I am a gay man of a certain age

[Warpy]

23. They not only marched, beggged and pleaded for themselves

they started groups like Act Up to do outreach to groups who weren't them, like IV drug addicts. Their campaigns were creative and effective. They also used to come into the wards from time to time, telling staff what was going on with research.

I have to think all the marching and agitating had an effect, I think it was shortly after AZT came out that we started seeing "compassionate use" drugs, identified only by numbers and letters and requiring massive paperwork. They allowed our patients to go home and at least tidy things up and say goodbye. Some of them started to get quite a lot of time by the end of the 80s.

I was a far cry from 13 in 1981, got my nursing license just about the time stories about GRID started to appear and things got very bad, very fast.

Seeing what's going on with Covid has brought some of those memories back, especially the treadmill the docs were on: asssess, intubate, pronounce, over and over again.