Forty years ago this June, we saw the start of another global health crisis when the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) and brought with it a similar sense of doom.

Much like the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the initial wave of AIDS infections upended the world.

While Covid-19 was particularly devastating for the elderly, AIDS initially killed mostly young, gay men with a harsh, relentless illness that crippled the immune system and led to cancers and severe secondary infections. In the early years, it seemed to be universally fatal. Now a global disease affecting men and women in equal proportions, AIDS has killed more than 32.7 million people.

Although the death toll is chilling, real progress has been made in diagnosis and treatment. Rates of new infection and death continue to gradually drop. Initially, though, control was evasive: it took nearly four years after the MMWR report for the Food and Drug Administration to license a commercial blood test to diagnose the causative virus while treatment with potent and effective antiviral medications was not available till the mid-1990s, fifteen years after recognition of the disease. Unfortunately, a vaccine to prevent or treat the infection remains elusive, despite decades of trying.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/01/opinions/aids-40-years-covid-opinion-sepkowitz/index.html