The start of our response to COVID-19 was very similar to our response to HIV. We tried to pigeonhole it as a disease of only certain people, Chinese people for COVID-19 or homosexuals for AIDS. We tried to ignore it. We knew, in the scientific community, that viruses don't only affect one group of people, that they spread to everybody. As soon as we knew COVID-19 was infectious, we knew it was going to spread everywhere in the world. We're now discovering that the terrible epidemic in New York City actually started in February, but nobody was paying attention to it. And it came from Europe, it didn't come from China.
Baltimore可能是活着的最著名的病毒学家，在这个采访中提到了一些HIV的历史，以及和COVID-19的比较。有些内容对这个版上很多人有一定的帮助。
The start of our response to COVID-19 was very similar to our response to HIV. We tried to pigeonhole it as a disease of only certain people, Chinese people for COVID-19 or homosexuals for AIDS. We tried to ignore it. We knew, in the scientific community, that viruses don't only affect one group of people, that they spread to everybody. As soon as we knew COVID-19 was infectious, we knew it was going to spread everywhere in the world. We're now discovering that the terrible epidemic in New York City actually started in February, but nobody was paying attention to it. And it came from Europe, it didn't come from China.