to “shut my pie hole” there was a way you could go about it. I just don’t want a frustrated, ex marine, probable ammo sexual running around loose. But you went off on this weird “meet at the park” tangent, which is just too freakin’ stupid to even get my head around.

    • Of course I did the same to others. As I’ve said, consistency creates credibility. You didn’t think you were the only keyboard warrior that threatened to “shut my pie hole,” did you?

      Credit to you, the rest ducked out like cowards and you didn’t. You wouldn’t follow any plan that might have really settled things, but you didn’t duck. I believe you are so freakin’ stupid that you might take a swing at me in a public park, damn the torpedoes, get one of us sent to prison. Hard to square that with your claims about how much you have to lose, but in some people stupid will win out.

      • LOL…37 minute, nine post rant. That’s a record.

        Tell me again how I never get under your thin little skin.

      • I’ve been playing chess with a friend in India, not frothing at the mouth in extended rants.

        One thing I do want to correct from your ramblings before your stupidity gets someone into trouble because you act like you know stuff…I did prison time with a LOT of people who believed the same BS about “A mutual fight rarely results in an arrest and is no big deal if there is.” Most of them were doing a lot more time than I was.

      • LOL…I have a way better than 90% success rate, and your “best plan” is apparently “announce premeditation, then commit violent crime in a public park with only one access road.”

      • LOL…if you can’t control your temper enough to keep your language from triggering the filters that’s on you. I guarantee that at two in the morning there is no human moderator dealing with the queue.

      • Moderator: Please don’t allow this. Two men with serious mental health issues going after each other all day and all night.

      • LOL…you can’t even let YOURSELF have the last word. Nine post rant over 40 minutes…uninterrupted.

      • I’ve been giving you credit for showing up at Jackie Robinson Park, but if you think it has six access roads you’ve never been there.

      • Getting caught is a 100% fail, doesn’t matter how many you robbed. You were charged with 4 and plead to 3. So explain too me where the 90% comes in, Mr economics degree.

      • LOL…the banks I gave them as part of the deal were still successful. Thirty some banks, got caught once, had the adventure of a lifetime. I won. Besides that, I have the experience of prison, without which I might have turned out be the same kind of hate filled scum that you turned out to be, since before that we were on very similar paths.

      • I am well aware of your problems with reading comprehension, but that misunderstanding is surprising, even from you.

        I wouldn’t trade what I learned from going to prison doesn’t mean that I ever planned on going to prison. As I said though, without having learned what I learned from going to prison I might have turned out a lot like you…and avoiding that makes the handful of years a small price to pay.

      • Said every guy ever who wound up doing a manslaughter bit after a bar fight went bad. But you carry on clown, since you constantly claim to know more about crime and criminals than anyone else around here knows.

      • One we were never on similar paths. Two it’s you that can’t comprehend, 365 days equivalent in dollars is 72k at the time of your sentencing. So basically you robbed banks to go to prison. But I guess in your strange strange mind you have too make yourself feel it was worth it. Did you know that despite feeling like you did something glorious. Regardless of how you robbed those banks, bank robbery is by definition a heinous crime.

      • LOL…interesting claim, saying that we were never on similar paths. How would you know that? I know exactly where the path I was on leads because my brother never strayed from it, and he is the same kind of frustrated hate filled sad sack that you are.

      • It’s you that doesn’t know anything about me. It’s very likely you’re brother has a reason too be hate filled judging by 99% of your replies to random people. Your comments not so bad. But people don’t need to know how traffic lights work and function. And I don’t hate anybody, hate is a bad thing. I just don’t like you.

      • See, one of the things I learned from prison is how important it is to be internally consistent. It’s been less than 24 hours since you posted that you hate me, and here you are trying to tell yourself, and us, that you don’t.

        So, I may or may not know your ‘real’ name, like you know mine, but I do know that you lack internal consistency, which is a much bigger thing to know.

      • Templer says

        December 13, 2023 at 9:41 pm

        But timmy is right about one thing I do hate him

      • As a successful violent criminal I can say, unequivocally, that the accessibility of the crime scene is one of the most important considerations.

      • LOL…standard clown processing…you’ve made up your mind with no facts whatever, and now if you somehow got hold if someone that will tell you what you want to hear you’ll believe every word that they say.

        And you wonder why I couldn’t give a rat’s tail what you think of me or say about me.

      • “I’m thoroughly convinced you probably snaked your parents estate out from under your brother. Love to here his side”

        THIS^^^

        No wonder he’s got his head on a swivel.

      • LOL…there ya go Templer. I’m sure you will find that to be “totally credible” verification of what you so desperately want to believe.

      • I don’t have run out of exit at all no reason to. You watch too many movies. Manslaughter no! One you could never even touch me, but I’ll touch you, won’t tap you above the shoulders. As long as I don’t chip your sissy boy teeth or a break bone no big deal just some real good bruising and shear exhaustion as you lay there looking up at the contrails.

      • Rant started at 2:18…probably just got home from the bar. Alcoholism is rampant in the military, and a lot of vets never get past it, sadly.

        • Lily please I don’t drink or smoke, very good neighbor. Family man and 42 employees, 4 of my employees have been with me for over 35yrs. Tim here has robbed 30 banks in his thirties hardly anybody to pass judgment on persons character.

      • Not unhinged at all very calm in the worst of situations and a very stable family man. 37 year marriage 3 kids and 3 grandchildren. Just don’t like timmy.

    • I think it’s hilarious that in your desperate effort to play the ‘ur gay, hur hur hur’ card you chose a one off screen name referencing the guy who contributed the most to waking up heterosexuals to the fact that they were also at risk.

      Using a one off screen name is cowardly, so you probably aren’t Templer, but you are clearly no smarter.

      • This is how you respond to folks that are clearly honoring you, and your journey…

        Wow, lighten up

        • Trolls that pretend they aren’t trolling are weak. If you are gonna troll don’t deny it, be proud of your work. Admittedly, you don’t seem very good at it, but still.

          • No worries, I don’t. This is just the usual elementary school playground level trolling that the people who are obsessed with me are prone to do.

      • There you go again referencing me when i wasn’t even on this thread. But yet you call me the one obsessed. Coo coo for coco pops you are cell rug.

      • You’re the one that’s cowardly you’re not that accessible despite playing toughguy here. And when invited you just babbled on. You called me out now show Everett Martin Park set the time timmy.

        • LOL…do you have any idea how moronic it would be to commit violent crimes at a place and time that you arrange on a public forum, you buffoon? In a park, no less? I have never encountered a keyboard warrior as stupid as you, and I’ve been doing this a loooooong time.

          If you want to commit assault, and I assume you want to use a deadly weapon, you need some instruction before you wind up in jail and your super cool house winds up for sale instead of on the next episode of Cribs. Since I have a success rate of over 90% when it comes to committing violent crimes without involving law enforcement I could really help you out here.

        • LOL…you are so stupid. If you are gonna premeditate a violent crime, pro tip: don’t do it on a public message board.

          Sigh, that isn’t a pro tip. It shouldn’t take a pro. You might be the only person on the entire internet that is too stupid to have figured that out for yourself.

          • LOL…what happened to the big hero marine that “doesn’t play” and was all set to “shut my piehole” for me? Now you are gonna pretend you just wanna meet in the park to shake my hand?

            Of course you operate in such quaking terror of the law that we both know you are all talk, even when you talk about committing petty vandalism. But still, consistency builds credibility, lack of it is just buffoonery.

          • It’s so hilarious watching Templer try, try, try again to get to me with some sort of “ur gay, hur hur hur” playground insult, or talk about prison which he CLEARLY knows not one thing about. I mean, lames around here, though none as lame as him, have been trying that for YEARS.

            Come up with something of your own, buffoon. Or better, just give it up and quit…with or without stroking out. Makes no difference to me, and in the long run nobody else either.

          • LOL…boxing? Sorry dude, I only hit people when I intend to hurt them. Sport fighting is not my thing.

          • careful you two, karen err lily the beta might be scurrred and cry for a censoring mod to save her.. CLOWN LADY. If the banter scares you dummy…LEAVE.

  5. ENDLESS STUPIDITY –

    ENDLESS LUNCHEONS –

    MEANINGLESS PROCLAMATIONS –

    THE REAL PROBLEMS ?

    NEVER MIND –

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