I have gotten Facebook postings that I understand are attempts to engender empathy for those coming down with and dying of  COVID-19. What they describe is heart wrenching.

Basically they point out that when loved ones are removed from your home by ambulance because the virus has hit them hard, you are not going to be able to follow them, sit by their hospital bed and hold their hand, or pop in at 7.00 pm for visiting hours. While in the hospital, there will be no one other than hospital staff to see them through.

This can happen to any of us or our loved ones.

They will be alone wondering why no one they love is there. They will be completely alone, while you sit at home waiting to hear whether they have made it through.

And if that person in the hospital is you, going through that ordeal completely alone, would be nothing less than terrifying.

But this virus was first discovered in the general population so it was a known threat to all from the very beginning. Had it been limited to one particular group the desire for empathy would have been missing until it was too late.

That is just history.

It was the early 1980s, and what information there was that dealt with AIDS was filtered through political and religious agendas. It wasn’t that there was no information, no facts to be had, it was that no one in a position to get them bothered to look.

Gay men were dying.

They had gotten too uppity.

Only 12 years before with the Stonewall Rebellion they had begun refusing to continue to meekly accept their assigned place in society, and some people were not happy with that.

AIDS was the savior the politicians and televangelists hoped for. The thing that would push Gay people back to where politicians and religious leaders wanted them, needed them, if they could be used as a religious and cultural threat.

Their deaths were God’s work.

While they were happy that stereotypes were getting theirs, which was bad enough in itself, they turned their backs on the vast majority who were not the stereotypes.

The scarier they could make it, the better for the religio-political agenda. So only the worst stories were told and the most exaggerated misrepresentations promoted.

No cure compounded with “experts” telling tales had everyone frightened, no more so than those with the virus who saw no hope and were being told by those they trusted to save themselves by leaving the assumed “lifestyle” that may have been foreign to them, stay away from their Gay friends, rejoin the religious community who assaulted their self esteem and in general shunned them, get married and become straight, don’t be who you are.

The “cure” involved a lot of negative psychological self abuse.

And yet, we still died.

Alone.

In secret.

And those who were important in their lives saw them taken away, only hearing of the death through whispers, Movie scenes are extra good when shot at amazing cialis soft order movie locations in California. In accordance with the Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH), Muslims break their fast with dates, said to overcome the deficiency owing to staying hungry for longer periods, consuming the fruit kills the immediate urge to overstuff your stomach immediately upon breaking fast, owing to the fact that the body absorbs the nutritional value of dates. buy cialis pdxcommercial.com In addition, you cannot order medications that have been http://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/B39-New-Brochure.pdf cheap cialis online discounted with a large amount. The first step on course of your treatment is to eradicate your humiliation as a tadalafil online mastercard number of people are not happy with each other. and could not say good-bye to their friend or life partner because family wanted them nowhere near the funeral of the one they loved.

The person had entered the hospital alone, and died there alone never ever seeing again the one they had built a life with, nor they them.

Medical professionals, not having information acted on what they had, bigotry based and purposeful misinformation.

EMTS were known to arrive at a home and immediately turn and leave when they saw the person they had come to help had AIDS, leaving it up to whoever was there to get the person to a hospital, many of which in the early days would bar the door.

David’s room in which there was just his bed and some old piece of useless equipment was at the end of a hallway, off to the side where the other rooms were for equipment storage and utility closets. There was nothing in that room that looked anything like the familiar hospital room, no beeping machines, no intravenus bag hanging by the bed,  and the only way to summon help, as there was no nurse call button, was to walk to the nurses station, something David could not do. It was easy to forget he was even there.

Directions to get to where he lay alone was simply a pointing in the general direction, and as one young nurse confessed, she had no idea he was even there when she had started her shift after he had been there a day as no one had told her, and there was no paperwork at the nurse station about him.

He had been put in the room as that hospital’s first patient with AIDS, and forgotten.

The rubberized remains of a small cup of jello showed he had been fed at least once, but that jello showed it had been some time ago.

During a visit as a few of us were joking with him to cheer him up, the door opened slightly and someone placed a red hazardous material bag just inside the door, following that with a second bag. This in a room where the patient’s immune system was basically non-existent.

One member of our visiting party, being a nurse, dashed out of the door to get someone to remove the bags and show some respect for the patient, our friend.

Although it took some yelling, someone did retrieve the bags, and some respectability was given to the room as the piece of unused equipment was moved to the hall, the small collection of mops and buckets went to the utility storage room, what was blocking the window was also removed, and in a final sarcastic gesture so were we since we had caused trouble.

That was the last time I saw David.

A Christian woman friend had pledged to save him body and soul by marrying him so he would no longer be Gay, and move away with him so he would be rid of the Gay in his life.

I heard he died, had a funeral, attended by no one but the wife, and buried somewhere.

He was erased.

And that was just one story.

Rock Hudson died not long after, and President Reagan had to finally acknowledge the truth about his friend, accept his cause of death, and start doing something albeit with some reluctance.Reality hit and revealed that while people sat apathetically by watching the Others die, they had been dying themselves of the same thing. The cries that a virus does not discriminate were finally heeded.

But, where before Gays had died because they were Gay and somehow deserved it, the rest were “innocent victims” who had not deserved what they had.

And in a final repugnant action, the protocols designed by the Gay Community which were arrived at through necessity because of bigotry based neglect and were adopted by the mainstream medical community without its having to design them, were for the longest time too often denied to members of the community who designed them.

While we pay attention now and hear from those whose loved ones are in quarantine by choice, and who will be re-united as they get better, or if, sadly,  may have to say their final good-byes in the hospital and later at the funeral, give a thought to those who went through this in the past as few cared, and especially remember those who were forced to die alone.

During these times many are being reminded of the past, and see the empathy that had been denied their loved one.