Coach Finstock: I think it's totally insane that more people don't know about PrEP. The fact that we have a prophylactic medication to prevent HIV is one of the greatest medical achievements of my lifetime. It's hard to explain just how hopeless the fight against AIDS felt in the 80s and 90s.

I think it's totally insane that more people don't know about PrEP. The fact that we have a prophylactic medication to prevent HIV is one of the greatest medical achievements of my lifetime. It's hard to explain just how hopeless the fight against AIDS felt in the 80s and 90s.

10 years ago, gay Americans could not get married and have it count in all 50 states 20 years ago, you could be made uninsurable because you got sick once 30 years ago, HIV was a death sentence 40 years ago, acid rain was still a problem Dedicated public servants keep pushing good things forward

Similarly try explaining to people what preexisting conditions meant

Zoomers straight up do not believe that the pre Obamacare status quo was that bad.

My mom used to take me to visit folks in a nursing home in Brooklyn, where she worked. A lot of young men dying from AIDs were there. Many were former performers on Broadway etc. They’d try to teach me to tap dance or sing or throw my voice. “Think of the back row!!” Crazy to think of it now.

I didn’t know her cousin, who she loved dearly, had AIDs and was slowly dying in Manhattan. She visited him without us.

Madonna had a very touching memorial to AIDS - just picture after picture of all those who died, mostly young men - in her most recent tour. honestly it was brutal.

Ugh. It’s a monumental tragedy and it’s just forgotten Even I forget sometimes. We were watching the original Little Mermaid and I was like, damn why don’t Disney movies have music like this anymore? And then I remembered why. 😔

I am really glad I got to see the Quit way back when.

it was pretty overwhelming. it came to my university and I was assigned to walk Cleve Jones around. what stuck in my head was him saying “it wasn’t just that all your friends were dying - it was the familiar strangers - mailmen, sales clerks that suddenly disappeared”.

Just, man.

IYKYK

Knowing the context that pic is always a gut punch when you see it.

That one hurts every time I see it.

My most emotionally draining lecture in my post-1945 US history course is always the one on the HIV/AIDS crisis

I recall a TV drama in the early 90s where someone with aids visited the shows main family. And after the guy with aids left, the dad actually threw away a glass he used. This was framed as only slightly paranoid but also like something many normal people did.

Golden Girls had similar, think Rose had a scare? For them it went for almost throwing her cup away to defiently taking a drink from it in solidarity and to throw off their own fear. Golden Girls was solid.

Yep! And not just sharing mugs, they fought back against the notion that AIDS is a bad people's disease, and God punishing you for your sins (when Rose said it would have been more fitting if Blanche had it)

They were wildly ahead of their time on so many of these issues.

Yeah, it was actually a big deal that Barbra Bush was photographed holding a baby with AIDS and Princess Di shaking hands with the guy who had AIDS.

Roy Cohen had AIDS and visited Maralago before he died. Trump had all the cutlery and dishes fumigated after Cohen died. www.newsweek.com/donald-trump... Which I mean, yes, but because Cohen and Trump worshipped the Devil, not because of HIV.

Trump Said He Fumigated Plates After Meal With Roy Cohn, Book Claimswww.newsweek.com The claim features in "The Fixers," a new book about President Donald Trump's relationships with former attorneys and advisers.

People wouldn't even help hurt strangers bc they were afraid of getting HIV/AIDS. Might be something we were more aware of bc of first aid training, but, yeah, people really were intensely paranoid and unaware of how transmission actually happened

My hyper conservative mother went to her gay cousin's wedding and warned me not to eat or drink anything there or I'd get AIDS. 1992, I think? Thankfully, and weirdly, my high school had a quarter decent health class and I knew better and had a great time.

Yes PrEP works great. Which of course is why Republicans are trying to end coverage for it.

Pro-disease party

there’s also PEP, doxyPEP & long-acting injectable version of PrEP!

Yes!

I have some questions about the varieties for health reasons, would you be comfortable answering a few?

ask away — between myself & @thesix.bsky.social we probably can be of help

I'm very curious about this injection prep brit

apretude (cabotegavir)! i know we have apretude patients in our clinic currently & if i recall, were referred by red door.

That's fascinating. I also wish we had intermittent prep, etc but basically the more options the better

If Brit's not got the time/energy, I don't mind fielding pre/post exposure prophylaxis questions.

Not least because so many of the people involved in it died deaths that were rendered invisible on purpose

The bit at the end of Angels in America where Prior states "we won't die secret deaths any more" still chills me every time I think about it.

Every year or so I rewatch How to Survive a Plague and then sob at the end.

I've never actually seen it, and I need to. Incidentally ACT UP was maybe the most important (and effective) art/protest movement of all time.

It’s so good. And the end is actually uplifting, because it shows all the survivors who are now middle-aged to old people, who essentially saved their own lives. And I end up sobbing because it’s just overwhelming to see.

In a similar vein, "Being Boring" by the Pet Shop Boys absolutely wrecks me if I pay attention to it. We take the world they fought for for granted far too often.

“We will be *citizens*”

Such an incredible line. An entire world in a word.

I remember sitting on the bus in 2015 and seeing a sign for PrEP. I couldn't believe it, so amazing!

I remember… Act Up Silence = Death

In order to get a feel for it first watch, "And The Band Played On" with Matthew Modine. Read the book by Ryan White. Don't skip that as it gives the child's perspective getting kicked out of school because he has AIDS due to Hemophilia. There are other great movies that capture the pain.

In case folks don't remember, Senator Jesse Helms suggested concentration camps for anyone with an HIV diagnosis. Some [strike that - LOTS!] of the behaviour of various governments was [and, in some cases, remains] totally egregious. For instance, this, from May 2023: www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1...

A new anti-gay law in Uganda calls for life in prison for those who are convictedwww.npr.org The bill, signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni on Monday, calls for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality. It drew swift condemnation from rights groups around the world.

I asked my GP for PrEP once and she had no idea what I was talking about - she was concerned I even thought AIDS had a preventative treatment

There's a generation that's never met the generation they lost.

20 years ago Hep C was you either had a liver transplant or you had it for life It is now curable (it was also only really discovered via HIV's appearance) This is fucking MIND BLOWING

At the same time on our side of the barrier, while Romania was hiding their HIV patients, in Hungary the rare and tropical diseases department treated patients. Doctors had to be read in confidentially and patients couldn't learn what they had was HIV.

i got clean in SF ‘97 & it was a horribly frightening time for all of us. the beautiful & kind trans femmes who helped me through the kick were in the recovery level of women’s shelter for HIV/AIDS in addition to addiction. will never forget them. ever ❤️

I was chatting to one of my kids about how terrifying sex was in the late 80's early 90's. Always sad to think of the many inc. Freddie Mercury. Who died only a couple of years away from living a practically normal life.

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