Perspective
AIDS and Coronavirus: What's Different Now
Some aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic are eerily reminiscent of the AIDS crisis — others are unrecognizable.
The playwright Terrence McNally died from coronavirus on March 24. When I was an actor, I had a small part in the Broadway revival of his farce, The Ritz, and got to know him and his wonderful husband, Tom. His death was an awful shock.
But the veracity of his obituary also struck me. McNally was one of the great chroniclers of gay life in the age of AIDS — and yet, during that time, obits wouldn’t dare mention it as the cause of death. You had to translate the writeups: So and so died after a “long illness.” Being survived by one’s parents and siblings was a tell-tale sign. Today there’s a whole section of the New York Times — “Those We’ve Lost to the Coronavirus” — to put vivid faces on the awful numbers.