Comparative Essay Sample: HIV/AIDS and COVID-19

Some philosophers say that humans will be the downfall to themselves and if you were to compare the past and the present there were many situations where many people died from those diseases due to the actions they have taken. One of the ways is specifically in the time when HIV/AIDS started to rise because of the way people got infected and now the rise of Covid-19. If you look at the present there are many similarities in how Covid-19 is being handled like HIV/AIDS for example using safety precautions to keep yourself safe. but at the same time a lot of changes in how people are handling Covid-19 for example how everyone is staying inside now as a precaution against Covid-19. Research has shown that HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 have many similarities but at the same time, many differences as well because of this many changes were made to the safety of how Covid-19 to prevent the same mistakes as HIV/AIDS. 

One of the research materials shown is the ages at which people got the most infected. For HIV/AIDs research has shown that people ages 20-49 are most likely to get infected specifically nonheterosexual males for those who got HIV. While AIDS on the other hand seems to have females around the same ages that are most likely to have AIDS. For Covid-19 the age in which people are getting infected are adults ages 20-49 regardless of gender and who they are into. The similarities between the two diseases would be how the ages 20-49 seemed to be the common age group in which people get infected easily. But the difference between Covid-19 and HIV/AIDS would be how HIV/AIDS targets males who are not heterosexual and females who are more than males who are heterosexual and females who are not, while Covid-19 targets everyone and not just certain genders and whom they prefer either. 

The next research material explains how people get infected by HIV/AIDs and Covid-19 and what the similarities and differences between the two are. For HIV/AIDS, the only way people can get infected by it is if they had done unsafe sex and one of the few ways people would want to do safe sex would require addicting substances for example if they had been drinking alcohol or have been using drugs. The way Covid-19 infects people are even worse, the only way people are infected is if they have encountered anyone nearby and they did not maintain a six-x-foot distance between them or are unsanitary and have not cleaned themselves for example they did not wash their hands or take a shower. The similarities would be what both diseases require which is at least another person to infect them, for Covid-19 just meeting another person is a risk enough for you to have a chance to get it while for HIV/AIDs the requirement to get it is by doing unsafe sex which proves the similarity between the two. The difference on the other hand would be the action in which they infect people as HIV/AIDS requires people to do unsafe sex while Covid-19 just needs human contact for a chance to get it. 

The last research material is showing symptoms of the two diseases, for HIV/AIDS, it is separated into two stages the first stage is HIV which includes lack of energy, memory loss, swelling in the lymph nodes, fevers, sweating at night, and persistent skin rashes. The second and final stage is AIDS which gives people infections from their lungs, mouth, part of the nervous system, and their stomach with a chance of death, depending on the gender older men can get skin cancer while females can get cervical cancer. For Covid-19 the signs of getting these symptoms do not appear until 2-14 days but the symptoms are as follows the stuffy nose, runny nose, sore throat, lack of taste, coughing, and fevers but if it becomes severe then the symptoms will have infections to the lower respiratory tract which can cause pneumonia and like always a chance of death. What makes the symptoms between the two similar would be how their symptoms have to do with infecting the human body as both diseases give infections to the person. On the other hand, what makes the two diseases different is how HIV/AIDS takes two stages until the person dies while for Covid-19 there are not any stages but if this disease becomes severe then the person can still die. 

In conclusion, The significance of HIV/AIDS was to show the experience of the first pandemic in which many people were unprepared against. But because how everyone was unprepared in the past, now in the current pandemic of Covid-19, many people have learned from the past and now there have been fewer cases of people getting Covid-19 cause of it. Therefore the significance of Covid-19 is to show the world that many people can overcome past mistakes no matter how bad the situation is. Some philosophers say that humans will be the downfall themselves which is untrue even though humans make mistakes they all eventually learn from their past mistakes and can in fact even improve from them.  

Work Cited 

Tab. HIV/AIDS Diagnosis, by Sex/Age/Race/Year. ProQuest, 2004. SIRS Issues Researcher, https://riohondo.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2257017299?accountid=28502. 

Monod, Mélodie, et al. “Age Groups That Sustain Resurging COVID-19 Epidemics in the United States.” Science, vol. 371, no. 6536, 2 Feb. 2021, science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/02/01/science.abe8372, 10.1126/science.abe8372. 

Pham-kanter, Genevieve, et al. "HIV Infection/AIDS." The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 4th ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2021, pp. 1357-1367. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8067400405/GVRL?u=cclc_rio&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=d1cc1ae7. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022. 

Burke, Chelsea Weidman, and Jacqueline Longe. "COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019)." The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 4th ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2021, pp. 744-747. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8067400224/GVRL?u=cclc_rio&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=87986512. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.