If you’d say, but those are not similar viruses, or sicknesses, or epidemics, I’d say: that’s what one can do when one contrasts one thing against another. No need to be identical. And you’re not going to like the results.
The AIDS-virus could be caught by blood transfusion, but if everyone had been monogamous, there would have been no such thing as any venereal disease. AIDS was blamed on polyamory. In classical Christianity, sex, except for having kids, is a ‘weakness of the flesh’ and bad, so that clicked. Besides, Gay sex is a sin anyway, so it was considered their own fault.
If we didn’t have so many plane riders, so many living packed in gigantic cities, and if Westerners wouldn’t value ‘autonomy’ over life itself, the COVID epidemic would never have happened. However, since travel, city life, and free will are the new idols, the pandemic is blamed on the virus.
The AIDS epidemic decimated Gay Men’s societies and much fewer others’ and the nations did nothing to stop it. Only when violent Gays and Allies US demonstrations began, slowly, money came available for research. Half a century on, there is still no vaccine, but at least there is a cocktail to stop the disease and to prevent the spreading (if one takes the cocktail).
When AIDS decimated whole villages in Africa, leaving just small kids and elderly, few cared. They had no money. But, what nice communities to test experimental medication on! Not to give them any when they were proven helpful, of course. If it doesn’t make any money, who cares?
In the case of COVID, the whole world started competing to have a vaccine and, at least half a dozen ones will be available in 18 months. No public pressure was needed. The victims were not mostly minorities. But, as with everything, the wealthy countries got almost all of it, the others a handout.
It’s nice to be privileged but, does it need to be at the expense of others?
Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden 