Examining and Comparing the U.S. response to AIDS and Covid-19 Mickey Z.

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July 2, 1986 - A protest at the Federal Building in Los Angeles. (Photo credit: Los Angeles Public Library)

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

July 9, 2020

“What we have seen exposed as a result of this pandemic is how dangerous our health care system is because it is a business.” (Masha Gesson)

“One of the things that happens in America is that, when we have a cataclysm, it reveals fissures in society that have long been here.” (Sarah Schulman)

There are many obvious differences between the AIDS pandemic and the Covid-19 pandemic. However, similarities exist when perusing the response (or lack thereof), e.g:

--Federal leadership choosing denial and defiance
--Medical male-practice
--Certain groups of Americans showing indifference and even hatred toward other groups of Americans
--Misinformation, propaganda, sensationalizing, and what we now call “clickbait”

“One of the things that happen in America is that, when we have a cataclysm, it reveals fissures in society that have long been here,” states Sarah Schulman, an AIDS historian, writer, and professor at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York.

“In the 1980s,” recalls epidemiologist, Gregg Gonsalves, “we had a president who ignored the AIDS epidemic for most of his presidency -- didn’t mention AIDS until the seventh year of his terms. (Note: by that point, at least 12,000 Americans had died.) That malign neglect, which for President Reagan was probably based on homophobia and racism and fear of people who use drugs, is a very specific kind of malevolence and incompetence.”

(more)

https://worldnewstrust.com/examining-the-u-s-response-to-aids-and-covid-19-mickey-z