I really hate when people compare Covid to AIDS. Firstly, it's hugely inaccurate on many many levels and it's minimizing and appropriating the experiences and suffering of others. Secondly, it usually reveals their complete ignorance of what it was like, both in terms of the activism and also just how people reacted individually and also as community. One thing that people who constantly compare Covid to AIDS very clearly don't understand or know is that people responded to it very differently, both those who thought they weren't at risk and those of us who knew we were. Some people, quite a few actually, did just go "fuck it, I've got one life and I'm going to live it hard and large now." We can talk about the complexities of it all but I am here to tell you that it wasn't some Utopian time when everyone was protecting each other and being cautious, and that lots of people didn't take it seriously back then either. So please stop trying to compare Covid to AIDS for dramatic affect, it's ahistorical and it's no more scientifically accurate than someone saying "Covid is just the flu" either.
@fifilamoura I do agree...
The only similarities I see in terms of #Covid aka. #SARS2 is that like with #AIDS, governments decided to individualize the problem instead of taking it serious because it doesn't harm the key supporters to power.
It was only when rich white heterocisbinary men caught AIDS that we saw any global action...
OFC #COVID19 is way easier to transmit and unlike AIDS isn't 100% lethal over years or decades [tho that's the state of data as of 01/2024] and people do recover.
@kkarhan@fifilamoura not everyone recovers. Only most people recover. Many people are left with permanent disability, or symptoms that eventually kill them. The other similarity is that they both damage the immune system (to different extents, and with different treatment responses). They’re not the same at all.
@hughrawlinson Sure, I'm not discounting that viruses can be debilitating (my aunt has ME/CF, likely due to a viral infection many decades ago) and I also have autoimmune disorders (and both my parents are doctors, along with this not being my first rodeo with a deadly pandemic, just to inform you about my perspective on this). The realty is that not everyone recovers from the flu or other viruses either (post viral syndrome is generally what it's referred to as). This is the nature of viruses, they are often persistent and can have long tails and consequences for the immune system. Now, I'm not saying this to minimize how terrible post viral syndrome is at all or to say that we shouldn't try to be safer when and where we can, what I'm saying is that comparing it to AIDS is opportunistic, often paints a very inaccurate picture of what the AIDS pandemic was actually like for those of us who experienced it intimately and is actually an act of erasure and appropriation. @kkarhan
but almost every single person I meeet - family, friends, coworkers - doesn't want to hear about covid; they would rather live normally and get it 1 or 2x a year then wear a mask
they may be making a bad choice, but it is clear that this is a choice people have made
@kkarhan AIDS hit everyone at once, nobody cared about White gay men dying either because they were gay and also deserved it. That's why rich White men and a lot of gay men in general were all in the closet back then (the push for Gay marriage was directly related to AIDS end of life care issues, it was a very different time to be queer). The narrative at the time was that it was God's punishment for homosexuality. What changed things was a combination of Act Up becoming impossible to ignore AND the families of rich White gay men getting involved out of love for their sons and brothers both pushing for research to be funded and raising money for research AND the medical community getting over their fear/refusal to treat AIDS patients.
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