• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Towleroad Gay News

Gay Blog Towleroad: More than gay news | gay men

  • Travel
  • Sports
  • Law/Justice
  • Celebrities
  • Republicans
  • Madonna
  • Books
  • Men
  • Trans Rights
  • Royals
  • Monkeypox
  • Dexter Origins confirmed with plans for more serial killer spin offs
  • Retired, Single & Sexy! Tom Brady Holds His Hand Over His Private Parts In Nearly Nude Selfie — See Photo
  • Jazz Jennings Admits ‘Nervous’ Remark From Date Left Her Feeling ‘Uncomfortable’ In New Sneak Peek

Coronavirus: Three Lessons from the AIDS Crisis

Laurie Marhoefer, The Conversation March 16, 2020 Leave a Comment

Aids Quilt
The AIDS Memorial Quilt, honoring people who died of AIDS, on display in Washington, D.C. in 2011. NIH/Wikipedia

As my governor closes all the public schools and public libraries here in Seattle, I’m thinking about 1981 – the year when newspapers in New York and Los Angeles reported that a strange new virus was killing healthy young men.

As of March 15, Seattle had recorded 420 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 37 deaths. As a historian of 20th-century queer and trans politics, I know that’s nothing compared to the toll that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, took on our city. But these are early days.

The U.S. made serious mistakes when the HIV virus and AIDS emerged. Those errors cost many lives. But our nation learned a few things, too.

Act fast and think big

HIV is very different from the novel coronavirus, in ways that could have made it easier to slow down. Since HIV is harder to transmit, and its incubation period is much longer, a swift response could have prevented many infections.

But the response was slow. It took health experts decades just to notice HIV. Studies have shown that HIV jumped from animals into humans sometime in the 1920s, and had already killed lots of people by 1981, but doctors thought those patients died of other things.

Even so, once HIV was recognized as a new infectious agent in 1981, fast action and massive investments in research would have saved lives. Instead, government officials sat on their hands. In 1982, White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes turned a reporter’s question about AIDS into a homophobic joke. It took four years to develop a blood test for HIV.

video
play-rounded-fill
Link
typorama 6 copy
Early reports on what came to be known as AIDS incorrectly suggested that it was caused by homosexual sex. In fact, HIV is transmitted by all kinds of unprotected sex, both homosexual and heterosexual, as well as in blood products.

That fatal inaction flowed from the wrong-headed assumption that only some people got AIDS, and that those people didn’t really matter. Instead of major research efforts to develop a test and medications, there were inane suggestions for forced quarantine of gay men and an actual forced quarantine of Haitians.

After a slow start, things improved. By the 1990s, even before the development of today’s magic bullets – antiretroviral drugs, the preventative medication PREP and the post-exposure prophylaxis medication PEP – public health agencies were advocating ways to slow HIV transmission that also protected individuals, such as using condoms, getting tested and communicating with sexual partners. If only they had had those measures in 1982.

Novel coronavirus is already all over the globe too, but public health officials already have ways to prevent transmission. They are hammering home essential actions for slowing transmission: Wash your hands, stay home if you’re sick, cancel large events and restrict your activities if you’re over 60 or have health issues.

A new study currently under review shows people may be most likely to transmit novel coronavirus just after they get it and before they have symptoms. That’s like HIV, too. For the coronavirus, it means “social distancing” is important, even from people who don’t seem sick. Scientists are estimating that social distancing, including canceling big events and closing schools, plus widespread testing, could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

It’s everybody’s disease

In the early years of HIV, discussion focused on “risk groups.” Even public health officials claimed that only gay men, Haitians or Haitian Americans, hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users and sex workers were at risk. Then straight, white, wealthy American women started dying too.

Today some Americans appear to believe that not everyone has to be cautious because not everyone will get seriously sick.

It’s true that older people and those of all ages with underlying health issues are at greater risk, and that pregnant women may also be. But if health care systems become overwhelmed, as has happened in Wuhan and Italy, anyone who needs medical care will be affected. And people who are sick from COVID-19 will do much worse.

video
play-rounded-fill
Link
typorama 6 copy
‘Flattening the curve’ of an outbreak by slowing its transmission rate can prevent health care systems from becoming overwhelmed.

The HIV crisis also showed that the concept of “risk groups” is dangerous. When public health officials must take actions that are invasive and forceful, like quarantine or travel restrictions, they need to be based in real science and implemented transparently, without recycling prejudices against “risk groups.” Otherwise, quite rationally, people assume public health is biased and unscientific, and resist.

In the 1980s, gay activists debated whether to ask city health departments to close bath houses and sex clubs, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control warned that they were spots where the risk of transmission was high because people met there for sex. Some gay activists called for the bath houses to close, to save lives.

But many gay people had the opposite reaction. Amid vitriolic homophobia and stigma around AIDS – people losing their jobs, family members barring gay relatives from their homes, lifetime quarantine for HIV-positive people – shuttering the bath houses sounded to them like a step down a slippery slope toward concentration camps. Gay communities resisted, and bath houses stayed open. In retrospect, to someone who studies gay politics and HIV, it’s shocking that New York City left its bath houses open until 1985.

Today racism has become attached to the novel coronavirus because the first reports of infection came from China. As the World Health Organization has pointed out, referring to it as “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese coronavirus” could lead people to hide their symptoms and avoid seeking health care. That will increase the risk for everyone. It is also misleading and stigmatizing, since it does not matter where the virus jumped from animals into humans, and the virus is not confined to any one country.

Investing in research and public health pays off

It took far too long for the U.S. to make HIV a public health priority, develop lifesaving drugs and deliver them to those who needed them. Partly because of that slow response, nearly 1 million people die of AIDS each year. Even today, not enough people who are HIV-positive have access to drugs.

But there is hope. After antiretroviral therapy for HIV debuted in 1996, and the wealthy world finally took major steps in 2004 to share these miracle drugs with the rest of the world, the story of HIV shows what science and public health can accomplish.

Especially in wealthy countries, substantial research funding and public action have converted AIDS from a devastating epidemic to a manageable chronic disease. And even for people who don’t live in wealthy countries, outcomes are much better than they were. Global deaths from AIDS had been cut by half by 2017.

Here is hope for a response to the novel coronavirus that’s smarter and faster.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]The Conversation

Laurie Marhoefer, Associate Professor of History, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Topics: towleroad More Posts About: AIDS.HIV, coronavirus, Health

Related Posts
  • US marks 1 mn Covid deaths, early epicenter New York seeks to move on
  • Almost three times as many died as a result of COVID than officially reported – WHO
  • People with certain health conditions ‘more likely to end their life’
  • Retired, Single & Sexy! Tom Brady Holds His Hand Over His Private Parts In Nearly Nude Selfie — See Photo

    Retired, Single & Sexy! Tom Brady Holds His Hand Over His Private Parts In Nearly Nude Selfie — See Photo

    Published by OK Magazine mega Tom Brady‘s latest sultry snap has fans drooling. On Monday, February 6, the legendary quarterback took to his Instagram Story to tease his 13.4 million followers with a stripped-down mirror selfie. …Read More »
  • Jazz Jennings Admits ‘Nervous’ Remark From Date Left Her Feeling ‘Uncomfortable’ In New Sneak Peek

    Jazz Jennings Admits ‘Nervous’ Remark From Date Left Her Feeling ‘Uncomfortable’ In New Sneak Peek

    Published by OK Magazine TLC Jazz Jennings has entered the dating pool — which has turned out to be more of a rocky, dating dance. In the sneak peek of the Tuesday, February 6, episode of …Read More »
  • Queering the internet: anonymous online spaces for LGBTQ+ people

    Queering the internet: anonymous online spaces for LGBTQ+ people

    Published by Global Voices A screenshot of Google maps (Jakarta). Composed by Sydney Allen via Canva Global Voices has extensively cataloged the pressures, violence, hate speech, and oppression queer people face all over the world. Whether …Read More »
  • Pro-LGBTQ Christian school forced to close after being ‘bombarded by hate’

    Pro-LGBTQ Christian school forced to close after being ‘bombarded by hate’

    Published by Raw Story A Christian school in Kansas City is being forced to close after its donations almost completely dried up ever since it came out in support of LGBTQ rights. The Kansas City Star …Read More »
Previous Post: « Keri Hilson Spreads Bogus Conspiracy Theory That 5G Networks Cause Coronavirus
Next Post: German Officials Hold Crisis Meeting Over Report of Trump’s Attempt to Gain Exclusive U.S. Rights to Coronavirus Vaccine »

Primary Sidebar

Adjacent News

  • Ivanka Trump ‘Doesn’t Trust’ Donald Trump Jr.’s Fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, Claims Insider: ‘Sees Her As A Desperate Social Climber’

    Ivanka Trump ‘Doesn’t Trust’ Donald Trump Jr.’s Fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, Claims Insider: ‘Sees Her As A Desperate Social Climber’

  • A Secret Weapon in Preventing the Next Pandemic: Fruit Bats

    A Secret Weapon in Preventing the Next Pandemic: Fruit Bats

  • Explainer-Biden’s State of the Union address and what to expect

    Explainer-Biden’s State of the Union address and what to expect

Good Trash: Going to Read It Somewhere, Y'know

  • ‘At Least You Know I’m Singing Live’: Adele FORGETS The Lyrics To Her Award-Winning Song At Las Vegas Residency Before Grammys

    ‘At Least You Know I’m Singing Live’: Adele FORGETS The Lyrics To Her Award-Winning Song At Las Vegas Residency Before Grammys

  • ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director SLAMS Michael Jackson Biopic Starring Late King Of Pop’s Nephew, Claiming It Will ‘Glorify A Pedophile’

    ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director SLAMS Michael Jackson Biopic Starring Late King Of Pop’s Nephew, Claiming It Will ‘Glorify A Pedophile’

  • Sarah Michelle Gellar reveals Sandy Gallin and Dolly Parton’s ‘little known’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer role

    Sarah Michelle Gellar reveals Sandy Gallin and Dolly Parton’s ‘little known’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer role

RSS Partner Links

  • Princess Kate wore stripes in a video for Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week
  • Courtiers have hatched a plan to not invite Duchess Meghan to the Chubbly
  • Chris Brown Apologized To Robert Glasper After His Post-Grammy Loss Tantrum
  • Murray Bartlett On Aging Up For THE LAST OF US + Santos Facing Probe (In A Bad Way) + Lea Michele Opens Up About GROWTH Since GLEE + Her Name Is Barbra, Guys! + MORE! — 6-PACK
  • 24-Year-Old Shawn Mendes Is Rumored To Be Dating His 51-Year Chiropractor
  • Brandi Glanville Allegedly Sexually Assaulting Caroline Manzo Was Why She Got Kicked Off “Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip”
  • Stephanie Hsu & Ashley Park Go For A 'Joy Ride' With Friends

Most Recent

  • Dexter Origins confirmed with plans for more serial killer spin offs

    Dexter Origins confirmed with plans for more serial killer spin offs

  • Retired, Single & Sexy! Tom Brady Holds His Hand Over His Private Parts In Nearly Nude Selfie — See Photo

    Retired, Single & Sexy! Tom Brady Holds His Hand Over His Private Parts In Nearly Nude Selfie — See Photo

  • Jazz Jennings Admits ‘Nervous’ Remark From Date Left Her Feeling ‘Uncomfortable’ In New Sneak Peek

    Jazz Jennings Admits ‘Nervous’ Remark From Date Left Her Feeling ‘Uncomfortable’ In New Sneak Peek

  • Queering the internet: anonymous online spaces for LGBTQ+ people

    Queering the internet: anonymous online spaces for LGBTQ+ people

  • Pro-LGBTQ Christian school forced to close after being ‘bombarded by hate’

    Pro-LGBTQ Christian school forced to close after being ‘bombarded by hate’

  • Afghanistan’s LGBTQ+ may prefer death to life under Taliban

    Afghanistan’s LGBTQ+ may prefer death to life under Taliban

  • Hogwarts Legacy seemingly adds first transgender Harry Potter character

    Hogwarts Legacy seemingly adds first transgender Harry Potter character

  • Grammy Awards: Men’s fashion steals the red carpet in stereotype-shattering style

    Grammy Awards: Men’s fashion steals the red carpet in stereotype-shattering style

Most Commented

Social

Twitter @tlrd | Facebook | Instagram @tlrd

Footer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in

×