Corona Daily 429: Living with a Pandemic

Two months of pandemic make it easier for the world to understand the life of many gay people. Frequent HIV testing is second nature to them. Forty years since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, no vaccine or definite cure has been found. Gay men determine the frequency of blood testing based on their sexual practices. But the days, hours, minutes before the result is a nightmare every time.

Gays are comfortable about knowing their HIV status and letting the partner know about it. In Gay language, not knowing the status means converting uncertainty into risk. Recently, immunity passports have been proposed as a way to segregate Covid-19 infected people from others. This may be done by way of a certificate on your smartphone. Straight people in Germany, UK and Brazil expressed shock at the concept, comparing it to Fascism or Nazism. But Gays supported the idea, because they are used to disclosing private health information to others.

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Talk about AIDS began in the early 1980s. It was transmitted by primates, perhaps chimpanzees, to humans. The AIDS pandemic didn’t shock the world the way the current pandemic does. Primarily because initially it was stigmatized as affecting only homosexuals. This was not true. Though the rock star Freddie Mercury was gay, Arthur Ashe, the tennis champ, was not. He got HIV through blood transfusion during an operation.

AIDS resulted in a slow, subtle but permanent behavioural change. Before AIDS, a single syringe could be used for several patients. Then blood donors made sure the syringe was disposable. In India, where trust in immunity and God is more important than hygiene, customers in barber shops started demanding fresh razor blades. Worldwide, the sale of condoms skyrocketed. Earlier the condom was used mainly for contraception. Multiple partners, some of them casual, some of them paid, meant the risk of HIV transmission existed in each sexual encounter. The world became more careful, if not more moral, following AIDS. It is said that the risk of getting HIV is reduced by 85% by the use of a condom. It was a condom for that pandemic; it is a mask for this one.

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Currently some 40 million people, including 2 million children (below 15) are living with AIDS. (Many African girls are infected as a result of sexual violence). At least 34 million have died. In the 1980s/90s, there was a horrible period of 15 years of unmitigated death, with absolutely no treatment. Although some drugs are available now 800,000 people died in 2018 alone.

AIDS had given rise to xenophobia, racism and homophobia. For 22 years, 1987-2010, USA had banned entry to all non-citizens with HIV. (Though in the 1980s, USA itself had the highest number of HIV infected people).

With the Coronavirus, some Chinese Americans have been attacked, and all Chinese airlines have been banned from flying to the US.

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The HIV virus and the novel Coronavirus are different in terms of transmission and mutation. We must hope their trajectories and life expectancies are different as well. The HIV/AIDS raises an uncomfortable question. Why has mankind failed to produce a vaccine for forty years? What makes us think we will achieve it quickly for Covid-19?   

Perhaps AIDS can teach us how to coexist with a virus.  

Ravi