Last Tuesday, we had the privilege of hearing from Dr. Musa Dube. Her discussion, as storytelling, included details about her life as a theologian and her work with churches. Her journey began as an academic and evolved into rounding the entire continent of Africa to hold workshops with various Christian leaders to change the discourse involving HIV/AIDS. Something that stood out to me in her conversation was the following assertion: “Jesus is HIV positive.” It is rather profound for lectures and informational sessions to conclude that the God of a well-known religion has HIV. Dr. Dube noted that the aforementioned statement, when backed with evidence from the Bible, helped address the discrimination toward African individuals who had HIV/AIDS. Dr. Dube shared that, unfortunately, the shame associated with HIV/AIDS that began due to the disease’s sexual nature (in terms of transmission) worsened to the thought that individuals who tested positive for HIV were sinners and deserved their suffering. However, Dr. Dube found that sharing that Jesus is HIV positive makes people question if they can be discriminatory towards people who have HIV/AIDS because you undoubtedly cannot be discriminatory towards God.
According to a Healthcare (Basel) journal article by Rewerska-Juśko and Rejdak, patients suffering from COVID-19 often suffer from social stigma. Social stigma is “the attitude of discrimination, disapproval, or negative perception of a given group due to the properties and features it represents” (Rewerska-Juśko and Rejdak, 2022). Rewerska-Juśko and Rejdak found that the social stigma towards COVID-19 patients can be significant when considering attitudes involving vaccination status, social status, etc., and social rejection. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, I can vividly recall members of my extended family making comments that people contracting COVID-19 lead an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle or are simply suffering from the consequences of living a virtue-free and religion-free life. Therefore, I wonder, if religious leaders made comments that religious entities were COVID-19 positive, could we have minimized the social stigma toward COVID-19 patients? What do you all think?
Hi Sreyas!
Wonderful post. I like your emphasis on social stigma among COVID-19 patients or even individuals who have contracted it. What is also really interesting is when the stigma of HIV and COVID collide. This summer, I worked on a project looking at the impact of COVID-19 on sexual and reproductive health services in Jamaica. All of the clinics we interviewed worked also with patients living with HIV/AIDS. Many of the clinicians reported almost a shift in stigma away from HIV and more towards COVID. There can be many factors playing into this, but one that sticks out is the often very visible symptoms of COVID versus the managed care of HIV/AIDS. This is definitely something I hope will be explored more.
Great post Sreyas: and I think your question about stigma is a good one. I would argue that while there was, maybe still is a capital “S “Stigma attached to HIV/AIDS I think the stigma attached to COVID is more a lower case “s” if anything. Now people may sheepishly report they tested positive for COVID and often the listener will report three other people they know who got it this week as well. I also think in some spaces there is a stigma for wearing a mask as a way to avoid COVID, so I think for COVID it is more situational.