“I didn’t let HIV beat me and I’m damn sure I’m not going to let COVID-19 do it,” says Jonathan Blake, 70. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1982 — one of the very first in the UK — before it was even called HIV, when all anyone knew was that you die.
He tried to take his own life. When that did not work, he decided he was going to try to live. Nearly 40 years later, Blake and his partner Nigel, whom he met the year after diagnosis, are facing the second pandemic of their lives.