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thrasherxy.bsky.social
9/ Grateful to @pulitzercenter.org, the Fund for Investigative Journalism & @theintercept.com for their support of Afeef’s and my work.

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December 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
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thrasherxy.bsky.social
4/ Also, Lenacapvir, an injectable HIV prevention medication which lasts for six months, is just ready to roll out. But as @gregggonsalves.bsky.social explained—and as I have seen in South African & Uganda—Trump just DESTROYED the needed distribution infrastructure
theintercept.com/2025/12/01/w...
Tragically, right as it was ready to begin rolling out, the Trump administration “decimated the infrastructure of global HIV prevention programs by its destruction of USAID,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. Despite the administration backing some small rollouts of the drug (about 500 doses of lenacapavir were delivered each to Zambia and Eswatini, which have a combined population of about 24 million people), Gonsalves described Trump’s “support for Lenacapivir” as “a hollow promise to millions who are at risk of HIV infection around the globe,” and “a drop in the bucket for a drug that can be manufactured by generic companies for $40 a year. We need the programs and services that Trump cut put back in place” — and for workers to be hired back to distribute this new drug to their peers.
December 1, 2025 at 3:17 PM
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thrasherxy.bsky.social
3/ In every country we reported, Trump's health budgets have been a crisis of LGBTQ *employment*. HIV is a slow-acting virus & while "the cuts" have caused death, overwhelmingly, the biggest and fastest form of harm has been Black & brown LGBTQ people losing work theintercept.com/2025/12/01/w...
The immediate consequences of the cuts are more economic than medical. For many, the cuts created an acute crisis of employment. Research has long shown that people who identify as LGBTQ+ and/or living with HIV are prone to living in poverty. Often, the only work in the formal economy accessible to LGBTQ people — and trans women in particular — is to work in HIV prevention. Workers typically began as clients, then became volunteers, then stick with it for their career. These people often lack university or even secondary-school educations, and their jobs in HIV prevention are key to their economic and physical well-being, with salaries serving as lifelines for their families and economic engines in their communities. And when the stop-work order came, they fell off an economic cliff that brought financial danger much faster than HIV ever could. This was true in every country where we reported.
December 1, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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thrasherxy.bsky.social
2/ First, a simple acknowledgment of World AIDS Day, and the impact of HIV over the last half-century: the virus has already taken the lives of approximately 44 million people, and 40 million people are currently living with HIV. theintercept.com/2025/12/01/w...
On World AIDS Day 2025, humanity should be celebrating that there is a new shot available which offers six months of protection against the transmission of HIV, the virus which has already infected approximately 40 million living people and taken the lives of 44 million more.
December 1, 2025 at 3:06 PM