AIDS disappeared from public view without ending. Will covid-19 do the same? – The Washington Post

As activists have long argued, AIDS is a political crisis. Protease inhibitors changed the nature of the disease, but only for those with access to them — namely White, gay, middle class men. And while the Affordable Care Act did expand access to health care in the United States, especially for people with HIV, it fell far short of activists’ visions for universal health care. In the absence of larger policy change, we have come to treat AIDS as a biomedical problem, to be managed primarily through testing and treatment, while the underlying conditions that render some of us far more vulnerable than others persist.