Vox Sentences: The US has a full-blown case of refugee panic

America's refugee panic has taken leave of facts; Charlie Sheen has an undetectable level of HIV in his blood; France wants the US and Russia to buddy up against ISIS.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Panic! at the Refugee Processing Center

(Carl Court/Getty Image)

• The following are things that have been said about Syrian refugees in the past few days:

• 1. That it would be more "humanitarian" to keep them at home rather than letting them come to the US.

  [Rep. Cynthia Lummis via Twitter / John Bresnahan]

• 2. That they are culturally incapable of integrating into the United States — not least because of the weather.

  [BuzzFeed / Andrew Kaczynski]

• 3. That one Syrian refugee, who has moved from his original resettlement in Louisiana and whose whereabouts aren't currently known by the agency that initially resettled him, must be "headed towards DC" (which was threatened in a recent video purported to be from ISIS).

  [Sen. David Vitter via The Hayride / Chris Nakamoto]

• 4. That President Obama is letting 100,000 Syrian refugees into the US at once via executive order.

  [Ben Carson via The Hill / Jonathan Swan]

• 5. That Obama is only sending refugees to Republican states — implying that the president doesn't care if terrorism happens to Republicans.

  [Donald Trump via Politico / Eliza Collins]

• This is what Syrians in the US are hearing the US thinks of them. That impression will only get more powerful if GOP governors do use their power to punish refugees: They can't bar them, but they can make it harder for them to learn English and get job training.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• This is what Syrian refugees abroad are hearing the US thinks of them. That reinforces an impression that Islam and the West are irreconcilable antagonists — which is ISIS's chief talking point to the Muslim world.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The public has always been prone to refugee panic. The Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor digs up polls about Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, and they are horrible.

  [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

The age of undetectable HIV

(Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

• Charlie Sheen announced that he has been living with HIV for the past four years.

  [Today Show / Matt Lauer]

• Sheen and his doctor explained that the amount of HIV virus in Sheen's blood, thanks to treatment, is "undetectable." That means it's highly unlikely to be passed on to sexual partners.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• This is mostly a big deal because it isn't. When Magic Johnson announced he had HIV in 1991, the public took it as a death sentence.

  [PBS / Sarah Moughty]

• But in the 1990s, as this erudite (and long) but readable article from a researcher explains, HIV became not curable but treatable. It became a chronic disease.

  [Nature Medicine / Richard J. Wurtman]

• This isn't to say that infection has been curbed. HIV infection is still on the rise among gay and bisexual men in the US.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• And those living with HIV still have to deal with stigma from their peers.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• In the wake of the Sheen news, Mic published its style guide for talking about HIV and people with it. If you care about calling people by the terms they call themselves, you should check it out.

  [Mic / Kaitlyn Jakola and Mathew Rodriguez]

A "Grand Coalition"

(Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)

• French President François Hollande is trying to get the US and Russia together for (in his words) a "grand coalition" to defeat ISIS once and for all.

  [Wall Street Journal / Yaroslav Trofimov]

• He's also asking the European Union for security aid — an unprecedented move. But his real hope lies with the superpowers, and particularly Russia — with whom France bombed a bunch of ISIS sites today.

  [AP]

• President Obama, for his part, is loath to commit ground troops.

  [New York Times / Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker]

• Russia is more eager, especially now that it has officially found that the airliner that went down a few weeks ago was the work of ISIS — giving it casus belli.

  [New York Times / Neil MacFarquhar]

• That puts Vladimir Putin — just recently a pariah in Europe for his treatment of Ukraine — in the position of white knight.

  [Wall Street Journal / Nathan Hodge]

• But as he rides in, it's worth remembering that when Russia started bombing in Syria last month, it wasn't bombing ISIS at all.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

MISCELLANEOUS

Overstock.com has $10 million in gold and silver buried in secret locations in Utah. [BuzzFeed / Matthew Zeitlin]

• The first lesbian character on TV appeared in 1961. She was a serial killer who used a sniper rifle to kill girls on dates with boys.

  [Autostraddle / Riese]

• Stoicism dates back to Greek antiquity, but shares many principles with current psychotherapy best practices.

  [Aeon / Lary Wallace]

• The year 2000, as envisioned by French artists in 1899.

  [Slate / Kristin Hohenadel]

• Bibliotherapy: like therapy, but fueled by the extraordinary power of the WRITTEN WORD.

  [New Yorker / Ceridwen Dovey]

VERBATIM

"In 2014, black children aged 6 to 11 saw 64% more snack food ads on TV than white children, and black teens viewed more than twice as many ads as white teens." [Fusion / Rob Wile]

• "Jewish refugees should not be admitted to the United States in great numbers, a large majority of college youths in this country believes, according to the first national poll of the Student Opinion Surveys of America."

  [The Crimson, 1938]

• "What if the great apes had asked whether they should evolve into Homo sapiens — pros and cons — and they had listed, on the pro side, ‘Oh, we could have a lot of bananas if we became human’? Well, we can have unlimited bananas now, but there is more to the human condition than that."

  [Nick Bostrom to New Yorker / Raffi Khatchadourian]

• "Contemporary R&B would not glower at us from beneath a cloud of discontent and painkillers if not for 808s & Heartbreak."

  [Pitchfork / Jayson Greene]

• "That day, like every day, you could hear the train from most of the classrooms, passing every 20 minutes or so. That day, one student later told me, the warning whistle seemed like the cannon that goes off in The Hunger Games every time a kid dies."

  [The Atlantic / Hanna Rosin]

WATCH THIS

The Paris attack: How the world is responding [YouTube / Joss Fong and Carlos Waters]

(Vox/Joss Fong and Carlos Waters)

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