Though it is tough and thorny, I do want to speak about the current Fire Island COVID discourse happening as someone deeply invested in talking about the ongoing AIDS epidemic and the COVID pandemic as concurrent pandemics, rather than AIDS as something that happened & is over.

1. I, too, was angry when I first saw the person acting with disregard toward others' health, but I was also angry that the US government has put its citizens in a place of having to deny themselves community for months, much longer than in some other countries, because of its

deprioritazation of people's health and decades of demolishing a health infrastructure to instead focus on privatization and profit.
2. I sincerely believe that we cannot shame our way out of a pandemic and I also believe that shaming others (and tagging Cuomo or the police)

is harmful. I am often reminded of this amazing tweet from Tourmaline about the ways in which we police each other. I think that that our policing each other does show those with power over us that it's OK to implement more laws and policies aimed toward https://twitter.com/tourmaliiine/status/1269774567637213190

public health that will ultimately see those who are most vulnerable interacting with the carceral state even more and be subject to state and physical violence.

3. Another thing that makes me deeply uncomfortable about the rhetoric surrounding the incident is the rhetoric

that makes it seem like queer people are inherently more likely to break rules/ deviate from public health messaging in the pursuit of pleasure as those are the same messages that have been with us as a culture since before the AIDS crisis and which proliferated in the early days

of the (still ongoing) AIDS pandemic. I believe that we buy into internalized homophobic messages about gay people having less self control, less willpower and less concern for their own health that the right has spewed about us for years when we engage in this kind of rhetoric.

Some of the rhetoric around FIP sounds similar to the "Close the bathhouses!" rhetoric heard during early AIDS. Yes, that appears to be sound logic from the outside, but is ultimately underpinned by an ethos of "Fags are acting badly" rather than the reality of bad public health.

I think it's important that we recognize that people in the FIP are doing something that straight people in Florida beaches and beaches all over the nation were doing weeks ago.

So, what do we do with that anger we feel. I, like many of you, saw the videos and realized that

I may not be able to see my loved ones this Thanksgiving or Christmas if this persists. But, ultimately, I am reminded that this situation is a direct result of harmful messaging and an all or nothing "Stay at Home" framework that gave people little

leeway on how to be in community with those they love during hard times. My anger continues to be directed toward the federal government and its gross negligence toward human life. That doesn't mean that's where yours needs to be, but I hope we can see with compassionate eyes.

And if seeing with compassionate eyes isn't where you are right now, at least consider those: there is no need to criminalize or call for the involvement of police. We do not need to augment the powers of the police state right now or ever. Police have no place in public health.

I DO want the people who are at FIP and who were in those IGs to understand the weight of their actions, but that is nearly impossible in a carceral/punitive justice framework of determining blame and administering punishment. If we want to use a restorative lens, that means

engaging in conversation with those who have harmed us and figuring out what their needs are and what our needs are and how we can live in a way that sees all of our collective needs being met. And those who did harm *do* need to make amends, take accountability and make it right