[I am forty-two years old. The struggle to end HIV/AIDS pretty
much spans my entire life. This year, in fact, marks forty years since
the first case was reported in the United States on June 5, 1981.]
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THE OTHER PANDEMIC  
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Evangeline Lawson
September 20, 2021
The Progressive
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_ I am forty-two years old. The struggle to end HIV/AIDS pretty much
spans my entire life. This year, in fact, marks forty years since the
first case was reported in the United States on June 5, 1981. _

, Creative Commons

 

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first global health crisis that I
have experienced. Before it was the HIV/AIDS crisis, which also seemed
to come out of nowhere to grip us with suffocating anxiety. Just like
COVID-19, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has tested the limits of our humanity,
becoming a definitive marker in history for me and countless others.

I am forty-two years old. The struggle to end HIV/AIDS pretty much
spans my entire life. This year, in fact, marks forty years since the
first case was reported in the United States; on June 5, 1981, the
Center for Disease Control disclosed
[[link removed]] that five
young gay men in Los Angeles had been diagnosed with a rare lung
disease, and two of them had died. 

It was the first time that HIV/AIDS—an acquired human
immunodeficiency syndrome—was reported by news outlets in the United
States. The story was covered by _The Associated Press_, _The Los
Angeles Times_, and the _San Francisco Chronicle_ on June 6. I was
too young at the time to understand, but HIV/AIDS would remain long
enough for me to get acquainted.

One day in the late 1980s after school, when I typically would be
designing clothes out of scrap fabric for my Barbie dolls, I glanced
at the television and saw the droopy, impassioned eyes and sheepish
smile of a very pale boy. He was fighting for the right to go to
school. That captured my attention: I wondered why anyone would try to
keep this kid from receiving an education. As someone who loved school
myself and couldn’t imagine missing a day, I listened attentively to
him recount being ostracized by his community. 

I was surprised to learn that this boy from Indiana had been born with
hemophilia (a hereditary disorder in which your blood cannot clot
normally), which required him to have a blood transfusion. That
procedure unfortunately left him infected with HIV, which over time
evolved into AIDS. 

His name was Ryan White
[[link removed]].
It struck me as dreadful, to be sickened with a virus that made
everyone avoid you.

Ryan White died of the disease in 1990, at age eighteen. 

I never forgot his face or his story. From that point onward, I became
engrossed in this mysterious illness that slowly killed people after
leaving them isolated, frail, and covered in dark blotches (Kaposi’s
sarcoma). But the horror and tragedy of HIV/AIDS still felt far
removed from my life. 

As a Black girl in San Diego, I thought gang violence was a more
relevant danger than contracting a virus. I’d heard of shootings at
house parties, and of kids getting robbed of their Air Jordans,
Georgetown Hoyas Starter jackets, or British Knights shoes on the way
home from school, but never did I hear of a young person dying of
HIV/AIDS. 

Information about this viral epidemic became a pivotal topic in sex
education in sixth grade and then again in ninth grade, as the
facilitator demonstrated rolling a condom down a cucumber as a means
to explain safer sex practices. I watched with equal parts shame,
intrigue, and fear. Sex seemed like a teenage rite of passage in the
movies, but in real life, it was being presented as a possible death
sentence. 

To many of us teenagers in the 1990s, the nonstop messaging about
HIV/AIDS seemed like fear-mongering at best. Although I took it
seriously, I could see why others didn’t. It was an illness mostly
associated with gay men. It was cloaked in mystery. _Where did it
come from, really?_ People were dying from it—not exactly from the
virus itself, but a secondary infection, like pneumonia. It was
presented like a plague reserved for a very specific subset of the
population. 

Perhaps that is why many Black people did not think that epidemic was
relevant to them. Moreover, Black folks were typically left out of the
conversations regarding education, prevention, and treatment. We all
sang along and choreographed dances in our garages to “Let’s Talk
About Sex” by Salt-N-Pepa, but while it was empowering to witness
these Black women asserting themselves sexually, HIV/AIDS still felt
detached from my Black adolescent life.

Then, the rapper Eazy-E [[link removed]] died
in 1995. 

The fact that you could be a young, Black, heterosexual male,
incredibly successful, yet die from HIV/AIDS, activated our awareness
in ways that had not happened before. That slightly off falsetto
voice, that groundbreaking force, would be gone forever. It just felt
odd and unfair because he was only thirty years old.

In 1997, I headed to UCLA as a biology major, as my love for science
had expanded beyond dissections and my summer internship at a research
institute. I still hadn’t had sex, but the conversations with my
peers about how we were going to navigate that new territory was
definitely a topic. 

I had watched documentaries and dramas centered on HIV/AIDS, such
as _Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt_, and _And the Band
Played On_, but what connected me more to the illness than any of that
was the numbers and the truths they exposed. I learned that Black
people were more affected than any other group and that the number of
Black women being infected with HIV was rapidly increasing.  

Then, by the early 2000s, the headlines started to disappear. People
mentioned HIV/AIDS less, if at all. I did not see as many posters
about the dangers as I sat in medical offices. It was almost as if the
expansion of HIV/AIDS into a disease that affected more people of
color around the world led to a decrease of public focus. 

I still did not personally know anyone who had tested positive for HIV
or was living with AIDS. It would be another several years before I
did.

That happened in 2009, when I was trying to fill time between jobs and
decided to volunteer at AIDS Project Los Angeles
[[link removed]]. As an intake and eligibility volunteer, I
was tasked with assessing if a client qualified for assistance and
directing them to various resources. 

I heard so many agonizing stories. 

A woman who tested positive for HIV after her first time having sex.
The client who boldly stated “All of my friends are dead,” in
response to my question as to whether or not they wanted to list
someone as an emergency contact. An eighteen-year-old who had just
moved to California and had tested positive for HIV. 

Some of the infected people I met had aged so much that I had to
glance twice at their ID because I couldn’t believe their age. Some
appeared otherwise healthy, while others had red inflamed skin with
white circular patches. 

I desperately wanted to help everyone who came my way, but the
assistance they needed exceeded what I was trained to give them. I
wanted to cry with them and listen to them for hours if they felt
forgotten and abandoned, but the moral support they required could not
fit into a thirty-minute appointment. And I could not emotionally
crumble with every devastating story and still make it through the
day. 

Some of those with HIV and AIDS died alone, afraid to ask for help.
Many were Black and brown. As a Black person, it was disheartening.
People of color just always seem to be fighting for our lives in some
way, and this was the embodiment of that. 

Since my time at AIDS Project Los Angeles, there have been significant
scientific advancements resulting in improved treatment options for
people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as innovative preventative
medications such as PrEP
[[link removed]].  However, this pandemic
is far from over. 

HIV/AIDS still poses a threat
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the lives of Black people and others and cannot be ignored as some
calamity of the past. About 35,000 people are still being infected
every year in the United States, 45 percent of whom are Black, despite
being only 12 percent of the U.S. population. And 55 percent of all
new cases among women are Black. Lastly, HIV/AIDS is the sixth leading
cause of death for those under age thirty-five.

As of 2020, HIV/AIDS has claimed the lives of more than 700,000
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in the United States; the death toll from COVID-19 is just over
660,000
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in just the last year and a half.

It is all scary and sad. 

Regardless of improved information and medical progress, HIV/AIDS
continues to take a terrible toll, and resources are not reaching the
people who clearly need them. This is similar to what we are
witnessing now with COVID-19. 

In my years of life, I have survived overlapping pandemics. That
feels miraculous—and exhausting.

_Evangeline Lawson is a southern California-based writer and content
creator. You can learn more about her and her work at
www.evangelinelawson.net [[link removed]]_

_A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good! Since
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