And the Band Played on Analysis

Alarea M. Jackson

Furman University

Dr. Reed

HSC 205-01: Fundamentals of Public Health

January 25, 2021

HIV/AIDS Pandemic and COVID Pandemic 1

The 1993 film And the Band Played On, directed by Roger Spottiswoode, showed its
audience that Public Health in America is not straightforward. There are many challenges in
problem-solving, plan implications, controversies within the government, and backlash from
civilians. Although The United States Public Health system has made progressions since the
introduction of the HIV/AIDS pandemic beginning in 1981, there are many similarities in these
challenges with the ongoing COVID pandemic beginning in 2020.
In The United States, both the HIV/AIDS and COVID pandemics are some of the
greatest health challenges faced by Public Health in the 20th and 21st centuries. From my
observations, the reason being is the confusion in the early stages of the pandemics. In both
cases, efficient early actions from government intervention could have prevented the
cross-country spread of the illnesses. It is the job of the Center for Disease Control to detect,
track, and halt the spread of disease. Efficiency in Public Health stems from the CDC’s ability to
assess and solve the problem, and the government's ability to implicate the CDC’s plan. This
system tends to get tarnished when both groups do not meet eye to eye.
Experts questioned the cause of transmission in HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Being able to
identify the transmission of a disease from host to host can be tricky, you must identify if the
disease is bacterial, viral, or parasitic, find out if the disease is transmitted directly or indirectly,
and find statistical commonalities between infected people to know how the disease enters the
body and what it affects. In And the Band Played On we see researchers scrambling to find the
cause of this new unknown disease by asking questions and analyzing the facts, Spottiswoode
(1993) has an actor say “What do you think? What do you know? What can you prove?” Once
researchers gathered enough information to be able to identify that GRID was transmitted
sexually Schneider (2021) stated that scientists with the CDC asked gay men infected with GRID
in detailed questions about their sexual lives and who they have sexually been in contact with.
This system of asking infected people questions is similar to the COVID outbreak in 2020. I
caught COVID-19 in Illinois early on, and to be able to receive the COVID test for free I was
required to answer a series of questions of who I had been in contact with, what my symptoms
were if I had been out of the state, etcetera. Initially, I was unaware of the need for intensive
information, yet now I understand that the CDC cause uses this information to gain more
knowledge about a disease.
Another similarity is the discrimination of Asian people during the COVID outbreak and
gay men during the AIDS outbreak. History has shown that with every new outbreak society puts
blame on a group of individuals causing hatred and discrimination towards that group. It is very
important for politicians to be neutral with their wording while in a crisis, this is when civilians
are most vulnerable and will listen to almost anything a power holder has to say. The
terminology of the press or government administrations can cause backlash and the targeted
group is left to face the consequences, the Regan and Trump administrations did just that. Trump
made numerous negative remarks against China while Americans were in a COVID-19 panic.
Trump said things such as: “China virus,” “Kung Flu,” and “It’s China’s fault.” Since The United
States was on a soft lockdown a lot of people spent more time on social media where hatred
toward Asian Americans became a joke and a trend. The creation of memes and hashtags such as
#Chinakidsstayhome, or spraying Lysol on Asian Americans was taken very seriously by society.
Social media and the Trump administration fueled hatred towards all Asians in The United States
resulting in more than 6603 reported hate crimes, and six Asian women being killed in Atlanta,
Georiga (Hahm, Hall, Garcia, Cavallino, Ha, Cozier, & Liu 2021). Similar to what happened in
the 1980s with the AIDS/HIV pandemic gay American men were given sole responsibility for
HIV/AIDS Pandemic and COVID Pandemic 2

the disease, causing Americans to give justification for the neglect and wrongdoing of gay men
at the time. As seen in And the Band Played On, the head of the French hospital pulled the doctor
into his office to tell him that due to the stigma the hospital was receiving for “treating those
people” they are to no longer going to treat gay men with AIDS because the “normal patients”
were afraid (Spottiswoode, 1993). At the height of the pandemic no one, not even government
officials wanted to help research and fight AIDS because at the time it seemed to only be a
gay-related immune disease. The Regan administration wanted nothing to do with the research of
AIDS because it only affected “people who behaved in ways so unappealing to the general
public” (Schneider 2021, xv).
The main controversy in both pandemics was the economic impact. The spread of
HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 could have been stopped much sooner if officials were more
concerned about the health and safety of the nation than the money that goes in or out of their
pockets. Money is replaceable, preventable lost lives are not. Schnieder (2021) states that the
investigation of AIDS was slowed due to a lack of funding. Blood banks knowingly gave
hemophilia patients receiving blood transfusions AIDS because they did not want to spend the
money needed to get all blood tested before transfusions. Bathhouse owners knew that AIDS
were getting spread in their facilities, but wanted to remain open. Doctors did not want to take
extra precautions in the hospitals because of the money it would cost them. Spottiswoode (1993)
has his actor shout while in a board meeting “when doctors start acting like businessmen, who
can the people turn to for doctors?” That quote from the film resonated with me the most, a lot of
systems in The United States that were established to benefit the American people have lost their
moral values and view everything in the framework of ways to save or make money. Although
there is no proof, in my opinion, if Donald Trump gave the American people a heads up allowing
them to stock up on essentials, and then put The United States of America on a strick patrolled
lockdown mandate where all stores and restaurants were closed and all persons must stay in their
homes regardless of their obligations, COVID would not have had the impact it did today.
Although there is a controversy in this solution as well, the controversy in which this impedes on
individual liberties of the American people but sometimes the protection of health outweighs the
protection of rights. Owners were upset with the money they had lost and could still potentially
lose due to the pandemic the states were then allowed to be reopened with the knowledge that
reopening could cause another outbreak in COVID cases. Now a lot of people do not want to
return to the work field for numerous reasons, the main one being the new COVID mandates.
Business owners and government officials were not willing to pay the short-term price for the
long-term benefit, and now The United States is at a loss at a total of $3.2 trillion dollars
(Gersema, 2021).
Another controversy is that a lot of Americans no longer trust the government through the
COVID-19 pandemic due to political interference with science. The Trump administration
admitted to hiding COVID from the public and falsifying its severity. In February 2020 Trump
says “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer it miraculously goes
away.” He later puts out a tweet stating that COVID-19 is “very much under control in the
USA”(Wise 2020). Scientists at the time knew the seriousness of COVID due to its rate of
transmission and hospitalization, but Trump felt as though lying to the American people was
what was best for everyone to stay calm. If everyone was correctly warned about COVID before
the numbers got so high we as a nation could have helped in preventing its spread, but that
opportunity was stolen. Now Americans are being coerced by government officials into getting
HIV/AIDS Pandemic and COVID Pandemic 3

the COVID vaccine with promises that they will not be able to contract the virus, which has
proven to be false.
I find it fascinating that there are more factors to Public Health than I have initially
thought. Public Health is not only science, protecting the people, and stopping disease, but it is
also politics and economic gains. This makes me wonder if there really are cures to things like
cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and much more that will not get passed through because of the
negative economic impact it will have if hospitals or nursing homes are no longer
treating/tending to these patients. In And the Band Played On the bathhouse owner hinted that it
would be a win-win if the bathhouse stayed open and infected men with AIDS because doctors
would profit from the infected. If Dr. Sebi claimed to have a cure for cancer, why did The United
States automatically debunk his claims without performing their own scientific research? Were
economic gains the reason he was killed? Who else has seemed to find a cure for illness but is
being silenced? What would be different if we lived in a world where Public Health's sole
purpose was to protect the health of all people at all costs, and not to align with the interest of
politicians? These questions will probably never be answered until politicians but public health
over economical gain.
HIV/AIDS Pandemic and COVID Pandemic 4

References

Gersema, E. (2021, August 3). Business closures due to covid-19 could cost the U.S.
trillions in GDP. USC News. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from
https://news.usc.edu/178979/business-closures-covid-19-pandemic-united-states-gdp-losses/

Hahm, H. C., Xavier Hall, C. D., Garcia, K. T., Cavallino, A., Ha, Y., Cozier, Y. C., &
Liu, C. (2021, August 18). Experiences of covid-19-related anti-Asian discrimination and
affective reactions in a multiple race sample of U.S. Young Adults - BMC Public Health. BioMed
Central. Retrieved January 24, 2022, from
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-021-11559-1

Schneider, M.-J. (2021). Introduction to public health.

Spottiswoode, R., Schulman, A., Modine, M., Alda, A., Collins, P., Gere, R., Huston, A.,
... HBO Video (Firm). (2010). And the band played on.

Wise, A. (2020, September 9). Trump admits playing down coronavirus's severity,
according to New Woodward Book. NPR. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-playing-down-the-coronaviruss-s
everity-per-new-book