Honored to continue this tradition on #WorldAidsDay, remembering the lives lost to HIV/AIDS and supporting those living with the virus across the world. pic.twitter.com/IvYjbYmKj7
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) December 1, 2021
Every year, World AIDS Day is celebrated on December 1. This day is celebrated not only to spread awareness about the disease but also to remind the people and the governments that HIV has not gone away…
This year the theme of the day is “End Inequalities, End AIDS”, highlighting the fact that as much as the virus itself, the social stigma attached with it also greatly affects people.
Most of us can remember when it seemed like the mysterious ‘gay plague’ would be the global pandemic to decimate humanity. Now — in the developed world, at least — it’s a chronic illness to be lived with. Progress made, and with enough effort more progress to come:
Biden marks World AIDS Day by renewing support for worldwide goal of ending the epidemic by 2030 Via @Eugene_Scott https://t.co/j7hxocYmFA
— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) December 1, 2021
… “We can do this,” Biden said at a White House ceremony. “We can eliminate HIV transmission. We can get the epidemic under control here in the United States, in countries around the world. We have the scientific understanding, we have treatments, and we have the tools we need.”
More than 700,000 people have died of AIDS-related illnesses in the country since the epidemic began more than 40 years ago. The number globally tops 36 million people. About 1.2 million people are living with HIV in the United States. The number nears 38 million people worldwide.
The president spoke at the event of the progress made in the fight against AIDS — one he has observed from the earliest days of the illness as a member of Congress.
“I can recall — if you excuse the point of personal privilege — being, I think, in this very room when a senator, who is deceased now, so I don’t want to mention his name, because he can’t defend himself, but standing up and saying, along with another guy named Jerry Falwell, this is God’s punishment, paraphrase God’s punishment,” Biden said. “Finally, think how much has changed.”
Biden said his administration has taken specific steps to address the AIDS crisis in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. He has reestablished the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, which will be at the forefront of developing a strategy to end the AIDS epidemic.
Separately, the Department of Health and Human Services has directed $2.21 billion in Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program funding to HIV primary medical care, medication and essential support services.
And in 2022, the United States will release a new five-year strategy for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
“We’re going to engage in people with lived experience with HIV and ensure that our efforts are appropriate and effective and centered around the needs of the HIV community, not us,” the president added…
There is still misinformation circulating about HIV
Here's what you need to knowhttps://t.co/11SsH0tO2T
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 1, 2021
… While HIV is no longer a death sentence and people with the virus can live normal and healthy lives, some campaigners say perceptions have flipped too far the other way.
“There’s been amazing advances in HIV treatment and prevention tools but this perception that Aids is over, in terms of prevention work – it’s not terribly helpful, and certainly in terms of investing in the search for an HIV cure,” Dr Kamarulzaman says.
UN figures suggest in 2020, about 38 million people worldwide were living with HIV and 700,000 died from Aids-related illnesses, which can be the result of the virus going untreated…
NotMax
Sorry, but even with air quotes, resurrecting the term gay plague is patently offensive.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: It is. I remember the early days when it was called another offensive name, gay cancer
I lost a dear friend to HIV, and my husband only found out he’d lost a cousin to it during a conversation with a stranger who was admiring our house while we were working in the front grade. When he heard our last name he told us he knew someone with that same last name, but Robbie had died a few months ago of AIDS. The family had hushed it up so that Grandpa wouldn’t find out that one of his many namesakes* had died of it.
*You couldn’t turn around in a room full of my husband’s family without bumping into a Robbie, Bob, or Robert; the old coot offered $50 to anyone expecting a baby if they’d name it Robert.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Could’ve been worse. The old coot might have been named Beverly.
;)
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Or Evelyn, like Mr Waugh.
Dan B
Thanks for this post. There are parallells to Covid – the denial and the aversion to science, and differences – people are not shunned or made invisible like Robbie, the cousin of opiejeanne’s husband.
Dan B
@NotMax: It’s the history and I believe Anne Laurie meant to show how the rampant homophobia of that era was cruel and in addition it meant that straight people believed they were not vulnerable. The homophobia allowed AIDS to become one of the worst plagues of the last hundred years.
Silence is Death and homophobia is gasoline on the fire.
Ruckus
@Dan B:
The entire concept was/is bad but I think you also have a point, that not talking about it, making it sound as if it can’t effect people that weren’t gay, calling it gay whatever and taking away the concept that being gay is acceptable was the point of using phrases like that. It’s always the point to blame some group, to make them the point of ridicule and hate, supposedly to boost some other group as better. In politics conservatives seem to always attempt to prove that they are better and always seem to make it far more obvious that they aren’t. And that is also just a plain human trait, because so much of our lives is really out of our control, so attempting false control seems to have to do. It shouldn’t, because it always gets in the way of actual living and being actually human.
sab
I am a straight woman, but I had so many of my friends die of AIDS when I was in my early thirties. My gay high school boyfriend. My closest friend in college who became a doctor…Amazing people. The world would be a better place if they had had full long lives, but they didn’t.
satby
@Dan B: I agree. It was ignored too long because it wasn’t seen as a threat to anyone outside the LGTBI+ community (which had a lot fewer letters in the acronym back then). And as is always true of the shriveled souls of conservatives, they only started to care when it affected their friends and families.
@sab: I lost several friends, both close and casual back then. What a tragedy that we seem to be incapable of learning from history.
Gvg
I didn’t know gays existed until AIDS. I was about the age kids find out about the world when it hit the news so much and I was so shocked that so many parents cut their own children off, let them die alone, that I became supportive of gay rights from that point on. I still cannot understand those so called parents. I think that was also one of the pivotal events that made me anti religious. So many religious leaders taking such a morally reprehensible position disgusted me. The news was full of stories about AIDS for years. It wasn’t long before it wasn’t just gays dying either.
Dan B
Insomniac commenter here (where did I put my superhero outfit?)
All your stories and ideas are interesting. There’s always been tension between people and groups that get comfortable with people and groups outside their own and others that become more entrenched in their fear and loathing. All your stories illuminate the impacts when society is under stress and the alternative, when societies optimize their potential.
Dan B
@Ruckus: The earliest media reports about AIDS called it a cancer in gay men. The first medical journal reports called it G.R.I.D Gay Related Immune Disorder. This was too long for media so, voila, Gay Cancer, and similar. Simpler sometimes has terrible consequences. There were people using the phrase innocently and a huge number who rejoiced that “homosrxuals” were falling ill. The terms that physicians used got morphed in the early chaos and confusion by people with well meaning intent and by people with cruel intent.
bluefoot
I remember when it was the “H disease” – the idea that AIDS only affected “homosexuals,Haitians and hemophiliacs.” People, including Reagan, were happy to ignore AIDS as long as the “right” people were dying. Back then you could be refused medical care (not just for AIDS, any medical care) if you were gay, or evicted just because people were bigoted and fearful. So many people were disowned by their families. Hell, one was considered “suspect” and could be shunned if you were friends with a gay person. The sheer cruelty of allowing people to be outcast that way and to suffer and die with only the support they could get from friends was so appalling. To me, it ripped the mask of so-called compassionate conservatism to show the moral monstrosity underneath.
BellyCat
A cousin of mine was in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 70’s. Then moved to San Francisco. The conservative Catholic family found out he was gay when he was one of the very early people diagnosed with and soon died from AIDS. They finally came to terms with the homosexuality aspect and his partner, a lovely guy, was eventually embraced as family. But it really rocked the entire family. Initially, probably more the gay part than the AIDS part.
Horrific illness back in the day. The discrimination and stigma was indescribable then and too much of it continues even today.
Good on the Bidens for embracing this issue so openly.
delk
36 plus years for me so far. Is it manageable? Sure, just $3,800.00 a month for a prescription, plus an infectious disease doctor in addition to an experienced primary care doctor, four annual blood tests two of which are specific and expensive, and a really good orthopedic team because years of meds have left my bones as brittle as a ninety year old woman.
People won’t even get a free vaccination for Covid so good luck with the managing.
ps Gay cancer or GRID does not offend me in the least. I pretty much outlived every asshole that wished me dead.
stinger
Thank you for this post, Anne Laurie. Lest we forget.
Thank you, Joe and Jill. Great comments here, too.
@Ruckus:
Like the “Gyna plague”, as TFG kept calling it, long after the term COVID was in widespread use. Somebody to blame.
StringOnAStick
@Gvg: Parents cut their kids off for a lot of things. My parents threw my just 16 yo older sister out of the house for getting pregnant. Funny how getting pregnant in high school is the exact same thing our mom had done, but I guess that was ok because she immediately got married. I figured that out when I saw a high school annual and she wasn’t listed next to get twin sister, but was under her (later) first husband’s last name.
My parents cut me off 10 years ago for telling them they needed to start hiring landscaping help because I couldn’t handle driving 4 hours every few months to labor on their overgrown acre because my knees were too shot. They didn’t speak to me for 5years after that, and my mom’s dying was what started any contact with my father again. He hates that I’m not a RW FOX bot like he is so to avoid his temper I now only stay in touch by email. I wasn’t that sad when my mom died, and I won’t be when he died either. I do envy the people here who have good parental relationships but that ship never even launched for me.
eddie blake
this is a dead thread, but i wanted to just say something:
my older brother died of AIDS-related complications. all of his meds ate his liver, then his kidneys died, then he died, drowning in ammonia-poisoning. it was horrible.
he WASN’T a gay man. he was murdered by corporate greed. like pretty much every other hemophiliac in NYS, he was given HIV by his drug company, the one that was SUPPOSED to keep him hale and healthy.
fuck ron johnson. fuck the fascist gop. goddamn those motherfuckers. straight to fucking hell, if they believe that shit. greed killed hundreds of thousands back then, it’s on its way to killing way more today.
FFS.