Like several of my peers, I noticed many similarities between the COVID-19 pandemic and the HIV epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Fear, uncertainty, and persecution became rampant as friends turned into enemies and property was destroyed, and neighborhoods were cordoned. Governments waged war against unfamiliar threats, while people flooded the streets in protest of social inequities. In the United States, the healthcare system wrestled with this dilemma as it tried to rectify centuries of racism in the face of a public health emergency
