Things shut down for that first month or so. Not everything but I remember the streets being really creepy with how empty they were. I live along a pretty busy street in my city but there was nobody on the streets for a while.

Can I draw attention to the amount of attention thrown at covid, too? When covid came around, the world screeched to a halt and opening up was slow and dangerous until we got a vaccine. Many workplaces, stores, restaurants and other businesses were having to close for weeks at a time because a strain of covid was spreading among their employees. Everyone wanted that vaccine really bad and the sooner the better. HIV, on the other hand, can be (mostly) avoided by practicing safer sex and not sharing needles. It’s much harder to spread and even if you have HIV, you can mostly live your life normally nowadays. There is much less emphasis put on getting an HIV vaccine.