From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as fear and isolation spread, Dave Perruzza had one thought -- he had seen it before.

"For me, it was thinking about the AIDS epidemic all over again, how nobody took it seriously," said Perruzza, who owns two LGBT bars in Washington, the US capital.

"We were like, 'Well, we're going to take this seriously.'"

With the Omicron variant fueling fresh restrictions around the world, some older members of the LGBT community say their shared experience of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s put them ahead of the curve throughout the pandemic.

Perruzza has for months been requiring customers show Covid vaccination cards to enter his bars -- popular gay spot Pitchers and neighboring lesbian venue A League of Her Own, in the Adams Morgan district of the city.

He implemented his vaccine rules in July, one of the first in Washington to do so -- and months before the local government began this month to do the same.

"I think my age bracket is the last bracket that saw people that actually died of AIDS," Perruzza, 43, who lost his first boyfriend to the disease, told AFP.

"I'm not going to let history repeat itself."

The HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States raged for two decades after the first US case was discovered in 1981, and still claims lives today.

It primarily affected gay and bisexual men, Black and Latino men and trans women.

Then-president Ronald Reagan didn't declare AIDS research a federal priority until 1985, and the first treatment was developed in 1987.

By the end of 2000, at least 450,000 people had died of AIDS in the United States, according to government data.

Same 'hysteria and lies'

The pandemic has also brought back painful memories for Eric Sawyer, a founding member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP, who also lost his partner to the disease.

"The misinformation, the hysteria, the spread of just absolute lies (and) the attempts by individuals to address it being part of the problem," said Sawyer, who also worked with the UN's HIV/AIDS program.

"The stigma and discrimination that people who had Covid face... completely parallel the HIV response."

But some lessons may have been learned between the two health crises.

"The HIV epidemic taught us that education, testing and access to prevention methodologies" can be effective, said Sawyer.

HIV activists have also advocated for better distribution of supplies, as well as vaccine access for poor communities, communities of color and homeless people.

Even as these activists worked to combat Covid-19, however, the pandemic took a toll on the ongoing fight against HIV.

Studies by the Global Fund and UNAIDS found that the pandemic worldwide caused an 11 percent drop in prevention and treatment and a 22 percent drop in testing in 2020.

UNAIDS attributed the decrease to lockdowns that forced people into isolation, shuttered health services and disrupted HIV/AIDS programs.

'You have to care'

"Because of our community's now-four decades of experience with HIV, we understand chemical trials, we understand antivirals," Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told AFP. "We're not afraid of science."

"As a community, we have a lot of solidarity," he added, pointing out that many of those living with HIV are immunocompromised and need extra support.

LGBT activists rallied early in the pandemic to organize financial aid and safe housing for HIV-positive people. They also set up Covid testing at sexual health centers and Pride events.

Gay bars across the country began requiring proof of vaccination at the door, months before some US states followed suit. Almost half the states still reject any such requirements.

"LGBTQ bars are different... more like community centers," said Ed Bailey, who co-owns Washington gay bars Trade and Number 9, pointing out that gay bars have distributed HIV literature and condoms for decades.

"Our bars are sometimes the only place some of the people that patronize us are able to go and be comfortable enough to be who they are," said Bailey, 55. "That creates an entirely different level of responsibility."

"You have to care about your community."

© 2022 AFP

Moscow on Tuesday accused the United States of ratcheting up tensions over Ukraine after Washington put several thousand troops on alert for possible deployment to boost NATO.

The West is accusing Russia, which has massed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, of preparing a potential invasion of its pro-Western neighbor.

The troop build-up has sparked the biggest crisis in East-West ties since the Cold War, with US President Joe Biden holding a long call with European leaders on Monday.

Biden said there was "total unanimity" on how to deal with Russia, as the Pentagon said 8,500 US troops were being put on standby and NATO said it was sending ships and jets to bolster eastern Europe's defenses.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said these actions were only adding to an already tense atmosphere.

"The United States is escalating tensions," he told reporters. "We are watching these US actions with great concern."

Russia denies it has any plans to invade Ukraine, where Russia already seized the peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and backs separatists forces in two breakaway regions.

Moscow has instead accused the West of increasing tensions with deployments and support for Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.

It has put forward a list of security demands including for a guarantee that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO and that alliance forces pull back in Eastern European countries that joined after the Cold War.

The United States and NATO have rejected the demands and told Russia to withdraw from Ukraine's borders, warning that an attack will trigger damaging economic sanctions, as well as a beefed-up NATO presence in eastern Europe.

A series of talks in various European cities this month have failed to ease tensions, though US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed at a meeting in Geneva on Friday to keep talking.

Divisions in the West

The United States has promised to provide written answers to Moscow's demands this week, but has rejected calls for a ban on possible NATO expansion as a non-starter.

The crisis has laid bare divisions in the West, with some European Union members appearing less willing to take severe action against Russia, which supplies about 40 percent of the bloc's natural gas supplies.

The new government in EU economic powerhouse Germany in particular has faced criticism from Kyiv over its refusal to send defensive weapons to Ukraine, as well as hesitating over one of the harshest economic sanctions under discussion -- cutting Moscow from the global SWIFT payments system.

Biden held a one-hour-and-20-minute video conference with allied leaders from Europe and NATO on Monday, telling reporters afterwards: "I had a very, very, very good meeting -- total unanimity with all the European leaders."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office also said there was unity "in the face of growing Russian hostility", while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for Russia "to undertake visible de-escalation".

There were hopes for some easing tensions after the French government announced that Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet, along with French and German counterparts, in Paris on Wednesday to try to find a way out of the impasse.

President Emmanuel Macron "thinks there is a space for diplomacy, a path to de-escalation," an aide said.

Both the aide and Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Macron would speak to Putin soon.

In Kyiv, the families of US, British and Australian diplomats had been ordered to leave, though the EU and Ukrainian government said any withdrawal of foreign embassy personnel was premature.

The Kremlin has accused NATO countries of "hysteria" over the crisis.

It also claimed this week that Ukrainian troops fighting Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country could launch an offensive, prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky's office to say that Ukraine will not "succumb to provocations."

The United States has warned that Moscow could manufacture a "false flag" incident in Ukraine to be able to then frame an invasion as a justified response.

The US has stepped up security assistance to Ukraine, with Blinken on a visit to Kyiv last week confirming another $200 million in aid.

A shipment arrived on Saturday and another batch was due later on Tuesday which the US embassy in Kyiv said would include "equipment and munitions to bolster the defensive capacity of the Ukrainian Armed forces".

The Arizona Republic reported Monday that Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) said that he had nothing to do with the fake electors from Arizona for then-President Donald Trump. According to him, he didn't even know about the fake electors until Monday morning, in 2022.

Documents obtained by American Oversight revealed that many Republican officials in Arizona were directed by Trump's campaign advisers and lawyers over the plot to overthrow the 2020 election with forged documents. At one point, Politico's Nicholas Wu obtained a cease and desist document that the Arizona state government sent to a sovereign citizens group trying to pass off the fake document with an official seal.

The Arizona Republic previously obtained text messages and other documents showing how White House officials and the Trump campaign were pushing Republican legislators to dismiss the results so that they could vote as a body to hand the election to Trump.

But according to Ducey, it's the first he's hearing of it. Dec. 14, 2020, the Arizona Republic reported on the 11 fake electors, even going so far as to quote Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, who was behind the effort. That expanded to national news, including the Fox networks.

At the same time, Ducey missed that Rudy Giuliani was pushing to keep the Arizona legislature in session to stop the 2020 election, Fox said at the time.

Ducey appeared to have missed reports in Dec. 2020, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a cease-and-desist letter to the so-called sovereign citizens' group saying that the state requires people to get permission to "use, display or otherwise employ any facsimile, copy, likeness, imitation or other resemblance" to the state seal.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is now running for U.S. Senate, is said to be investigating the 2020 election in Arizona. He hasn't announced any probe into the electors.

Ducey has not made a statement condemning the fraudulent attempt to overthrow the election.

"I'm going to leave that to the appropriate authorities," he claimed.