Victories Against AIDS Have Lessons for COVID-19

November 29, 2021

(Nature) – This year’s World AIDS Day, on 1 December, marks both incredible progress and the need for more. HIV was shown to be the cause of AIDS in 1983–84. Soon, there were blood tests for diagnosis, and for screening the supply of donated blood. These revealed the enormous scope of the pandemic: between 1984 and 1985, new cases of AIDS in the United States almost doubled. Eventually, progress in understanding — getting the sequence of the virus’s genome, and comprehending how it decimated the immune system and how disease progressed — paved the way for dozens of approved therapies. (Read More)