The COVID-19 crisis continues to dominate headlines, understandably so with daily infection, hospitalization and death numbers at record high levels while economic shutdowns continue to affect the entire world. â¨This level of concern is reminiscent of the early 1980s and the arrival of the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. At the beginning of the HIV epidemic, the disease was viewed by the general public as affecting mostly gay men, and efforts to battle infection rates were slow to come in the early years, but the world eventually saw it quickly grow into a life-threatening concern for all people. As of 2019, there were around 38 million people worldwide with HIV/AIDS, including 1.8 million children. As of 2018, about 700,000 people had died of HIV/AIDS in the United States. These staggering statistics highlight the tremendous reach for what can still be a deadly virus if left undetected and untreated.