Books about the plague, cholera or the Spanish flu are selling well again. Can you tell us something about the pandemic that is now scourging us? Perhaps. But maybe we don’t have to go back that far, because in much more recent times a “new virus” has wiped out entire circles of friends. Spread fear and horror. Hope for a vaccination, a cure, a disappearance nourished and yet remained. Til today. Moderate, but still. Almost 40 million people around the world are currently living with HIV infection. In her book “The Optimists” Rebecca Makkai takes us to Chicago in the 1980s. And shows how a virus blows up life and haunts its victims, survivors and relatives until 2015. Makkai, born in 1978, introduces us to Yale, Fiona and their friends. She lets us participate in her life, in the years we spent together in 1985, 1986, 1990, and she makes us fearful together with them. Leaves Fiona a survivor. A sister and friend who sat at too many deathbeds and forgot about her own daughter.

If you had read the book in 2015, it would have been a memory. We would have shuddered at the thought of what a death sentence HIV was back then, in the beginning. We are reassured by the fact that there are now wonderful drug cocktails, if you live in a country with a functioning health system. We would have been reminded of the films “Philadelphia” and “Dallas Buyers Club”. To Rock Hudson, Freddy Mercury. Bad bad. Those who were particularly moved by the rousing novel might have donated a little to the numerous AIDS institutions.

Fight against HIV Will AIDS soon be curable?

Now the book makes you shudder differently. The fear of going to clubs that were a short time ago paradise and could now send you to hell. The distrust of other people. The fact that with every encounter you also have to take into account all the encounters a friend or family member had before. It has become everyday. Worldwide. Of course, HIV spreads differently than Covid-19. But the social mechanisms are astonishingly similar. “Some individuals, some unfortunately in positions of power, love to blame people for their illnesses. You shouldn’t have had sex, you shouldn’t have gone to this place. I think they do this to make themselves feel more secure, as if nothing bad could happen to them, “said Makkai in an interview when her book was published in the US in 2018, referring to the Trump administration, which had just dissolved the HIV / AIDS Advisory Council. Today we can use the words pre-existing illnesses, obesity, age, poverty here.

In the end, a friend of Fiona’s, even while experiencing it, longs to go back to the time when gentrification appeared to be a big problem, perhaps the biggest problem of our time, the last, good times. It’s 2015, we’re in Paris. The streets are full of flashing lights. The terrorist attack in the French venue Bataclan will mark something of a turning point. After that, Brexit, a new US president, the successes of populist politicians in Europe as well, further terrorist attacks and finally the corona pandemic will call into question much of what we took for granted in 2015. As if the bad, old 1980s times were back.

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