Coronavirus and the Lost Legacy of the AIDS Epidemic

In many ways, this American crisis is a heightened rerun of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. A US president faced with a burgeoning virus, identifying that its initial victims lie outside his electoral base, decides to gaslight the nation and either ignore the disease like Ronald Reagan, or pretend it will disappear on its own. As Trump said during an interview in August, ‘This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away.’ What White House strategists seem to have forgotten, or, more chillingly, remember, is that Reagan’s necropolitical gambit cost more than 80,000 American lives. As I have written elsewhere, with the US coronavirus death toll above 200,000 and climbing with no end in sight, Americans are paying the ultimate price for their government’s failure to learn the lessons of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In southern Africa, the parallels between the coronavirus and HIV/AIDS are even more tangible. The conditions that emerged from the HIV epidemic are now shaping the course of this new pandemic as southern African governments address it using the infrastructure of the HIV response. And as the United States founders under the weight of COVID-19, southern Africa struggles to manage the legacy of America’s extensive involvement in its last major viral crisis. The primarily US-funded World Health Organization (WHO), whose current structure was shaped during the global response to the African AIDS epidemic with the creation of UNAIDS, is attempting to play a role in containing the spread of a deadly disease in the region once again. And while SARS-CoV-2 and HIV are different pathogens, comparing the viruses themselves, as well as how southern Africa has responded to them, can help us better understand the region’s current climate and provide insight into whether coronavirus and its aftermath will spur a crisis on a scale comparable to the United States.