 I'm Jonathan Blake. I've been living with HIV since 1982 and I have had COVID and I'm still here. I'm Harun Thulmai. I've been living with HIV since July 2016 and I had COVID. I am four-time vaccinated and I am taking one pill a day to manage my HIV. I'm from Turkey. In Turkey, the terminology is so different, so outdated still. Plus, I was raised in a very religious family, so when they found out that I'm a gay man, remember my mother was just shouting at me, yelling at me, you're going to die by yourself in your flat and they're going to find your rotten body and you're going to die from AIDS. That will be your end. And that was the first time I had sexual health education and here about AIDS. But it is amazing that in 2016 there is still so much misinformation and this is one of the real problems around HIV and how it was treated in those very early days. It was great the fact that the government produced the, you know, Don't Dive Ignorance but what that did was it created a huge amount of fear and what is really fascinating is the way that COVID was completely other. COVID was this virus that could affect anybody. The government machinery just moved in to start giving information, giving proper information, how you were able to stay safe. Whereas sort of HIV, you never got that, you know. It was always about this misinformation, the fact that it was this gay disease and what did that do for communities? People are asking how COVID vaccines was developed so quickly but they were expecting a pandemic so laboratories and the scientists were ready for it but they didn't know what would it be, where would it come from, what kind of virus it would be but the systems were in place, the processes were ready. So obviously when something like COVID came around, we were sitting at home and they were working in the laboratories and trying to find what kind of virus is this and what could control the virus. Plus, if you imagine like all the countries pouring all the money suddenly to one goal with all those opportunities, they were just able to work faster. Look at the NHS workers, look at the healthcare workers. They work nonstop. Scientists are the same as well. They never stopped working in the laboratories and they never stopped working and working on the HIV medication. I find it really strange that people are so averse to taking a vaccine but it exists and maybe it's a mistrust of government that is at root to it so it's not so much a mistrust of science but it's a mistrust of the people who are giving you the information. With HIV there was too much fear that was put into the initial equation. Everything is so different now. So many ways that people can communicate. Information can be disseminated so much more easily than in the early days of HIV and I think that that's been proved with how the COVID epidemic has been treated because it's been treated as A that it's global and B that there is no stigma attached to it. The most important thing is that when you are giving information that it is open and it is to save someone's life. I hope people learned from HIV and COVID is actually when it comes to public health, especially if a disease is spreading widely that it has to be people's vaccine, it has to be people's treatment. I know that the medication that I've been on has made a difference to me has kept me alive, that I have a quality of life that I don't believe that without the medication that I would have. Thanks to the vaccine I had the mildest COVID ever and thanks to the medication and science I am undetectable and I can't pass HIV to anybody and I am having a really happy and normal healthy life and this is all thanks to science.