Thread by @kakape

My colleagues and I have decided to spend a few episodes of our @pandemiapodcast talking about the search for an HIV vaccine and parallels and differences with #covid19.
First episode (in German) here, a few thoughts (in English) to come:

viertausendhertz.de/pan21/

@pandemiapodcast It’s worth noting that we are coming up on 40 years since the first report appeared on what would turn into the devastating AIDS pandemic. On 5 June 1981, @CDCMMWR reported on 5 young men in Los Angeles with a rare pneumonia caused by a fungus, 2 had died

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/m…

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR One month later, there were 26 similar cases reported in @CDCMMWR (cssh.northeastern.edu/pandemic-teach…).
As Tony Fauci told us:
"At that point, it dawned upon me, we have a really serious problem. And this is very likely a new disease, likely a virus."

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR Fauci’s life changed at that point. Other scientists and doctors sprang into action, too. But there was no political response. And while the time scales and the pathogen are very different, of course, there are echoes here of what we have seen with #Covid19.

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR It may sound hopelessly naive but as someone who was born in 1982 and tested HIV-positive only in 2013, going back and looking at some of the early political reaction (or rather inaction) and rhetoric was shocking.

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR Take the presser that happened on October 15, 1982 in the White House and with which my colleague @sciencecohen opens his great book “Shots in the Dark”:

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR @sciencecohen It was interesting to hear what Fauci had to say when I asked him if with Trump and #covid19 he felt like history was just repeating itself. He basically answered: Kind of, but with Trump it was worse.

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR @sciencecohen “There was nothing in the early years, from the Reagan White House, or subsequently, from the George HW Bush White House, that did anything to counter or impede what we were doing”, Fauci told me. “We didn't have public demeaning of me as a scientist."

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR @sciencecohen Trump on the other hand actively worked against him and other scientists, Fauci told me. "I mean, it was almost an active put down of what we were doing, whereas back then, it was more of a passive lack of the utilisation of the bully pulpit versus trying to suppress something."

@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR @sciencecohen There is obviously a lot more to all of this and I am acutely aware that I am alive today and able to essentially live a normal life not just because of the work of scientists but also crucially that of activists that worked with all they had to be heard.