Sex education in the United States is indeed abysmal in general, Hunter Wagenaar. For LGBTQ students in particular it’s often non-existent.

Ironically, as a member of Act Up in the 1990s, battling HIV, one of my specialties was safer sex education.

We did street theater in parks and other public spaces, working to get the word out about preventing HIV with condoms and safer-sex practices.

But even with HIV incidence and death rates rising dramatically every year, and even with incidence being particularly high among young people, we sometimes went to jail for getting the word out about how to stay alive.

Why do I say ironically? Because even though it’s now 2020, realistic sex education for high school students is still prohibited in many states. Or where it is (barely) tolerated, it’s often toned down to the point that it has no practical effect.

Tragically, the covid-19 pandemic is already dramatically worsening the HIV pandemic in Africa. The WHO recently released a report saying disruptions in the HIV treatment and education supply chain there will see mortality double in the next 6 months.

I don’t expect anything that dramatic here in the United States, but I’m afraid you are onto something when you write about covid-19 disrupting HIV prevention.

I wish we could all just set our differences aside and agreed to do the best we can for one another according to best public health practices.

But for 30 years, I have personally experienced that as a difficult political struggle rather than a medical one.