The hero of the Corona crisis was also the hero of the AIDS crisis: in a speech, Fauci now drew connections between the two pandemics with regard to the stigma attached to minorities. In the US, the PoC (people of colour) community is particularly affected by COVID-19. The immunologist praised the queer community and said that their strong manner and activism alone had changed something about the stigmata. He was standing – of all people – next to Mike Pence, when giving his speech.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US since 1984 – and thus also the main figure during the AIDS crisis. Not only that: as a member of the National Institute of Health, the immunologist has already served as an advisor to every US president since Ronald Reagan.

At a briefing at the White House in Washington on Tuesday, he spoke about evidence that COVID-19 has a disproportionate impact on the country’s African-American community. He drew a direct comparison to the impact of the AIDS crisis on the queer community.

An analysis by the Washington Post showed that in the United States, counties with a majority African-American population have up to three times as many infections and up to six times as many deaths as counties with a mainly Caucasian population.

Fauci referred to this in his speech – according to him, it is not the case that African Americans are infected more often. Rather, underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and asthma, which are more prevalent in the community, would put people in intensive care and ultimately lead to a higher mortality rate. He said:

“Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a crisis, it shines a very bright light on some of the weaknesses of our society.”

In the US, according to the newspaper Die Welt, the statistical probability of African Americans not having health insurance is twice as high as for white Americans. In addition, more than a fifth of the African American population in the US lives in poverty – again, twice as many as the white population. And the community lives in more densely populated areas and often works in jobs where measures such as home office are not possible.

Fauci made it clear that there have always been health inequalities for the African American community. COVID-19, like HIV in the 1990s, shed light on how accepted these inequalities are – because minorities suffer disproportionately from such a crisis.

Then Fauci finds cordial words of encouragement:

“When you look back, there was an extraordinary stigma against the gay community at that time – and when the world realised how the gay community reacted to this outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism… I think that was the moment that really changed the stigma against the homosexual community.”

Did Trump set a thief to catch a thief?

Dr. Fauci’s speech is made even more positive by the fact that he delivered it while standing next to Vice President Mike Pence. The Republican headed a think-tank institute of the right-wing Indiana Policy Review Foundation at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1990s and made a name for himself by promoting the very stigmasta that Fauci denounced in his speech.

Pence argued, for example, that homosexuals did not deserve legal protection because homosexuality was at the very least an individual choice and at the very most a learned behaviour. In 2000, he published an election manifesto calling for certain organisations to cut funding for HIV/AIDS prevention – those that “celebrate and encourage behaviour that favours, celebrates and promotes the spread of the HI virus”.

His fight against HIV/AIDS is different: The ban on the needle exchange program and cuts in HIV testing led to a large increase in HIV infections during his time as governor of Indiana. In the small town of Austin alone, 200 people became infected with the virus until Pence pulled the ripcord – and was subsequently celebrated for solving the problem.

Trump made Pence Chairman of the White House Corona virus Task Force in late February. He praised him with the words:

“I think he’s done a phenomenal job in the healthcare field. One of the best, if not the best work in the country.”

It’s reassuring to know that Dr. Anthony Fauci is there also.

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