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Lessons from the front lines of the AIDS epidemic
Source: Andrew Savulich / AP / The Atlantic

On the latest episode of the Social Distance podcast, James Hamblin and Katherine Wells are joined by Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and AIDS activist, who describes his experience fighting AIDS in the 1980s and ’90s and the implications for today.

Listen to the episode here:

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What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.

Katherine Wells: We got a question from a listener about something that’s been floating around and that I’m actually quite curious about as well. Ted writes, “In recent weeks, there’ve been a lot of stories about COVID-19 that look at HIV as a kind of older-sister narrative. For the most part, I’ve hated these stories because they treat HIV like a past plague that only impacted white, urban, middle-class gay men. What I have not encountered is a mainstream look at the criminalization around COVID-19 and how that relates and is informed by HIV criminalization.”

We need an expert for this one. Gregg, could you introduce yourself?

Gregg Gonsalves: My name is Gregg Gonsalves. I’m an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

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