Eldergays - how does the COVID pandemic compare to the AIDS epidemic?

One difference is that AIDS was a death sentence. Virtually everyone who got it, died (eventually).

Also, people who are diagnosed with Covid aren't treated like lepers the way AIDS patients were. Most people knew they would never be exposed to AIDS and found it easy to condemn those who were.

Covid is a breeze by comparison. I don't see similarities at all. (Ebola, on the other hand, comes close.)

Hello! you have to have sex with someone to get HIV, you get covid by breathing on someone. I think it's just a little worse.

AIDS was much much worse if you were a gay man. It was truly horrifying for those who were having sex for years and then suddenly out of the blue realized they could be a ticking timebomb with a gruesome death awaiting them. Covid is a walk in the park in comparison. (Watch now having survived the AIDS epidemic I die from Covid.)

[quote]Watch now having survived the AIDS epidemic I die from Covid.

I have often considered the irony of this potential outcome. I'm sure a lot of us have. If you're old enough to have "lived through AIDS," you're close to the high risk age bracket, if not in it.

Statistically, a lot of gay men like us have already died from Covid. I wonder how that irony felt in their final moments, all those years avoiding or dealing with HIV, only to die from this weird bug instead.

I agree with R1 and R3. OTOH, once reliable and accurate testing was available, things changed for those who were HIV negative. In that case, it was still different from COVID, but in a different way. HIV is much harder to contract than coronavirus, so if you were negative, you were fully in control and able to avoid infection. There was no risk of transmission outside of sexual or drug-related activities. You didn't have to walk around the supermarket in fear or avoid ordinary social interactions. In that respect, AIDS had much less of an impact on day-to-day life, especially if you didn't live mostly within the gay community.

On the other hand, the sexual restrictions were difficult, especially for the generation that was used to the anything-goes '70s. And for those who lived much of the time in a gay environment, the psychological impact of so much sickness and loss was devastating even if they were not, themselves, at risk of illness.

For me, I think living through the AIDS era made me more fatalistic, but I know others who had the opposite reaction.

The fact that it wasn’t that easy to get (compared to Covid) gives one pause. why were we not able to contain it? I realize it’s a sensitive subject.

"ONLY GROSS DISGUSTING FAGGOTS GET COVID!!!"

WE NEED TO ROUND THEM UP AND KILL THEM ALL!!!

What I don't fucking understand is why NONE of these mask pullers/spitters/breathers have been charged with ANY crimes.

People with HIV were regularly jailed for spitting. In fact, people without HIV who said they had it were charged with attempted murder or other bullshit.

This was just last YEAR

A few friends of mine who are older have posited that Eldergays are better equipped to deal with Covid, having lived through AIDS, and that we should tap into their expertise, that getting people to wear masks and getting them to wear condoms are not all that different.

R7 - and since so many straight women were caretakers/activists and men, particularly those who had clout and power, weren't, why are we not shaming them? We shame those who disregard healthcare workers.

r7 Only two kinds of people with AIDS. People who deserve it and people who don't.

Many people viewed AIDS as punishment by GOD or punishment by nature from going inside the wrong hole.

Yet no one would even consider that COVID/MERS/SARS/HIV could be GOD's punishment for eating meat.

In 1987, 85 percent of people knew that you could not get hiv from an infected coworker but 40 percent of people still would not work with one.

My roommate's dad was also a building manager while equivalating his engineering degree and the building was in West Hollywood. The owner was an old conservative guy or German bitth who would say "Mike, stay away from those fuckers...keep your daughter out of the pool". Her parents were highly educated and aware of how AIDS spread and just thought he was an old asshole, but a few other wealthy Russian Jews in the upscale building would not take the elevator if any gay men were in it, which was about 70 percent of the tenants.

R8 - cuz those spitting are probably of the same mindset and demographic as the cops. Repukes.

R9 - I think that would be a great resource but one that would alienate the right and make them go maskless even more. Sad because a lot of psychological suffering is going on and eldergays probably have a lot of lessons they can teach.

The difference between COVID and AIDS is that COVID affects everyone, AIDS pretty much only affected gay men and drug users. The fact that 95% of those who got it were considered "undesirables" by straight, white, conservative society made it easy for the world to keep turning as gay men and drug users died in the streets. The fact that COVID affects everyone has made the world stop cold in its tracks in a way it never did for AIDS.

Also R15, you needed to actively do something (have sex) to get HIV.

You can catch COVID by being in the same room was someone

[quote]The fact that it wasn’t that easy to get (compared to Covid) gives one pause. why were we not able to contain it? I realize it’s a sensitive subject.

What? You're living through a pandemic where people won't wear a mask or stop going to the gym, and you're wondering why people didn't wear condoms or stop having sex during AIDS?

If you whores would stay off the fucking apps you would be fine.

OP, for a long time, we didn’t know how AIDS was transmitted. We didn’t know what to believe. There was no test at first, then there were tests but no treatment, then there were crappy treatment.

There are similarities:

Follow the CDC guidelines, even as they change, as the CDC learns more.

Assume everyone has it. Including your own self. Take care not to catch it, or transmit it.

Trust that this is temporary. It’s small inconveniences now, in exchange for a long healthy life. This is especially true today, with the vaccine on the way. Stay safe until mid year, next year, and you may get the vaccine.

AIDS was a nightmare with no end in sight for way too long. First of all, no one knew how it was transmitted, or how it acted. Yes, it was a death sentence. Absolutely. And what is worse there was a stigma attached. It was the "Gay Disease." It was "God's Punishment." It was Just. Horrible. No one would talk about it. No one. And when it was finally making the nightly news it was to re enforce the dangers, so that Police, Fire, 9ll EMT workers wore hazmat suits. They refuse to give CPR because of AIDS. and all kinds of other shit. The stigma was the absolute worst part though because the straight world thought they were safe until it was shown that you could get it from needles, that it was blood borne. For me personally, the most touching moment, the one that was earth shattering, was Arthur Ashe. What a beautiful, decent human being. He went on live TV at a presser and announced he had AIDS and that he caught it from a blood transfusion. Then Magic Johnson. Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana were really important. YOU think it's not a big deal, but hugging babies with AIDS was a huge deal. And no one can every deny how important Elizabeth Taylor was . She was passionate about raising awareness and money and a real fighter. But we were really pariahs for a long time.

[quote]Hello! you have to have sex with someone to get HIV, you get covid by breathing on someone. I think it's just a little worse.

The problem with this is that we didn't really know that at the time. Could you get it by kissing? Initially no one knew if it was saliva-borne. What if some random person just had an open sore and got too close to you? As R20 says, even hugging was widely thought to be dangerous by people who didn't follow the research. And remember, it was always fatal.

In hindsight the infection route for HIV is pretty clear, but back then it wasn't, at all. HIV was much worse.

Yeah - I laugh at Covid. All you have to do is wear a mask. Try being a horny 18 year old with minimal sexual self control but needing to stop and consider possibly dying from having sex during sex, then ensuring you have a condom and using the condom. Just think how many unwanted teen pregnancies there are - full term and abortions. Now imagine every one of those girls died instead.

Screw straight idiot Republicans who don’t want to wear a mask. Let them die. I have had a deep and lasting hatred for them for 35 years and am happy to see them die - just like they were glad to see us die for 15 years.

COVID and AIDS are incomparable because of the fact that COVID happened during the internet. If the internet has been around during AIDS it would not have been as devastating as it was. Right now you can google the ways to prevent COVID spread. Back then you couldn't google how to prevent AIDS.

R22 They're not the ones dying in droves unfortunately, its blacks and Latinos and they WANT them to die. If the white grandma's were dying like blacks are now, they would keep their tired old asses home. But like AIDS they think its killing all the right people.

I really don't care, do u?

For three decades I've practiced safe sex and stayed HIV negative. In January I got COVID from plane travel. You do the math.

I found it interesting that once Freddie Mercury tested positive, his ex girlfriend also got the test every hear for 2 years according to his gay secretary and, hence, waited 3 years before having a baby to be sure she was negative. I mean, if they had parted in 1975 the fact that Freddie's doctor insist she get it too all the way into the mid 1980's tells you how little they knew about transmission. Sure, they kissed on the mouth and she took care of him when he was sick with his vocal chords but she had her own partner and no way could she have gotten it since he was by then living openly as a gay man who was a close friend to her. Were they that ignorant?

Can't compare them really. Despite COVID ripping around the world right now and likely to for some time to come it will not reach the numbers of people who have died of AIDS or will it have the stigma that is still out there for people with AIDS.

R22 - I think you underestimate COVID. I don't think just wearing a mask is enough. I went to my orthopedic surgeon a week ago and he said he took every possible precaution including mask, gloves, visor and suit and hasn't operated for since February and still got it in September. Here in Romania they have crazy good delivery service and, because he works with some vulnerable people, he had them leave the groceries at the front of his door and his life has been car, work, and house. He thinks he probably got it when he was in the elevator going to the garage and some teenage idiots got on and one had his mask under his chin (standard Eastern European practice) and sneezed like hell on the back of his head inside. Not 100 percent sure, but he suspects. It's that easy.

[quote]Right now you can google the ways to prevent COVID spread. Back then you couldn't google how to prevent AIDS.

This has to be the dumbest thing ever posted on DL.

[quote]If you whores would stay off the fucking apps you would be fine.

That exactly what DL would have been like in the early days of AIDS.

"Only whores get it! I and my long term partner spend Saturday evenings baking pies in our pretty aprons, so we'll be safe!"

Rupert Everett has written so well about those years. It was like there was a glass wall. On one side, the Eighties as history knows it: big hair, big shoulders, gowns, guns, Dynasty and Republican triumph, booming stock market, happy times. And on the other, an absolute waking nightmare. For healthy gay men, an ever-present miasma of anxiety; for sick gay men, a painful appointment with death. And for many years of that decade, a complete ignoring of their plight. Gay men who say "the Eighties were faaabulous" need to be dragged out into the street, and shot in the gutter. Well, just a little bit. They were fabulous, but only through a veil of stress.

You were treated like a social and medical pariah. Friends, family members shunned and shamed. . It was a disease of junkys, gays and the lower classes. .there was no willingness to understand it in the the early years even into the early 90s when my father died in an aides ward. We already knew you couldn’t get it from a hug or being in the same room but the ignorance and prejudice was so great. I watched my father die a short painful death and his ignorant family were horrid. I was told to keep it to myself and hide it. .

I imagine wheezing for air in Covid is rather like AIDS pneumocystis in some respects. That was a never-ending dry cough. I remember visiting friend with it, and seeking respite for a moment, tried to open the door to a terrace adjoing their room in the AIDS ward. "It's locked," he said. "People were jumping off."

R34 - yep roommate said her dad would come home and whisper that apartment X had "become vacant, AIDS victim, nice fellow and his neighbor that walked his dog said suicide". And in a sense many were suicides when victims could no longer bear the side effects and let it go. As in R27, Mary Austin said Freddie told her that the point had come where the medication was doing more harm than good and "it's time for me to go". The stigma was horrid.

Also, apparently the guy from "Voices Carry" had AIDS and I don't really think he "disappeared". Probably suicide. In a sense, AIDS gave you some time to make plans, to make decisions about the end but COVID is fast and deadly. Because I got interested I talked to an elderly dentist friend of my roommate's mom about this today over the phone and she said that the reason the virus spread all the way to orphanages here was because the official party line in the 1980's was that there were no gays or AIDS in Romania. Obviously, the whole medical community knew about it and yet, she was forbidden from using disposable needles for anesthesia and hot water was rationed. She boiled her own water and disinfected alone. Not everyone did so and gay men with AIDS were sent to hospitals for "TB" to die and not allowed out again. And now there are cases where those over 50 and are diagnosed with COVID often break out of the hospital if they are healthy enough or hide because they remember those times.

Absolutely nothing good came from the 80s. I hate everything about it. A normal life didn’t become possible until around 1992 with Clinton and enough certainty about transmission.

Don't trust Fauci.