OutCasting; Pandemics - Covid 19 and AIDS - part 3 of 4

the epidemic has been the community people are responding to get better people because of cold it because it's affecting everybody but with h i v and the way it was affecting people who lived on really out there of it really gave people permission to be horrible and it made life very very difficult or people this is outcasts public radio's lgbt q u program we don't have to be queer to be here outcast is produced in new york by media for the public that online it out casting media dot org hi i'm lucas it's too early to tell about the long term impact coven eighteen will have on the world though of course in the short term we've already experienced illness and death and social economic and political disruption on a massive scale as the economy starts to reopen were already seeing new spikes covert could become something unimaginable

but the social distancing other preventive measures were taking has kept the disease from spiraling completely out of control and there's hope though are defective vaccines within the next year or two in contrast the aids pandemic which began in ninety one was allowed to spiral out of control and it was about fifty years from the beginning of the outbreak and to the development of effective treatments in the mid nineties even now nearly forty years later there is no vaccine una's reports that as of the end of twenty eighteen nearly seventy five million have been infected with a charity and thirty two million had died some people have been suggesting or feeling now in the early days of a covert outbreak must be similar to how it felt at the beginning of the aids crisis but there are crucial differences in a commentary in the april twenty twenty edition about gassing overtime outcast accra said imagine how much lower the number of people lost states might have been if people had made gay men that instead of

recognized aids is a worldwide health crisis right from the beginning and imagine how you today dealing with his new corona virus would be panicking because we're reading in your community that there was no effect of public response imagine the sickness and death becoming pervasive among your own friends and family and asking pleading screaming for help but no one listens no one really cares about the infected and the government sits on money that you'd be released from developing a vaccine or cure for caring for those who are sick i imagine the rage and grief you'd feel as your friends were getting sick and dying and the rest of the world was ignoring the whole thing joining us now to help us understand and not just imagine is jay blotter jay is a veteran journalist and activist he arrive in your city in nineteen eighty two he began writing for the new york native the leading gay newspaper at the time and then became associate producer of our time a weekly tv show about lgbt life

in your city hosted by the activism historian vito russo jay join accept new york in nineteen eighty seven the year the group was founded he took part in a key demonstrations that the fda protest and it stopped the church nineteen eighty nine and the demonstration at the national institutes of health in nineteen ninety he served as the head of the committee taking the helm from michelangelo senior rally most recently jay was the editor of rainbow warrior mile example the memoir of gilbert baker creator of the rainbow flag jay is also a member of the gilbert baker foundation and cofounded public impact media consultants a pr firm for progressive groups and individuals this is part three of a four part series welcome back to our past in a seed when we left off in the last edition about casting we were talking about how people involved with aids as activists or as people with aids came by necessity to know more about the disease than the medical establishment you mentioned that this change relationships keeping

patients and their doctors we've also been talking throughout the series of that house aides might have played out very differently if it had not initially been concentrated in populations that the general public just in like particularly gay men intravenous drug users but once it became clear that age it could potentially affect the general population not just these so called undesirable says out of the public and political response is change i would tell you that the tenor of factual explosion of a charity cases although we warned about that never really happened i don't know why an epidemiologist would have to explain it but while we want people that age it could affect everybody it seemed to fade mostly in the gay male community and in the communities of color it did start of it in how women of color because the fans believe they would get it

from then who were sleeping politically touchy material because ain't it the lead they own the problem with that communities have to logically you know the fact is that in communities of color we have a drug addiction and that thing gets disproportionate but it is there and we also have people are poly emirates were rather have many sexual partners at one a guy could have a wife or a girlfriend and he could be going to other people for sex whether it be men or women and frankly that was very uncomfortable that the african american community did not want to address than unfortunately a community ignored a tie the issue at its own peril

for hubble years many lives roll off that didn't have to be lost but you have to remember that the african american community you dominated by religion or by religious leaders and they did not want to deal with a chatty because they drive he was about facts from each it was about drug use for the chevy with about sex workers of all things that they wanted to ignore and pretend we're not happening in their community and it was just a horrific thing that the african american community was in denial about each it for so many years and so many live or loft me to a flea the fact is that you still had people in the when the straight community saying no it's not going to get tough with only going to affect those people you know were they were the fence of otherness will be the outcast the prior if they gave the people of color the poor people oh the

sex workers everybody who mainstream privileged whitehead or factual america flaw as dispensable commodities so even though it became clear that anybody could get a try the you still have that magical thinking that each it was not going to hit hurting people and home politicians became a little bit more willing to do things for people with a tidy into law before funding for various branches of the government that deal with each it research it still never really got better you know i got a little bit better when the in the late eighties america learned about ryan white a white straight boy a teenage boy who had contracted h i v through a blood transfusion end you know they were typically agreed audit back then that they were innocent

victims of a tragedy and those were people who got a chevy because of it did blood by calling people innocent victim of means that america also felt that other people got ate it because they were gay or because they were drug users or because they were prostitutes for sex workers those were an innocent victim of the implication was that they deserved and there was a real infinity of mentality going on in america really wash they had to get people to talk well if these people do this sort of behavior than they deserve what they get there with a lack of compassion for people with aids and that was a brazen lack of compassion but along comes ryan white and people could find ryan white's quite as the white middle class teenage boy they could embrace him you know i'm not demeaning while ryan white because he was a great

person he raised awareness he was he was a real hero you know elton john came to his rescue they you know he was he and elton john spent time together and ryan white normalize the aids epidemic for america but after the white boy to be the poster child because everybody else was not considered a good enough american then he you know we we had to find somebody fall if to garner the compassion that all people with aids deserved but by the mid nineteen eighties people were generally becoming aware of how it was transmitted and the methods for letting this transmission so how are these lessons applied and were some of them controversial were talking about closing that house is encouraging people to have seen for saks you exchange programs and that kind of thing you know even though our government now

new modes of transmission you would think that would wake them up to how to deal with it but people remain judge mental the fact is that some people are panicked and they use of needles and a activist fed well away to fade people live is to provide needle exchange so that they're not using the same needle over and over or sharing deal and one of the government say oh we're not going to condone addiction soviet people with drug addiction that i get off the drugs right away or die and people who knew the drug world fed on fire that's not how it'll work you have to help them they'll live at the same time that you're trying to help them get off drugs you get to fade them ok go cold turkey right now stop doing it

drugs and so are government federal government put an embargo on any organization like the funding enduring your invasion that would wants to provide needle exchange with that punitive had the very heartless approach you'd say ok now in that we know how old they are how to stop at everybody better get with the program right away or would just going to forget you and it's tough for you and you're not following the rules so that compassion towards people with aids will still be a thing in the united states it would fail affect her vote for friday who all her faculties job to worry a group not going to affect you you just keep doing what you're doing the church took a very aggressive role in telling america that afternoon for the way to go and fame to you know high school kids

yeah just be abstinent because we're not going to give you condoms condoms are the wrong way to move ahead condom from the wrong message the religious people you know if we keep on them from people that they won't have facts or they were having sex anyway condoms would've been a lifesaver but these religious orientation were not content to provide them with information only to their congregations they actively went to school and went to political bodies in towns and cities and on the state level to try to change the rules to squelch any discussion of condoms or aids education in the schools and that was unconscionable you know it's one thing if you have

narrow minded erroneous misguided idea of about your you know for your religion and you share that only with the people in your church why are you trying to spread this misinformation to the public at large the catholic church was a huge offender in this and i want america to remember that before the catholic church was brought down because of its child molestation fever they were doing horrible things and doing all that the work that needed to be done to save people's lives with proper age education and condom distribution what they did this is outcasts public radio's lgbt q youth program produced in new york by media for the public good online an outcast immediate dot org as the covert nineteen pandemic unfolds around the world some people have said this is what it must have felt like at the onset of

eight's our guest is jay block a long time activist who's involved in the struggle against a senior city so how did you and the rest of the gay community cope when your friends are getting sick and dying and the rest of the world didn't care and wasn't doing anything you know the epidemic brought out the best in many people but it brought out the worst in more people you know every epidemic of the cab of a compassion of a community and wishing that again with coded now i have to face that people are responding as better people because of coded because it's affecting everybody but with h i v and the way it was affecting people who lived on the very dirt of the high at the gay people permission to be horrible and it made life very very difficult for people with a tie the end for

the people who are friends of people with a chubby when i was an actor up every monday night meeting would be started with an announcement of the people who had died a week before and that's when we would find out that somebody who just two weeks ago we had been marching with at a demonstration had gone into the hospital and family died within the week with a casualty number of workshops staggering end if you thought about it too hard you would go crazy and have what you're helping your ruined and shot shape our response and members of act up with to fight even harder to channel that ain't her and that sadness into the next demonstration because if you stop to think about what you were living through you would go crazy and probably kill yourself and so that was our response for people who did not have to act up and they're like favre as their

focus i don't know how they dealt with it because of the epidemic was all consuming and depending on what kind of person you were you could know twenty thirty forty fifty of your friends who affect were dying i talk to people who were probably in their thirties back in the eighties and they would say oh yeah i loved about intuitive that different if the numbers are unfathomable when you think in terms of your social circle of the people in your life and to have that social circle virtually all wiped out one of day to day life for gay people living in the eighties and early nineties and frankly that did not change it got worse in the early nineties the epidemic reach the new pitch and the number of casualties was already take it was not until protease inhibitors many people outside of our communities did not war ii they just

connected to a really great sense of denial and that denial save them you know they are you know out of sight out of mind they didn't have to deal with it and we were left on our own to fight for our own right foot of gay people of people of color and for sex workers because nobody was helping us we were all but forgotten we were left on her own it was not until the prey even have the earth came around that things changed their party the neighbors were indeed miraculous leaf a lot of people they did not favor all the people people talk now of aids is manageable but if you talk to anybody who have to take pills for the rest of his or her life or you call or call people been taking another type of drugs since the mid nineties and they were living guinea pigs we had no yeah the thought what effect a long term

effects of using these drugs people were just happy to have a drug that was working and kept taking them well you thought in the late nineties and early two thousand premature death because of cardiac issues in the men who were longtime users love tortillas and hitler's you know obviously they had to be from fatah fact it wasn't immediately apparent there are people alive buy a chevy drugs but they are still facing a lot of problem there is no cure for a charity the epidemic it feel happening no matter how much people might want to deny that fact you're seeing a flight uptick in the cases of a study among gay men were for many years it was going down and family your new

generation came along and they didn't experienced the devastation that i did they did not bury scores of friends and they come in today for may hear about each it and they hear that there are drugs to handle it so they get careless and the pharaoh convert and they get a tidy and they threw all their drugs for the nfl with vigilance needs to continue the works for research into a vaccine need to continue went whoa huge inhibitor of came along this wasn't a signal that everybody could go home and you know not war ii anymore it certainly was a great advancement but it wasn't the end of the problem and every three cases happened again wi fi younger people taking prep now and then thinking that prep is going to protect them from everything you're seeing a gif

of sexually transmitted infections start to rise again and give way to super strains of infection it's because people aren't getting the message that crap and protection from each it but i can protect you from everything and so there's still a need for condoms but that topic have gotten lost in all the rhetoric about how amazing prep is we have a younger generation that did not live in the eighties and did not live with the idea of men who were only born in the early two thousands and when we talked to them about what it was like in the eighties they auger for that we're talking about you know an imaginary land that they don't have to worry about how do you think the response statement of the different if the disease had initially had another population that wasn't despised as gay men an iv drug users were oh

in that larry kramer the book notes from the holocaust he points out that in the nineteen eighties if there was any bacteria epidemic to happen in philadelphia called legion is disease so called because it affected members of the american legion when they were absent conference well in the days since the few people died of different bacterial breakout operate there were scores of articles in the newspapers covering this why these were white straight men who were pillars of the community and everybody demanded answers the disproportionate amount of money and confirmed that went into i think the way he uses initially but they were the right kind of people though people who you should care about the when you look at the disproportionate response to lead a new tvs you can

see holl the epidemic would've been dipped in the body early if it had been happening to the right white wealthy people and that the galling point and that's the point that we don't have to worry about with covert nineteen because covert nineteen is not heeding specific demographics only but i will say that the people of color or larvae are disproportionately guy as opposed to the people who have access to proper healthcare so once again an illness is striking people but the social problems that are already in place are worsening the epidemic to me in this gave gordon nineteen so again we're faced with a medical system that was not ready to deal with if you already overwhelmed resources are two minutes hoff are

already ridiculously high because of the republicans have been trying to destroy obamacare we are in a similar situation of being unprepared for covert nineteen the way that we were unprepared for h i g the only difference is that overnight kenya's much easier to transmit then ate it so that makes it an even more dire more dangerous and more frightening pandemic to expand on the rate of spread of coven eighteen there are other key biological aspects of the novel corona virus they're different from those of a chevy first up a corona viruses a much shorter incubation period and psychic of the corona virus isn't as deadly as it is once so out of these biological differences in the viruses themselves affect the ways that the pandemics developed i think we have seen a greater compassion flow from people towards covert nineteen victims than we would ever have been intervened and compassion

for people of aids even though carbon banking is much easier to catch people can wear them after and protect themselves and i think they're invested before their infant to be more sympathy and more outreach to people with covert nineteen them that ever was for people with aids over making you could argue with a blameless you know a virus where is aids for the virus that was punctuated by blame and demonization and blame throwing end of the worst of the worst in terms of liability and negative of the people who are affected by it it was a draw some ways to do it as much more contagious corona virus what does our history with aides to just going forward peter murphy about corona virus that when you have a

republican in the white house it's a deadly deadly thing because they are not going to respond in a way that's going to help people that don't believe in big government at a time where big government is really helpful all they only care about their people not about the rest of the people and they don't want a ferocious efficient money into a medical system that should be more socialized medicine than medicine only for the rich and privileged so we are seeing you know people who lived during the early aids epidemic into ptsd flash that for them now to see yet another clue of republicans in the white house is handling this that's all the time we have for now all things up this conversation on the next edition about this case for joining us today

that's it for this edition of this program has been produced at the outer city including its participants all the legal star a one star to press will foreign justin brian and the lucas our executive producer is mark's of its outclassed is produced in new york the media for the public good more information is available at our casting media dot org to find information about the show the siblings for all our testing content and the podcast out casting is also on social media to connect with us on twitter facebook and instagram at podcasting media if you're having trouble whether it's at home or school or just with yourself call the trevor project hotline at eight six six for a date seven three eight six or visit them online of the trevor project art or the trevor project is an organization dedicated to lgbt key youth suicide prevention call them if you have a problem seriously

don't be scared they even have an online chat you can use if you don't wanna talk on the phone again the numbers eight six six for eight eight seven three eight six being different isn't a reason to hate or hurt yourself eight six six four eighty seven three eight cents oh online of the trevor project dot org you can also find a link to an hour set out as immediate dot org under out gassing boat you could stick your resources and lucas thanks for listening