Ever wondered how you would have behaved at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic?
You're doing it now.
A short summary of the parallels between COVID and HIV/AIDS.
“We keep us safe” means wearing masks to protect ourselves & each other from a deadly & disabling virus.
COVID is similar to HIV in how it attacks the immune system, but it’s easier to transmit & infect others with COVID because COVID is airborne. It moves like smoke & stays in the air for hours. (You can also catch COVID from poop — think about that next time you’re taking your unmasked public bathroom mirror pics.)Wearing a mask is like wearing a condom. Masks do not eliminate your chances of catching COVID just like condoms do not eliminate your chances of acquiring HIV, but these preventative measures drastically reduce the risk of infection.BIPOC are 3.5 times as likely to wear a mask than white people & they’re also 2 times as likely to die from a COVID infection than white people. Settler colonialism is rooted in white supremacy, anti-Black eugenics, & anti-Indigenous eugenics. COVID is just the latest in the US government’s tools of genocide. If you’re white and your values include anti-racism, live that value by doing your part to protect BIPOC.Lastly, there are people with health conditions that prevent them from being able to mask, so it’s up to the rest of us to protect these most vulnerable folks.
There is no u=u for COVID.
We know that when someone’s HIV viral load is undetectable, the virus is untransmissible (u=u). There is no analog for this with COVID.Vaccines do not prevent COVID infections; they reduce the severity of your symptoms & your chances of dying from a single infection. You can get long COVID from even one infection & each infection increases your chances of getting long COVID.Close to 2/3 of COVID infections are asymptomatic, meaning you could have COVID & spread it to others without ever realizing it.Rapid tests have also become less effective as the virus has been allowed to mutate over & over again. False negatives are very common, leading people to believe they don’t have COVID when they do.
Our struggles are interconnected.
COVID eugenics are contributing to the active genocides in places like Palestine. Israel has blocked Palestinian access to COVID vaccines since 2021. The lack of universal mask mandates has allowed the virus to mutate again & again & again globally. Without vaccines, Palestinians are more likely to die &/or have severe symptoms with even one COVID infection. Palestinians are being removed from their homes & forced into overcrowded displacement while the Israeli government blocks aid deliveries to Gaza & bombs hospitals. These conditions mean Palestinians have no means to protect themselves & no recourse to stop the spread of COVID.
The government does not care about us.
During his time as president, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, Ronald Reagan never publicly used the term “AIDS,” denying its severity because of its prevalence in queer & intravenous drug user communities. This facilitated the faster spread of HIV & AIDS.Mirroring Reagan’s inaction, the Trump & Biden administrations failed us by rolling back mask mandates, eliminating access to free testing, & pretending the pandemic is over in favor of growing the economy.The CDC recently reduced COVID isolation guidelines to 1 day, forcing people to go to work while they’re still contagious. Hospitals are also no longer required to report COVID infections, making info on the virus’s severity & prevalence even harder to obtain. This is even more unconscionable considering most medical facilities don’t require masks for medical providers or patients anymore.
Unlike AIDS, we knew how bad COVID was from the beginning.
Info on HIV & AIDS was hard to come by, & often hidden from the public, in the 1980s. We have the benefit of the internet, meaning we’ve had access to info on the seriousness of COVID since 2020 & long COVID since 2021, at least. However, it’s important to note not everyone has the same access to info via the internet because of income inequality & houselessness. For those of us who do know how harmful even one COVID infection can be, it’s important we use that privilege to protect ourselves & others from this deadly & disabling virus.HIV-positive people are more than 10 times as likely to die from a COVID infection as people who are HIV-negative. We already lost most of an entire generation of queers due to the AIDS pandemic. We can’t afford more losses.
In conclusion:
The info in this zine is not intended to stigmatize or shame anyone with HIV or AIDS, but to highlight the similarities between HIV & COVID & the ways in which we should learn from our queer history to keep each other safe — not just during pride month, but year-round.Pride is a celebration, but it’s also a protest. Being queer is inherently political, so don’t settle for mass death & disability just because the government is trying to convince you the pandemic is over. Thousands of people are still dying from COVID infections every week.The best preventative measure you can take against getting & spreading COVID is wearing a well-fitting respirator mask. If you have the means & access, other mitigation measures include: HEPA air filtration, far UV light, CO2 monitors, nasal sprays, & CPC mouthwash.