COVID-19 Vaccine: You Can Thank HIV and Ebola Vaccine Researchers
Most of all, thank the protesters who demanded research into HIV.
“A new HIV vaccine, based on the Moderna COVID-19 inoculation, has shown a 97% antibody response rate in Phase I clinical trials.”
Wait, what? How the heck is this not front-and-center on the TV network news? The moment I saw the news, I couldn’t help but remember the decades of fear and heartbreak — and homophobic hatred — that followed the rise of HIV/AIDS since the late 1970’s. I remember listening at the time to a right-wing politician on the radio in the Mississippi Delta expound upon how best to control the spread of AIDS. He was absolutely sure that what needed to happen was to test every gay man for the disease, and every one that tested positive would be sent to a camp to be kept isolated and away from the general population to prevent spread of the contagion. He didn’t say “concentration camp”. He didn’t have to.
I was somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but I saw the logic and couldn’t argue otherwise. Of course, this was back when I was a strong conservative who couldn’t allow for anything other than two genders, each one hard-wired for attraction only to the opposite gender. I also thought the Village People were just a bunch of regular hetero guys like all the…
