But this is not a series in a news story from an overwhelmed Covid department. The year is 1985 and this is a scene from “It’s a Sin,” a scorching British television miniseries that examines the AIDS crisis over a decade through the lens of those who have experienced it.
But – when it comes to public health response – have governments and politicians learned the lessons of the past?
Marc Thompson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 at age 17 and is now committed to public health in disadvantaged communities in the UK, doesn’t think so. “I have yet to speak to a government minister who is working on the Covid response and who has questioned what we have learned from the HIV and AIDS crisis,” said Thompson.
Even if the comparisons are clear, the context is different. At the height of the AIDS crisis, many victims died alone, not from fear of infection – although it certainly existed – but, as writer Russell T. Davies’s series points out, from shame.
Funerals for Covid-19 victims are so sparsely attended because the coronavirus thrives in social gatherings, regardless of whether they are meant to commemorate or celebrate. Many AIDS victims were buried solely because of the stigma placed on those who contracted the disease.
When one of the gay characters on Davies’ show dies of complications from AIDS, their family gathers to burn clothes, photos, books and memories as a way to get rid of them – and the shame that so often came with the condition. associated – of their lives.
There are also striking contrasts between the crises.
Only when the British government realized that the heterosexual population would be in danger [from AIDS] they have finally accelerated their response to the threat of the crisis, “said Lisa Power, co-founder of Britain’s main LGBT lobby group, Stonewall, and advisor to” It’s A Sin. “
“One of the reasons why Covid has been reacted so quickly is that it affects the general population. It’s much more random than HIV that it infects,” she says. “Everyone has a grandmother. But not everyone had a gay friend then, and not everyone has a gay friend now.”
AIDS response hindered by homophobia
Thompson says the lack of urgency in responding to the AIDS crisis was largely because “the bodies that were most affected were the ones that were not appreciated.”
HIV and AIDS campaigners in the UK say that the response to the coronavirus is significantly more timely than the response to AIDS represents widespread homophobia and a social and political disdain for marginalized groups.
The press, and the tabloid newspapers in particular, essentially said this disease would only affect gays and ‘junkies’ [intravenous drug addicts] and it wasn’t something to worry about because they don’t matter, ”says Power.
For those who have experienced both crises – particularly those who remain part of the fight against the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS, the vast contrast in responses highlighted by ‘It’s a Sin’ is telling – but they are the similarities, and the repetition of serious mistakes of the past that concern them the most.
It’s a strange time to watch “It’s a Sin,” says Thompson. It’s an “emotional, occasionally exciting and a fun one at the same time,” he says. The series – which has received hugely rave reviews since launch in the UK in January – will be streaming on HBO Max in the US starting February 18 (CNN and HBO share the same parent company, WarnerMedia.)
Throughout the series, there is exuberance and euphoria between members of the LGBTQ + community as they scour their late teens and early twenties for raucous house parties and what Thompson describes as ‘dingy little pubs where the dance floor is next to the bar’.
But where unabashed fun and pleasure can be found in “It’s a Sin,” there is also grief as the shadow of AIDS that hangs over the first episode gradually envelops the characters.
Still, like AIDS, Covid-19 has robbed us of collective joy and suddenly forced us to face daily trauma and death – and since the parallels between the two epidemics don’t stop there, there are some important lessons from the HIV – and AIDS activists who had not been taught in the past experience a sense of it seen already.