Hit TV show It’s A Sin reveals failure to learn lessons from the past

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But this is not a sequence in a report from an overwhelmed Covid neighborhood. It’s 1985 and here’s a scene from “It’s a Sin”, a scorching British TV miniseries that explores the AIDS crisis over a decade through the prism of those who lived through it.

The parallels between the devastation caused by AIDS and the Covid-19 tragedy today are clear. Thousands of lives lost, people dying alone in hospital, denied the opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones, with only medical staff to offer comfort in their last moments. Funerals devoid of grieving crowds, misinformation and confusion in the face of the growing crisis have quickly spread across the world.

But – with respect to the public health response – have governments and politicians learned from the past?

Marc Thompson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 at the age of 17 and now works to promote public health in underserved communities in the UK, doesn’t think so. “I have yet to speak to a government minister working on the Covid response who asked the question of what we have learned from the HIV and AIDS crisis,” says Thompson.

While the comparisons are obvious, the context is different. At the height of the AIDS crisis, many victims died on their own, not because of fears of contamination – although these certainly existed – but, as the series by writer Russell T. Davies shows, in cause of shame.

Funerals for Covid-19 victims are so uncrowded because the coronavirus thrives at social gatherings, whether their purpose is to commemorate or celebrate. Many AIDS victims were buried alone because of the stigma attached to those who contracted the disease.

Nurses wearing PPE attend to patients in a California intensive care unit. The parallels with the AIDS era are clear.

When one of the gay characters on Davies’ show dies of complications from AIDS, their families come together to burn clothes, photographs, books and memorabilia, in order to excise them – and the shame that was so often associated to disease – of their life.

There are also stark contrasts between the crises.

“It was only when the British government realized that the straight population would be in danger [from AIDS] have they finally accelerated their response to the threat of the crisis, ”says Lisa Power, co-founder of Britain’s leading LGBT lobby group, Stonewall, and adviser on“ It’s A Sin ”.

“One of the reasons there has been such an immediate response to Covid is that it affects the general population. It is much more random than the HIV that it infects, ”she says. “Everyone has a grandmother. But not everyone had a gay friend then, and not everyone has a gay friend now.”

Aids response hampered by homophobia

Thompson says the lack of urgency in responding to the AIDS crisis has happened in large part because “the bodies that were affected the most were the bodies that were not valued.”

HIV and AIDS campaigners in the UK say that the fact that the response to the coronavirus has been much more timely than the response to AIDS comes down to widespread homophobia and societal and political disregard for marginalized groups.

“ACT UP and Larry Kramer used to label AIDS a negligent genocide,” says Ben Weil, activist and doctoral researcher on the exclusion of homosexuals from blood donation programs at the Department of Science and Technology at the UCL in London. “Covid is a genocide of the clinically vulnerable and disabled by neglect.”
AIDS activists in the 1980s complained about a lackluster government response.
Power claims that the press of the 1980s and 1990s fostered a culture of shame around HIV and AIDS, while the (mistaken) belief that heterosexuals were not in danger encouraged a lackluster backlash from British and American governments, led at the time by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

“The press, and the tabloids in particular, were basically saying that this disease would only affect gays and ‘junkies’ [intravenous drug addicts] and that wasn’t something to worry about because they didn’t matter, ”says Power.

Weil agrees that the media – on both sides of the Atlantic – have played a key role in influencing the severity and speed with which the two diseases have been addressed. “When 100,000 people died from Covid in the United States, it was the front page of the New York Times, but it took them a number of years and many AIDS-related deaths to make the AIDS crisis a leading story, ”Weil says.
He argues that the fundamental difference between responses to AIDS and to Covid-19 has revolved around who society in general, and especially those in power, feel need to be protected. “All risk is political,” Weil says. At the start of the AIDS crisis, homosexuals were not considered worthy of priority. In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, many countries were slow to respond to the threat of residential facilities for the elderly, with devastating consequences.

For those who have lived through both crises – especially those who continue to be involved in the fight against the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS, the enormous contrast in responses, highlighted by “It is a sin”, is revealing. – but it is the similarities, and the repetition of the serious mistakes of the past, that worry them the most.

It’s a weird time to watch “It’s a Sin,” says Thompson. It’s both a “moving, sometimes trigger and fun watch,” he says. The series – which has received very enthusiastic reviews in the UK since its launch in January – will air on HBO Max in the US from February 18. (CNN and HBO share the same parent company, WarnerMedia.)

Watch & quot; It & # 39; s Sin & quot; can be “emotional, stimulating and fun,” says one activist.

Throughout the series, exuberance and euphoria are shared among members of the LGBTQ + community as they navigate their late teens and early twenties to loud house parties and parties. what Thompson describes as “dingy little pubs where the dance floor was next to the bar.”

Yet where there is unfailing fun and joy to be found in “It’s a Sin,” there is also heartache as the shadow of AIDS that hangs over the first episode gradually envelops the characters.

The series sparked a positive and perhaps unexpected public health benefit: British activists used its success as a springboard for new campaigns around the importance of HIV testing and treatment effectiveness. The enthusiastic cast of the young gay actor series crashed into this post in TV interviews and social media posts.

Yet just like AIDS, Covid-19 has robbed us of collective joy and has suddenly forced us to face trauma and death on a daily basis – and as the parallels between the two epidemics do not end there, with a few key lessons. ignored past, HIV and AIDS activists feel a sense of already seen.



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