World AIDS Day Is Grim Reminder of an Ongoing Epidemic, with 700,000 Dead from HIV/AIDS in 2019

December 1 is World AIDS Day, and as the world waits on an effective vaccine for COVID-19, we look at the ongoing AIDS epidemic and how the coronavirus has threatened treatment for those living with HIV. Author and journalism professor Steven Thrasher says the coronavirus has amplified racial, class and other disparities, just as AIDS has done for decades, and that treatments must have an antiracist and anti-capitalist foundation in order to be successful. "HIV/AIDS has continued to kill way too many people. Almost 700,000 people died last year," says Thrasher. The problem is not just the drugs. It's the conditions around people's lives that lead them to become affected by viruses."