It was January 1991. The first year I witnessed the death of someone I personally knew from AIDS. It scared the holy sh*t out of me. I remember hearing an older couple I was friends with commenting on this article from the NYT. The report of 100,000 deaths from AIDS was buried deep in the paper. There was no national outrage, there weren’t any names posted on the front page. We were on our own.
Fast forward to this week’s front page article with a thousand names of the 100,000 dead from the pandemic.
The LGBTI community remembers. We know what it’s like when the government ignores a disease. We remember what it was like to see so many our people die from AIDS, many of which died alone.
Don’t be cavalier or indifferent to this crisis. Don’t be a name on the front page or one buried on page 18.