Here's Why You Can't Compare HIV to COVID-19
Written By Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri
An epidemic is defined as “an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time” ('Pandemic' vs 'Epidemic', 2020). A pandemic is defined as “an outbreak that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.” An epidemic is a type of pandemic.
We are in the midst of a COVID-19 (or “Coronavirus”) pandemic, which has swept the entire world since an outbreak that occurred late February/early March this year. This pandemic, and how it essentially brought life as we knew it to a halt, has been compared to the early HIV epidemic/current pandemic in terms of social impact and rippling effects. The two may share some similarities, but when you look beyond the similarities, from the history to the treatment and assessment of them both, we get the true picture of just how different they are.
The majority of the world has never experienced a pandemic the magnitude of COVID-19. COVID-19, a respiratory illness, was first detected in the Hubei province of Wuhan, China, in late December, 2019. Flu-like symptoms included fever and cough. The most important and distinctive symptom was difficulty breathing. Because the virus could easily be spread person to person (through respiratory droplets resulting from a cough or sneeze), it exploded at the end of February 2020, creating a global crisis and pandemic. As I write this in May of 2020, the current amount of confirmed worldwide cases is at 4.13 million, with a total of 283,000 deaths. The US alone has a confirmed 1.36 million cases and nearly 81,000 deaths. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the global economy to come to a halt in many instances: flight and travel have halted in many countries as countries quarantine themselves to try to avoid a viral peak in the pandemic. Even though the virus has yet to officially peaked within the US, we are still attempting to “reopen” the country in order to reverse the high unemployment, social anxiety, and continued strain that the quarantine placed on our consumer-based capitalist economy.
HIV’s history spans much further back, dating back as far as the 1920s. HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is said to have originated in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, around 1920. HIV was thought to have crossed species from chimpanzees to humans through bushmeat trading and hunting of chimpanzees, causing the blood of infected animals to get into the cuts and wounds of humans. Sporadic cases of HIV and AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) was documented prior to 1970. Before scientists were able to properly identify AIDS and its root cause, HIV, the disease presented with other immunodeficiency conditions such as PCP (Pneumocystic Jirovecii Pneumonia) and KS (Karposi Sarcoma) (Nall, 2018). The current epidemic of the virus started in the mid-to-late 1970s.
Prior to 1980, the number of those infected with HIV or who had developed HIV was unknown. By the end of 1981, there were close to 300 cases of severe immune deficiency among gay men. Among them, nearly half died. In June, 1982, GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) was suggested to be the cause of immune deficiency among Southern California gay men. Later that year, in September, the Center for Disease Control used the term AIDS for the first time. Although the disease was thought to only be among gay men, in January of 1983, AIDS was reported among the female partners of men who had the disease, suggesting it was passed on via heterosexual sex (HISTORY OF HIV AND AIDS OVERVIEW, 2019).
Since the beginning of the HIV and AIDS epidemic, nearly 75 million people have been infected with the virus, with 32 million dying as a result of AIDS-related illnesses.
With the high infection and mortality rates, as well as the way both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 have essentially changed the social landscape, how do they both differ?
Pose Season 2 re-enacted a “die-in,” which was one way that activists protested against the lack of government funding for HIV research.
Very early on, HIV and AIDS was branded as the “gay disease”. Even though the first case of HIV in the US presented in a Midwest teenager in 1968, it was always billed as a “gay disease” derived from homosexual sex; regardless of how people contracted it. Because of the anti-LGBT movement, the US wrote off HIV and AIDS as a death sentence for the queer community. With COVID-19, because it is affecting the cisgender-heterosexual population (families, kids, etc.), the world greeted the pandemic with more of a sense of urgency. There was more of a collective social effort to fight the virus, find a cure, and to keep the public safe. Decades later, while there has been some progress made with medication and social advocacy surrounding it, HIV and AIDS is still a global pandemic. Because there is still a stigma attached to these diseases, deaths and infection rates remain high. In 2018, 1.7 million people had been newly infected with HIV, while 770,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide (Global HIV & AIDS statistics — 2019 fact sheet, 2020). Just like COVID-19, HIV/AIDS infection and deaths are most severe in marginalized communities of color (especially poor, black communities) often forgotten about.
COVID-19 is a very serious and very real pandemic currently affecting the world at the moment. But to say that COVID-19 and the HIV/AIDS epidemic are one in the same is completely ignoring the length and ways that our society chose to ignore and stigmatize HIV/AIDS. Tens of millions of lives have been lost to HIV/AIDS. Nearly a whole generation of the LGBT community was wiped out. The government silently sat back and watched HIV/AIDS ravage the queer community; not just with their silence, but with their banning of AIDS-related funding for anything that they felt “promoted” homosexuality (Geiling, 2013). Fearmongering federally-funded campaigns and misinformation regarding basic AIDS also helped contribute to the rapid rates of infection and death. As the AIDS-related death total continued to rise, government officials laughed, on record, and continued to openly call it the “gay plague”. Even as there is a race currently to cure COVID-19 and increase testing worldwide, AIDS testing was slow coming from our government, with a vaccine promised in 1986 that never materialized.
When looking at the present pandemic and comparing it to those of the past, it is crucial to examine it with an intersectional, historic lens.
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Bibliography
Geiling, N. (2013, December 4). The Confusing and At-Times Counterproductive 1980s Response to the AIDS Epidemic. Retrieved from Smithsonian Magazine : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-confusing-and-at-times-counterproductive-1980s-response-to-the-aids-epidemic-180948611/
Global HIV & AIDS statistics — 2019 fact sheet. (2020). Retrieved from UN AIDS: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
HISTORY OF HIV AND AIDS OVERVIEW. (2019, October 10). Retrieved from Avert: https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
Nall, R. (2018, January 29). The History of HIV and AIDS in the United States. Retrieved from Healthline: https://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/history
'Pandemic' vs 'Epidemic'. (2020). Retrieved from Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/epidemic-vs-pandemic-difference