Human Writes: Are you panicking yet?

A bushfire burning on a property in Balmoral, 150km south-west of Sydney, New South Wales. A state of emergency was declared on Dec 19 in Australia's most populated region, as a record heat wave fanned unprecedented bushfires. — AFP

There was a time when AIDS was treated like a joke. In the early days of the epidemic, the US President’s then press secretary, Larry Speakes, laughed about it in press conferences. It took former US President Ronald Reagan five years to mention it publicly.

There was plenty of denial and ignorance too in Malaysia in the early 1990s. I recall one minister once refusing to discuss it. As a rookie reporter, I felt compelled to cover the issue.