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Purpose
There are a lot of similarities between the AIDS pandemic and the current COVID-19 Pandemic. Each disease started in one group, homosexual communities for AIDS and those in China for COVID-19. Because of this, gay people and Asians have been subject to discrimination, so I wanted to highlight how the AIDS pandemic has progressed, because ultimately, people can learn from these actions and apply them to the current pandemic at hand. -
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HIV/AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) affects the way that one's body can fight infections and causes Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV originally appeared in homosexual populations and people who shared needles as HIV spread through bodily fluids, but soon cases in heterosexual couples and babies caused this epidemic to turn into a worldwide pandemic. Currently, there is no vaccine or cure for HIV, but the prognosis for this disease has lengthened. -
Gay Cancer
At the start of the AIDS Epidemic, people were uninformed and ignorant about how HIV spread, but it was known that mainly the LGBT community and those who shared needles were affected by this new disease. Newspapers all over the country began printing these homophobic titles calling HIV the "Gay Disease" or the "Gay Cancer," and these ignorant and abrasive headlines mirror Donald Trump when he called COVID-19 the "China Virus." -
Gay Disease
This image is another example of the homophobic news articles printed during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. -
TIME Magazine: July 4, 1983
People were still relatively uninformed about AIDS and HIV, so scientists worked to understand this strange disease. Breakthroughs were small and scattered, and the prognosis for AIDS during this time was very poor as "for the growing number of patients, primarily gay men in their 20s with the virus, [getting AIDS was] a death sentence." -
Protest Against Discrimination
As AIDS spread throughout the world, protests about the disease spread throughout the world as people began to combat discrimination and homophobia as AIDS itself is a disease that just so happened to appear first in homosexual communities. In May 7, 1988, protests in front of the Georgia State Capitol were staged, and this image from the protest states that "AIDS does not discriminate." -
HIV Care Grant Program
The United States Health Resources & Services Administration put into place the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. This program "funds grants to states, cities, counties, and local community-based organizations to provide care and treatment services to people with HIV to improve health outcomes and reduce HIV transmission among hard-to-reach populations," (HRSA) and this program has helped those affected with AIDS to have a good prognosis. This snippit is from 1996, and it lists grants from states. -
TIME Magazine: December 30, 1996
TIME Magazine dedicated their Man of the Year cover to Dr. David Ho, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University and researcher of HIV/AIDS whose contributions to HIV research helped the prognosis of AIDS become better. -
Red Ribbon, White House
December 1st is World AIDS Day, the first ever global health day founded in 1988. The point of World AIDS Day is "to raise money, increase awareness, fight prejudice and improve education" as prejudice towards the LGBT community and lack of awareness on how HIV is spread is still rampant in our world. On World AIDS Day in 2008, the Bush administration put up a red ribbon in front of the White House out of solidarity. -