164
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
164 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
49551 readers
279 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Encephalitis is caused by viral infections. Our immune system usually suppresses said viruses, and HIV takes away the ability to suppress them.
This happens with a lot of illnesses... thrush, Tuberculosis, fungal infections. HIV allows a lot of stuff to have far worse impact than it normally would.
That's not quite the same as HIV causing them... Pedantic maybe, but since we're talking about words meaning things... ;)
Encephalitis literally just means "in the brain inflammation".
https://www.etymonline.com/word/encephalitis
This brain inflammation can be caused by many things. Quote from Mayo Clinic:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/encephalitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20356136
It can also be caused by prions. Mad cow disease is aka bovine spongiform encephalitis. I believe the word just indicates cell death in the brain which leaves regions of dead tissue.
True, but in the context of talking about someone's child in my local culture, it raises an eyebrow or two if the other person doesn't associate the two conditions.
I don’t get it. It raises an eyebrow if you don’t link encephalitis and HIV? I’m about 90% sure I must be misunderstanding you...
Or they’re just doubling down on using it incorrectly.
No it's true.
Encephalitis has many causes, yes, but HIV is the one that sticks out. If you go to someone and talk about it, they're going to have the same "assume the worse" or "out of context" mindset as if you were to talk about mononucleosis (to give a distant analogy). Sure, mononucleosis can be caused by several things, such as sharing a toothbrush or having someone cry on you, but everyone associates it with what it's famous for, being spread through liberal usage of intimacy. Same with encephalitis. So when you go to a random neighbor here and say "how is the kid with encephalitis" they're not going to take it well. People here are prudish like that.
You have a very exceptional bubble. Or a false impression.