How To Survive a Plague

THE GIST: The story of how, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when the illness still represented a death sentence, gay and lesbian activists came together to take on the US government, hospitals, the health insurance industry, the CDC, the Catholic Church, and anyone else who stood in the way of finding a treatment and a cure.

How To Survive a Plague is a heart-wrenching documentary whose lessons clearly stood the test of time as evidenced by the ongoing struggles to bring healthcare coverage to all citizens in the US or the haphazard response the current administration put together for the threat posed by COVID-19.

Fortunately, and thanks to the gargantuan efforts on the part of all the activists portrayed here, nowadays AIDS is no longer a death sentence. Instead it has morphed into a manageable disease for which, alas, there's still no cure nor vaccine.

Unfortunately, many of the people we see portrayed in this film have passed away, taken too soon by this horrible disease.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A very powerful, important, and still timely documentary about a disease that has killed over 32 million people the world over, and a good road-map for future fights on the part of the common people. A must-see.

Grade: 8