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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed the same thing, and I'm pretty sure it's because COVID no longer features as part of identity politics. It's the identity politics that drove the AIDS discussion, and it's been the identify politics that drove the COVID discussion. Now that has passed, COVID is no longer a topic people care to discuss regularly, while AIDS is still a forefront topic.

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More like identity politics is why AIDS was completely neglected. With COVID it's clear that capital couldn't stomach the effects treating it properly would have on the labor market. What a ham-handed way to compare two wildly unsimilar scenarios.

While this may be true to an extent, it doesn’t address why fighting AIDS outside the context of its impact on the LGBTQ community, e.g. in the developing world, still figures so prominently in American culture and public policy. I expect that the real reason is actually something more sinister, where the politics of the US have devolved to a point where almost everyone will accept the “they deserved it” narrative that was used to vilify those with HIV/AIDS, whether it be of the “they’re were old/fat/weak” or “unvaccinated” variety.

Or possibly it’s like the hole in the ozone layer, which has also faded from public discourse, because thanks to that huge amount of press and action it’s been largely addressed.

You’re basically saying “why is this thing we’re all working so hard to prevent not happening enough to justify prevention?”.

I’m not sure what’s been addressed? All the interventions beside vaccination have been taken apart and we’re on track to kill 200K people this year. I suppose that’s better than the outset, but would’ve been considered catastrophic for any other disease, prior to COVID. If HIV/AIDS was killing this many people in the US in 2023, it would be considered a national disgrace, for example.

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