The Other Epidemic
5/14/21 - As we emerge back into the world, how long will we live with COVID? Will it be like HIV/AIDS? We talk to people who have been closely involved in AIDS activism and responding to the coronavirus: Mathew Rodriguez and Leisha McKinley-Beach
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Executive Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
TRANSCRIPT: THE OTHER EPIDEMIC
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long distance besties everywhere
Aminatou: I’m Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. Shame, assumptions, misinformation, community resilience, breakthrough medical interventions, and the false notion that because it's over for some it's over for all while HIV AIDS and COVID-19 are not the same, they definitely share some similarities here in the US on today's agenda. What have we learned from living with another viral pandemic HIV AIDS, as we look forward to living with Coronavirus for the foreseeable future
[theme song]
Aminatou: Hey, Ann Friedman.
Ann: Hey, Ooh um…
Aminatou: How are you doing over there?
Ann: I'm good. You know, I am really feeling like in the specifics of my life, uh, kind of like exiting the pandemic back kind of energy. So I am really appreciating that what's happening with you?
Aminatou: You know, she is back, same energy over here. [laughter]
Ann: I don't want to be a damper on, on that feeling, but because we can hold complicated realities in our head, simultaneously. Today's episode is about how, despite the ways that you and I are feeling this kind of emergence from the pandemic, it's not really over. And in a sense, we'll probably never be over for people who maybe have long haul COVID or people who live in parts of the world where the vaccine is not as accessible. And today's episode is kind of about that, about, um, what happens when a pandemic feels over to some people and it is really not over for others.
Aminatou: Ah, well, that is, um, it's a very of the moment as you say.
Ann: Yeah. And it's a question that I have sort of had it's bubbled up in a few things that I've read throughout the pandemic about, you know, maybe some lessons in activism or community resilience that have their roots in the HIV AIDS crisis. And it's like ongoing rippling effect. And I don't want to draw like a really simplistic parallel and say like, HIV is COVID-19, that is a hundred percent not what, not what I've been thinking about, but it did make me want to call some people with, um, uh, public health expertise in both of these pandemics and talk to them about what they see as similarities and lessons, and maybe like really important differences between these two huge public health crises that have happened 30, 40 years apart, but still like, kind of in conversation with each other.
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, and also just I've been so struck by like in the last couple of months, as you say, like we're gearing up to a return to normal, like even that word, like not an accurate statement of fact, you know, because it presupposes so many things, but I think it also makes us not confront the fact that there are a lot of realities that we refuse to accept and whatever the pandemic is, even though we can't compare the situations. I do think that one thing that I am having my own private reckoning with, it's just, what does it mean to live through a moment of intense suffering and what does it mean to live through it when you are not suffering the same as other people? And, and also like, you know, like what are your responsibilities when you survive? And if you survive and I just don't, I just don't want to forget this moment, because as you say, like, historically we forget, we move on because the trauma is too much, but, um, a lot of people don't get to move on and I think it does a disservice to all of us because some pandemics are just not over.
Ann: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, um, I talked to two incredible guests for this episode. The first is Mathew Rodriguez, who's an editor at thebody.com, which is an HIV AIDS news website. And he's also part of a collective called What would an HIV doula do? and he teaches journalism at NYU. So he has like a great, also kind of like media critical lens on how both of these pandemics have been talked about. And then I also spoke with Leisha McKinley Beach, who is a public health consultant who focuses on HIV AIDS. She's been doing this work for 30 plus years. And her focus is really on mobilizing and educating black women about HIV AIDS and empowering them to take control of their sexual health. So she also kind of comes at this from a lens of HIV AIDS is not over. It was not just like, um, uh, an issue affecting white gay men in the eighties. Like it is very much still here and present. And the idea that it is of the past is like actively harming people who are living with it and at risk for it today.
Aminatou: I'm looking forward to hearing this.
Ann: I want to start this conversation with a question about AIDS imagery. It's not like a pop quiz for you, but I did this exercise myself about, like, when you think about AIDS activism, is there a poster or a slogan or a photo or something that really comes to the forefront of your mind when you think about that?
Aminatou: That's actually, that's such a good question. Um, because it's such a complicated, um, answer for me, I think a lot about, um, I think like Princess Diana in, um, I believe it was like a Harlem hospital hugging, um, an HIV patient, but maybe I have that wrong. Like I have, I have this like image of like, um, a celebrity, like someone who is not, um, someone who we don't think would do this, like doing this. But I also think that like living in West Africa, HIV just was, it was, it was, it was a different kind of taboo and the predominant image for me, it's like children whose parents are dying. Like just this, we would get to these images of just like completely amazed, created parents and children crying next to them. Like that is the, that's the thing that I'm always, um, left with. And I think it also, the reason I say it's complicated is because of course, like, you know, crises, it looks, it looks different like wherever it is, but I think it was also for me, like an, an understanding later on about so much of, um, early AIDS activism that I just didn't know. Like I, um, I did not like understand or learn about Act Up, for example, like if I told you about like prominent slogans, now those that would come to mind are those, but the truth is like, those were introduced to me much later in life. And so I think that there's, I am also just like having that private reckoning of like, how do you, how do you form this memory, you know?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: When, so much of it has to do with mass media and also, yeah. And also like, um, you know, AIDS is a crisis that is, um, affects people around the world very differently. I don't know. I'm, I'm getting really emotional, like, like telling you this, because I think that it's those images of just like African parents. And I'm also just thinking about the town that I lived in, um, in, um, where I went to boarding school, we watched a lot of people die of AIDS, but because of the taboo, no one talked about it and it is only now, um, you know, or it was only later with like the hindsight of like adulthood or whatever that we, or at least like, I understood what was going on. And so I think that that is also like my own private imagery of like, Oh, um, here's what it's like to see someone be sick and not have the words, um, to discuss their experience.
Ann: Yeah. Yeah. And, and even hearing you say that it's a real reminder to me of how kind of culturally specific a question like this is of like, what is, what is the, what is the image you associate? Cause I think for me, it is like watching, like, you know, kind of like mainstream nightly news coverage of the AIDS quilt. Um, I think that that's like the thing that really sticks in my mind because I was young enough and also, you know, insulated in the sense that like, it, it wasn't something happening or it wasn't something that felt like it was happening, like in my hometown or in my community, it was only like this kind of big gesture of the AIDS quilt that I was, you know, that, that was big enough to get like national media coverage at a time when I was old enough to process it. That like made it hit home for me. But, but like you, I think I was quite a bit older before I learned about Act Up and about Reagan's foot dragging on this and like, um, the, how political, the development of antiretrovirals was like all of these other things that are not just like, Hey, there's this disease out there or, Hey, there there's this pandemic out there that, um, now I think really inform the way I think about it. Like at the time it really was just like, Oh, there's a thing happening really far away from me out in the world. Like I think that that is like what it, what it meant for me to, to like, you know, see this pandemic as filtered through news coverage of the AIDS quilt. Okay. So for those who don't know much about the history of Act Up or some of its iconography here is a little background in 1988, the artist and writer David Wojnarowicz had just been diagnosed with HIV and he attended a protest at the US food and drug administration, which had been slow to acknowledge. And honestly, that's charitable to call it slow to acknowledge the HIV AIDS crisis and even slower to do meaningful research into developing treatments at the protest Wojnarowicz wore a denim jacket with a pink triangle on the back. Along with the words, “If I die of AIDS, forget burial, just drop my body on the steps of the FDA.” In March of last year, Act Up New York, released an homage to that jacket and its famous slogan. Act Up, if you're not familiar stands for the AIDS coalition to unleash power. And it was one of the most prominent of the many activist groups that sprang up in the early days of the AIDS crisis to advocate for better research education treatment access. The image on its Instagram was a black face mask that read “If I die of COVID-19 forget burial drop my body on the steps of Mar-a-Lago. Later, Act Up also released a twist on the classic Silence Equals Death poster. And I'm sure you've probably seen this too. It also has a pink triangle behind it this time. It was an orange triangle in the words, Trump Equals Death. I'm going to let journalist, Mathew Rodriguez tell the story of what happened next.
Mathew: There was a lot of backlash to Act Up, actually from the internet, because a lot of people felt in the in that you shouldn't compare the the epidemics of COVID and HIV, because in their minds, they were different and that you shouldn't, and that those images were in some way sacrosanct. And it was very interesting. I had a very emotional reaction to both of those things. Because I think that the AIDS epidemic is ongoing.
Ann: To Mathew, it made perfect sense to draw a parallel between the ongoing HIV AIDS epidemic and the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. The impulse to protect an image like Wojnarowicz’s “Drop my body on the steps of the FDA” jacket was basically to cordon off HIV AIDS in a nostalgic way to treat it like an incident of the past rather than a health crisis of the present.
Mathew: And when you say, you know, those images are sacred, or we can't talk about the AIDS epidemic in that way, it ignores the way that politics and policies still affect people with HIV today. Especially in the form of like HIV criminalization, which in the United States, I think 32 or 33 states, I forget the exact number, still have laws on the books that either in some way, criminalize the non-disclosure of HIV or enhance sentences. First, if you're doing a crime not related to HIV, it might enhance your sentence if you're living with HIV. So, you know, the reason I bring up the story is because it made me think of the ways in which people feel like the AIDS epidemic is untouchable, or we can't, we can't talk about it, or it happened. And it's not still happening. And so, for me, the, you know, COVID and HIV are, are, are co-pandemics or co- epidemics, they're happening at the same time. And also, when I think about them, I think about the ways in which they force people in some way to wrestle with their mortality. You know, I think that growing up queer in America, and just for everyone who may not know me, which is probably most people reading this, or watching or listening to this, you know, I, my father was, was living with HIV, and he actually passed away from an AIDS related illness in 2011. And so it's something that has touched my life, very personally, and something that, you know, happened as recently as 2011. And, you know, it's, the AIDS epidemic is not something that was solely in the 80s or 90s for me, it continues on now. And growing up queer, you know, when you are queer, you are taught about, well, we're not taught about, people are barely taught about sex the United States at all, let alone queer people with queer bodies being taught about their sexuality. So we're told nothing. But you know, there is a deep-seated fear of HIV AIDS for many queer people, and I definitely experienced it growing up. You know, and so in some ways, you know, for a lot of people, sex and death are somehow linked. And COVID in this, in this way, I think, forced a lot of people to wrestle with their own mortality and think about the ways that their intimacy in their connections, something like a hug, something like seeing your loved ones, could expose them and or make them vulnerable. I really like the phrase make someone vulnerable to illness. And so that's kind of a few of the things that come up for me, when I think of HIV and COVID in conversation with one another. I think of the ways that people are forced to reckon with having a human body, to reckon with the fact that they might get ill for something that has nothing to do with them, for something that is totally a case of the government botching something and not caring about human life and for what it means in the ways that we reconceive and reconceptualize intimacy.
Ann: For Leisha McKinley Beach, who has worked as a public health advocate on HIV AIDS issues for three decades. At first, COVID felt like history, repeating.
Ann: I'm wondering what it's been like for you to watch this Coronavirus pandemic unfold, and what, if any connections you're making between that and what you have witnessed as like, you know, this country responded and continues to respond to HIV AIDS.
Leisha: Well, and with that, one question [laughter]
Ann: A giant question. [laughter]
Leisha: That, that covers this whole pandemic. And, you know, this has been, this whole process has been very difficult for me. When, when I got involved in HIV, I was an incoming freshman at the University of Florida. Go Gators. Seventeen and just knew about this epidemic and how it was affecting the country, obviously, the globe, but then there started to be this focus around communities of color. And that was, this June will be 30 years ago.
Ann: Wow.
Leisha: And in that 30 year period, I saw the COVID-19 pandemic unveiling before my eyes the same way that HIV did to this country. And just just just a few examples, just around what I witnessed just as a professional, but also what I witnessed personal and and, and I will say for me, I reached out to a few long time survivors of HIV, because I started using a term that I had never used before, and that was, it feels like PTSD to me.
Ann: Oh wow.
Leisha: Because I was so young, during the period right before the onset of antiretrovirals, during the period where we only had AZT, and we saw so much death. And when COVID came on the scene, and we began to see so much death, it took me back to that young adult and not knowing how to process my feelings and not understanding and you know, feeling like I am too young to be exposed to so much loss. But from, from a public health perspective, there were things that came out of this pandemic that I will say, weren't handled correctly. I would even go a stretch to say we're handled poorly as it relates to communities of color.
Ann: And when the overall public health rollout is screwed up, the messaging is unclear. You get stigma.
Leisha: We have seen stigma, as at its finest, um, with HIV. We have seen how that that same shame and stigma will determine whether a person gets tested, whether a person enters into treatment, whether a person remains in care and treatment in HIV. And Ann, we’re seeing the same thing now with COVID. Can I just say this, Ann?Can I just say this, Ann, I did not want to get in the COVID business, too much in my life, right now has been focused and dedicated on making sure that women have the same access to pre-exposure prophylaxis and HIV. And that's taking up all my time, because one would think that everything we've been through on HIV, there would never be a celebration of access or HIV prevention tools for one population when you don't have the same for the other population. But that clearly has not been the case. So I have been dedicating all my time to leveling that playing field and COVID comes on the scene. And I realized at that moment, that that was the moment that I realized I was gonna have to get involved in this. It was an elderly woman from my hometown, she called me after hearing a press conference with Dr. Fauci. This is so funny, but it's so true. She heard this press conference with Dr. Fauci. And Dr. Fauci used the term comorbidities throughout the press conference, you know, for people who are at greatest risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and possibly death and COVID. People who had comorbidities. And he goes on and he talks, you know, comorbidities, 10 times, comorbidities throughout the thing. And this elderly woman, she called me, and she said, Leisha, she said, I saw the press conference, she said, I think I'm okay. She said, the little white man.
[laughter]
Leisha cont: She said, the little white man said that you could get sick and die. Especially if you had comorbidity. She said, what my doctor had told me I had any comorbidities, he said that my blood sugar is up, and that my blood pressure is high. But I don't have the comorbidities. I don't know what that term meant, so I started creating fact sheets. I was like, so I got, you know, the folks that I love. The folks that are watching the news and trying to protect themselves but the terminology this use is now a barrier for them, so I took words like comorbidity and turned them into the language that they would use, you know. Instead of diabetes, some of the elders in my community, they would say I got a little bit of sugar. So a little bit of sugar is what went on the fact sheet.
Ann: Now, Alicia is bringing that energy to vaccination. Instead of leaning on shame or scare tactics, she's trying to listen to concerns and make her responses super personalized. This is one area where we all have a role to play. She says talking to our own communities about the vaccine.
Leisha: My mom, she’s in her mid-sixties, you know a girl never tells her age, you know she’s in her mid-sixties and most of her career has been in assisted living facilities. So you know, this is a woman who’s very educated, is a member of the health workforce, who had made a decision she was not getting the vaccine. And it really freaked me out, because like every day you go to work, you put yourself at risk, every single day. But what I did, instead of pointing out the scare tactic and trying to shame her from a negative place about getting the vaccine. There are things you are supposed to be around for, you are supposed to be around to continue to critique my parenting--
Ann: [laughter]
Leisha: You know, you never want it, but sometimes she gives this great advice, I just can’t tell her it’s great. And I’m like, I believe in a future where one day I’m going to be a grandparent and you’ve traveled this world and I really need you to be around to help me make these decisions in this new world of being a grandparent. And so, if you don’t do it for yourself, if you don’t do it for me, do it for your great-grandchildren, they will miss us. This will be a missed opportunity for them to not get to know you. And I left it like that. And she called me a couple of days later, and she said, I got the vaccine and it wasn’t that bad, I was like not that I was right. She never said you were right, none of that. She just dropped it in the conversation she got the vaccine and it wasn't that bad and I told her, now you just got one more step, you got to post it on your social media, so people know you got the vaccine. And she did and so many people liked and commented on it. And you know, my mom is a senior, she doesn’t know anything but Facebook, she doesn’t know Messenger, she doesn’t know Instagram, she just knows Facebook. She called me, I know you’re busy but I need some help with my phone, something is wrong with my phone. And I said, what’s wrong? You can’t turn it on? And she said, it’s like I have an alarm but I don’t have an alarm set. [laughter] You know where I’m going with this, Ann, right?
[laughter]
Ann: I know where this is going, I one hundred percent do.
Leisha: And so, while she’s telling me this problem with her phone, she’s like see, did you hear that. And I said, oh mom, you’re getting messages. And she’s like, well what is that? I didn’t sign up for that. [laughter] And so, I said I want you to find this little icon and I explain the icon. And I say, click it on. And when she clicked it on, it was like a whole new experience for her, there were people from her church, from her elementary school, people she hadn’t connected with since grade school that were asking her about the vaccine, where did she go, how does she feel. And I was like, look at you girl, the city advocate, you know. And she--
Ann: Your mom is a public health influencer.
Leisha: Exactly, exactly! And I told her, you realize that people are going to go and get vaccinated because of your story, that is so awesome. And so, it was moments like that and it just gives me so much hope that we are going to get through it and there will be a time when we will be talking about COVID and it will be in our rearview mirror. And so, I’m very hopeful and I believe it and I’m very hopeful for that time.
[music]
Ann: So hearing Leisha talk about all of this, I was really thinking about the ways that my COVID information was filtered through my community in the sense of like, okay, like when, and how are we all trying to get vaccinated? Or like, what, what did your symptoms look like? Or what have your personal safety policies been throughout the pandemic? And I'm wondering if you felt that too, if it was like, not that, like, there wasn't objective science out there or something like that, but that like the real meat of like, how are we living and keeping ourselves safe seemed to really happen for me in interpersonal ways, like with people in my community.
Aminatou: Yeah. I think that that's, I think that's fair and also very similar for me, I think. Um, but I think that I, uh, again, like, because of growing up in West Africa where we have had, um, you know, we get like all sorts of, uh, health scares that are to a different degree. Like not always pandemics. I think that the muscle of always keeping an eye on like what the health authorities are saying is also something that I, I had lost over the years and I was surprised to like plug it back into immediately. And that I think was also really hard because we have such a pension for like trusting, um, authority where it's like, if the, who says, or if the CDC says…
Ann: Dr. Fauci.
Aminatou: Right and Dr. Fauci and, um, you know, but I think that's something that was well, and maybe it was just because it's the first time that I've had to deal with this and adulthood. It's like, um, in childhood, the authorities would have been my parents who would say, well, we are having an Ebola, we're having an Ebola outbreak. So this is what we do, or we were having a cholera outbreak, and this is why we're staying at home and whatever. So I guess like, it is the first time as an adult that I've had to navigate this. But I think something that I was not prepared for was how muddled the authoritative messaging would be. Not that I thought, you know, not that I naively thought that, um, you know, the authorities know everything, but it was, there were just these very nimble and, um, like nuanced ways that we were not on the same page when we were saying certain things, you know, and I also found that, um, at least like in the pandemic, I could not engage with this kind of information with people on social media. I was like, you either have to be like an actual epidemiologist, just doing a press conference or I'm reading in the paper, or it's a conversation that I'm engaged with, with people who are my immediate community. But, um, I, I found myself having a lot of anxiety at the water cooler aspect of all of this, because it did not build in, um, enough trust.
Ann: That really resonates with me. Like the idea of like, it's either science or specifics, like really highly specifics where it's like, I'm talking to people where I understand like something about their health history, something about the constraints of their life and where they live and, um, who they're taking care of and all of that stuff. Like I almost needed that level of detail to, to engage and be like, how are you applying this high level science, God, that really, really resonates like no nothing in between is useful,
Aminatou: Yeah, nothing in between, because I do think that, um, it, it really just exposed the cracks of like how we're, how do we all handle scientific information? And I think that even within very close friendships, there was already conflict about that, where it was like, okay, we are hearing the science, but we are making different meanings of it. And that's already a source of conflict, but also I just find no use. And it's just, I'm like, this is a personal preference. I think everybody deals in a crisis differently, but for me, I have no use in just like a worrying with people and, and every like everyone's anxiety coming to the forefront because none of us are informed enough to make these decisions. And so I think that the really protecting myself from the water cooler was that because all that did was like heighten my sense of anxiety. It was like, Oh, one more thing I hadn't thought about, or one more or somebody else is doing that other thing. And I was like, no, no, I need to put one foot in front of the other. I need to worry about my it's like, like who were, who was my immediate exposure? Like who could I endanger? And who am I, you know, like, who am I accountable to? And also, how are we making informed decisions together? But it was really hard.
Ann: Yeah. Right. And as you're saying, it's not the end of us making decisions collectively, or like with the collective in mind. But honestly, at the same time, it's hard to see COVID in the rear view mirror because when you US vaccinations are plateauing and the virus is still ravaging many countries in the global South. It is, it isn't over. It's just not. And I found myself wondering if this is going to end or continue rather much more like HIV AIDS, which is to say a virus that for many people is relegated to the past, but for others is still very much in the present. I asked Mathew Rodriguez about that.
Mathew: You know, I think that there are a lot of people think that we're kind of in the late stages of the COVID pandemic, like the vaccine is coming out, things are starting to reopen. But I think that the reality is that we're still in it's still just beginning, right? What is the, our lives with COVID are going to go on for years, you know, there are people and there are movies out there that push the idea that the AIDS epidemic ended when in 1996 they released, you know, highly active antiretroviral therapy and because the medicine was so good, the epidemic ended, but, you know, the point that I'm trying to make is that the epidemic lives on through structural inequalities, through mass incarceration, through lack of access to medical care, and of course, especially in the global south, as you, as you pointed out, um, so I think that that the same thing is true for COVID. It might be, when we say over, I think what people are saying is, I won't have to think about COVID as much anymore. Just like, there are some people who might say, you know, I don't think about AIDS every day. I do I happen to, you know, but, um, you know, we are just at the beginning of our lives with COVID, we are going to see, you know, I know people who are COVID long hollers, who are, you know, dealing with symptoms, still, after having a COVID infection, we don't yet know what what the virus going through someone's body, the way that it can affect people, 10 to 20 years from now, we don't know, um, you know, what, government assistance is going to be in place for people who are dealing with, you know, chronic COVID. And as you brought up, we don't know what it's gonna look like for the vaccine rollout in the global south, because that is not even in a lot of countries, it's, you know, the United States is still being selfish in the way that it’s distributed, in the way that it shares the patent for the vaccine. So and harmful, so we are very much an early COVID. And that's something that I tell people and that I that I truly believe that, you know, this is something that's going to make us think how we care for people, how we practice mutual aid, how we show up how we support, those questions are going to be with us for a long time, past vaccines and boosters.
Ann: So what would it mean to accept that we are at the beginning of a long game with, COVID not at the end of a pandemic and, um, what do you think we can learn from the activists who worked and continue to work on HIV AIDS?
Mathew: A lot of the previous, a lot of the previous stories about AIDS that are in the media revolve around someone, let's think about Rent or Dallas Buyers Club or something like that, like Rent for its queerness does center, you know, white male perspectives, and Dallas Buyers Club is about a straight white man. And they're kind of about how these people beat the odds. And you know, it's a very heavy individualism, very heavy like, you know, this person saw that there was a problem and they made a change. But the reality is that buyers clubs were a communal collective effort, and survival among survival in the AIDS epidemic was a collective effort. And despite, you know, like I was talking about before with movies, like maybe How to Survive a Plague, which shows just five, the lives of five white guys who were in Act Up at the time. They, you know, they certainly did a lot, but we can't understand AIDS and we can't understand the response to it as you know, these five guys did something. We're talking about a collective of like, 800 to 1000 people in a room at any time. And that's only Act Up there were so many groups that, were had different constituencies that are not, you know, a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, in my collective always says, like, when you remember one group, you automatically just remember other things, right? So you also have to say, you know, that's one group that's well known, but there are so many other groups, Gay Men of African Descent. There were so many, you know, different groups around at the time, that were responding to AIDS in different ways. Women, people of color, just all types, and I think if anything, what we can learn from AIDS is that the response has to be collective and that we have to show up for one another and we have to... help each other through transition. So one of the reasons that the collective I'm in, What Would an HIV Doula Do, that we call ourselves doulas is because doulas help people through transition periods. And like doulas, the work of doula-ing and when it comes to COVID and HIV is that we’re, you know, we're all learning what it means to live, to live with illness and to live with HIV and to live with COVID, in the sense that we're living in a world in which these phenomena are present. And we respond by not exactly mutual aid, but we respond by helping people wrestle with what it means to live in a world where, you know, these, the official response to a lot of illness, the public health response has often been harshness and harm, and I think that we respond to it like collective action, collective love. A really yeah, so that's what I want to say is that I think, if anything, I hope the AIDS epidemic shows that we need each other for this fight and the for this fight for our lives and for the love and support that we can bring to one another as we gain a deeper understanding of what it means to live with illness, even if you are not yourself sick.
Ann: I find myself, thinking about, um, the news coverage of vaccine hesitancy and how many people just don't like being told what to do. They think of it as a personal choice that they make for themselves, for their bodies. Um, but not a choice they make to keep their community protected, like much less strangers protected, but ultimately when it comes to a highly communicable virus, there's no such thing as a truly individual
Mathew: It's about caring for other people, and we're working in ways that do, that keep other people protected. And I think that's why the messaging is not resonating with a lot of Americans, because a lot of Americans don't think that other people's health is their business, because we're not taught that. And so I just want to say that I think that the AIDS epidemic can teach us that, our that, you know, our health is each other's business in a way, like there are ways that we can look out for each other's health, and we can work together to, to keep, to protect each other.
Aminatou: Yeah. I mean, I remember on, um, maybe day three or four of lockdown, like in the really scary days, the news was talking about the potential, um, fatality count for COVID where there were like over a half a million people might die or maybe a million and, you know, and the numbers so big and scary. And I remember someone just saying like, Hey, you know, um, yes, like a half a million people, it's awful. But also we are a society that have made choices. We have made the choice that it's okay for 70,000 people to die of the flu every year. We decided that our, we were, we were not going to change our lives because that number is small enough that it doesn't matter. And I remember feeling a real sense of like, Oh, that had never occurred to me before. You know, that, um, 70,000 like 500,000 people is awful. 70,000 people is awful. One person is awful because we are not doing like very basic, essentially like community care for each other. All it is, is like for, in the case of COVID I was like, wash your hands, wear a mask and distance, like, of course it was hard. But I think that really, like, it just opened my mind to the fact that, um, every day we make decisions that are not optimal for, for other people in our community. And so even as my life has gone back to normal. I like, I have been holding the weight of that since the beginning of the pandemic. And I'm like, I can't unknow that. And so there has been no like a great joy. One of the things that has, has been the hardest about this period was really, was seeing firsthand how, um, how much inequality exists in our society and that also you cannot unknow and you cannot unknow your place in it. And you can't unknow that we choose to move on when, when some people's lives are completely out of standstill. And that I'm like, I, yes, it's like, it's great to see all my friends. It's great to have this normal life, but I'm like, is that normal? Because that part of my brain is broken.
Ann: Yeah. And I think if there's, if there's anything that I, that I take some comfort in, is that like, it is valuable and important to be reminded of like how interconnected our fates really are. Especially like, once you reach a certain level of like wealth or privilege like this, our society makes it really easy to pretend that like, you really can just determine it all yourself. And like, there, there is a part of me that is like, I am not grateful that like, like this year has been so incredibly terrible and there has been like so much loss of life and so much difficulty. Like, I'm not, I'm not like, happy about that, but I do feel like the silver lining of like, hello, like wake up and remember that we are all interconnected. And there's actually, especially when it comes to something like health, there is no such thing as like your individual health, like your health is the result of the community. You live in the things that you have access to. Like, how are you, how are you living with that knowledge? I, I feel like I don't want to lose, I don't want to lose that. And I think that's also part of really forcing, forcing my brain. You know, even though it feels like, like, think things are different. Like if you, if you fill my day-to-day life with a camera, like my life is different than it was one year ago today, you know, like that, that is true, but I don't want to lose that sense of like, okay, like what does everyone else doing? How are they doing? Like that kind of like pandemic vigilance, I think could have a positive side as well. Like not just on a public health level, like on a political level, like on other levels. So anyway, so thanks for being part of that community with me. I love that you helped me remember that too.
Aminatou: Ah thank you for being part of my community. Um, and I just love you very much.
Ann: I love you too. And I'll see you on the internet.
Aminatou: See you on the internet, boo boo.
Ann: Huge thanks to our guests today. You can find out more about Leisha McKinley Beaches work at leisha.org. That's L E I S H A dot org. And Mathew Rodriguez is at Mathew hyphen rodriguez dot com. That's Mathew with one T and we'll link to both of their sites in the show notes and a special thanks for this episode goes to Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan.
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Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.