Edmund White is the author of 30 books. His newest novel, A Saint from Texas, will be published in August

I am a gay man who lived through the Aids pandemic, so many people have asked me to compare that crisis with the one we now face. The main difference between the two is that Aids at first appeared to afflict specific populations, while coronavirus is an equal opportunity malady. I remember when I visited Paris in 1981 I told Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, about Aids and he laughed at this American invention that seemed to target both gay men and Haitians. He said: “That’s too perfect, blacks and gays, only American racists and puritans would have come up with that delusion.” He died from the disease in 1984.

In the mid-80s, I wrote an article in which I said American gays, at least younger ones, had worked through their self-hatred in the post-Stonewall 70s but that internalised homophobia had come back with the Aids stigma in the 1980s. We knew we were a hated community; relatives wouldn’t let us hold their babies. Eventually the viral nature of the disease became known and we discovered the only two significant modes of transmission were blood and semen, but in the early days people feared physical contact, mosquitoes, kisses, coughs. Actually, coronavirus is much more easily communicated than Aids ever was.

I was the first president and one of the six founders of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1981; we felt we were so isolated, so alone, in our struggle that we could only imagine giving a disco fundraiser for gay men. When later I observed Foucault’s widower, Daniel Defert, in 1985 start the charity Aides, I was impressed that he went immediately to the French health minister; American gays had such low self-esteem they (we) didn’t think we had the right to societal concern. Read more via Guardian