Despite effective treatments, HIV drags on. Experts warn COVID may face the same fate

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April 19th, 2022

There are parallels between COVID and HIV. Despite effective treatment and prevention tools, preventable deaths continue because of difficulties reaching out to and educating people about the tools. And even as the country seems determined to move on from the pandemic, as of April 2022, someone dies of COVD-19 every four minutes in the U.S.

Ron Frehm / Ron Frehm

HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are completely different viruses. They spread and make people sick in completely different ways. But in 2020, when COVID-19 started to spread, Stephanie Brooks-Wiggins says, it felt familiar.

“Everywhere you went, people just seemed to be getting sick,” she says. Through the pandemic, she lost five family members to COVID-19. “I lost my son-in-law. I lost my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law. They all died within months of each other.”

Back in 1986, when she was diagnosed with HIV, it felt the same way. “There were people dropping like flies – people were dying,” she says.

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