Some blunt words from the US’s new envoy on HIV and AIDS, Anthony Fauci, who says:
“For every one person that you put in [antiretroviral] therapy, six new people get infected. So we’re losing that game, the numbers game.”
How refreshing to see a leading global issue ambassador being blunt about the central numbers, rather than spinning the usual rubbish about ‘steps in the right direction’, ‘packages of measures’ and what have you. Would that we saw more of this on climate change, where the linguistic swamp is probably worse than any other issue. Time for a quick hit of George Orwell for a rainy Monday morning, from Politics and the English Language:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age, there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics”. All issues are political issues.”
