Dispatch From a Prior Pandemic: HIV Meets COVID-19
My personal account of what we’ve learned — and haven’t — from HIV as we go through the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the mid-1980’s I lived on Castro Street in the fabulously gay hub of San Francisco. At the time, it was also an epicenter of the then new mysterious disease that was wreaking havoc on gay men: HIV, the virus that if left untreated can lead to AIDS.
Today, I live in New York City–Brooklyn to be specific–and sirens are a regular soundtrack to my life. I can distinguish the honks of a fire truck from the woot-woot of a squad car from the more traditional wail of an ambulance.
As we’ve been living under stay-at-home rules, however, the sirens are entering my psyche in a very different way. Those thirty-five year old warnings haunt me, day and night.
In San Francisco, all those decades ago, when we heard an ambulance in the Castro, it was assumed that inside was a patient with HIV, perhaps already with AIDS, who had a grim prognosis. As in all crises, dark humor crept in to keep some vague sense of normalcy, and my roommates and I would look at each other and say something like, “Yard sale on Saturday!” It was off-color, to be sure, but that was the reality. People were dying from an invisible virus.
While I was well aware of the unfolding epidemic, and certainly sympathetic to the efforts to reverse the impact, I didn’t feel it was “my” concern because I am a heterosexual woman. My heart ached for my neighbors and my city, but I didn’t heed the warnings myself.
In 1992, at 28 years of age, I, too, contracted HIV. As I’d never seen a woman with HIV (that I knew of) I didn’t take the public health messages plastered around town to heart. Until I had no option but to do so when I was told I was HIV+.
Everything changed. In fact, I remember my life in two halves, before and after contracting HIV. With a sense of nothing to lose since viable treatment was not yet available, I launched myself into advocating for women living with HIV and AIDS. That work took an unexpected twist and resulted in a decades-long career in HIV awareness and prevention with the United Nations system. Part poster-child, part activist, I did what I could to ensure that my own experience would not be in vain.
Today, I turn 56 which marks the fact that I have been living with HIV for half of my life. I didn’t die in five years as my first HIV doctor warned might happen. I’ve responded well to treatment and live a normal life – whatever that even means. Several years ago, I left the United Nations and now teach for CUNY at LaGuardia Community College. Most days, aside from having to take my medications, I don’t even think about living with this incurable virus.
Yet in the past weeks, with the relative quiet of the city on lockdown, each ambulance that passes sends me back to those days on Castro Street. I am unnerved by my memories of the men who died in those years: neighbors who left for the hospital and never returned, the relentless quantity of funerals, the palpable grief, and yes, even the yard sales.
Would my life have turned out differently if I’d payed closer attention to the warnings? Probably. But I was young and invincible and didn’t think those messages were for me. And now, with COVID-19, I see history repeating itself and far too many people who are not heeding the current warnings.
The greatest difference, of course, is that HIV is not so easily transmitted as COVID-19. HIV has dealt an irreversible blow to humankind, but it started slowly and spread – and continues to spread – over decades. This coronavirus, in contrast, is a supersonic bullet train compared to HIV.
Please dear reader, heed the warnings. COVID-19 is not somebody else’s disease. A virus knows no borders and does not discriminate. This is real and people are dying. Young people, old people, seemingly healthy people, chronically ill people, first responders, health care professionals, and more, dying. Each of us must do our part to protect one another. Social distancing and washing your hands are simple tasks that will change our outcome if everyone adheres to the rules. Don’t wait until you know someone with COVID-19 to take this seriously. It is here and you’re just as much in the crosshairs as anyone else.
Through science, support, and good luck, I have lived half of my 56 years with HIV. I do not intend to be taken down by COVID-19. Wash your hands. Stay at home. Stay Safe. Please.
