US LGBT community draws on AIDS experience to fight COVID

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 neighbouring 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...