If it had not been for Magic’s announcement, I do not know how long it would have taken this nation to openly confront and discuss HIV\/AIDS as a national problem …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If it had not been for Magic’s announcement, I do not know how long it would have taken this nation to openly confront and discuss HIV\/AIDS as a national problem, not just a “gay problem.” My best guess is that it would have taken years and, without a smiling public face to identify with this disease, would have been a much more difficult, ignorant, hate-filled process (and there was plenty of hate and discrimination to go around as it was).<\/p>\n
If there can be a positive takeaway from this turn of events, it is the fact that Magic forced us to look at this disease in a different light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If there can be a positive takeaway from this turn of events, it is the fact that Magic forced us to look at this disease in a different light. No longer could people say with impunity that HIV\/AIDS was only a problem in the gay community, among intravenous drug users, or in other “darker” areas of our society. America was forced to acknowledge that this was a major public health crisis that needed to be addressed ASAP.<\/p>\n
At the time, contracting AIDS was seen as a death sentence. The fact that Magic Johnson is still with us 25 years later (and, by all accounts, as healthy as someone with HIV can be) is testament to the progress we have made, both medically and socially.<\/p>\n
Looking back on that Thursday a quarter-century ago, it’s clear that\u00a0we all lost a bit of our innocence. I know it changed the way I viewed the world.\u00a0But we also took the\u00a0very important step of realizing what AIDS was, rather than what it was not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the first things I saw on the morning news today was a look back on Nov. 7, 1991,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Innocence Lost: 25 Years Since Magic's Announcement Shocked The World - Inside the Mind of Eric Kuznacic<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n