Instead of spreading misinformation and accusations as a certain sitting president does, top Democratic presidential hopefuls took to Twitter with messages of support and respect in honor of World AIDS Day Sunday. The "first ever global health day," World AIDS Day is an international effort to raise awareness about HIV, support those living with the virus, and commemorate those who died from AIDS-related illnesses, according to the U.K. charity National AIDS Trust.
”On #WorldAIDSDay, we gather to remember the many lives lost to the AIDS epidemic,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with those who live today with HIV, and we recommit ourselves to ending this epidemic.” Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Kamala Harris released similar statements, both calling for an end to stigma related to living with HIV and pointing to the statistic that nearly 40 million people are living with the virus around the world.
“On #WorldAIDSDay, it is my commitment to you that we end HIV and AIDS within a generation,” Harris said. “It’s on us to improve education, end the stigma, and work together to fight discrimination.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg dedicated entire Medium posts to the day of awareness.
Buttigieg, who would be the nation's first openly gay president if elected, described in his post what happened even years after “prejudice and fear, not science, drove policy” at the height of the AIDS epidemic. He said his office runs a blood drive that he inherited when he took office. “And I remember the moment when I realized that — unlike most initiatives I spearhead — I couldn’t lead by example, because my blood’s not welcome in this country,” Buttigieg said. He called the discrimination a “small consequence of a nationwide pattern created by decades-old ignorance and bigotry.”
”As the AIDS epidemic accelerated in the 1980s, the federal government shifted from quite literally laughing off the epidemic to panicking about it,” Buttigieg said. He referenced laws restricting gay men from donating blood and a travel ban restricting people with HIV/AIDS from traveling to the United States without special waivers from 1987 to 2010.
”Policy drove people into the shadows,” the mayor said. “And those driven into the shadows too often died from the virus.” He quoted Randy Shilts, a noted journalist and the “foremost chronicler of the AIDS epidemic.” “By the time America paid attention to the disease,” Buttigieg noted that Shilts wrote, “it was too late to do anything about it.”
Decades later, hundreds of thousands of people are still dying from AIDS-related illnesses. About 770,000 people died of those illnesses worldwide in 2018, compared to 1.2 million in 2010 and 1.7 million in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Biden noted in his post that he was part of an administration that did try to do something to save lives. President Barack Obama expanded the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, issued guidance to permit federal funds to be used for some syringe services programs, and lifted the ban on HIV-positive travelers and immigrants in 2011.
Biden said the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, for which he helped lead the reauthorization effort, allowed “more than 2.6 million babies with HIV-infected mothers to be born free of the disease.” He also called for "robust support" for programming in communities with inadequate health services, the modernization of criminal laws that "create disproportionate penalties for people living with HIV," and a complete rejection of President Donald Trump’s proposed programming cuts that would undermine the Affordable Care Act.
Biden said Trump’s efforts “to allow health care providers to discriminate and deny services to LGBTQ patients may jeopardize prevention efforts in high-burden and high-risk communities, including transgender populations, who are five times as likely to be diagnosed with HIV.” He said, “We need to support evidence-based policies to fight discrimination, support women’s reproductive rights, ensure universal education for girls and boys, and defend the human rights of LGBTQ people around the world.”