You can't compare HIV/AIDS to COVID in this simplistic way, including the attitudes and public debate around them, and this comment is dangerously close to some sort of public health version of a Godwin's Law violation.

What I remember about HIV in the early 80s was that fear of it fueled a lot of homophobia from those who were ignorant about the disease, certainly to begin with. In fact I remember it originally being seen as a disease that only infected homosexuals and drug addicts - and those being the people who were vilified - which proved to be a fatally uninformed point of view for some.

But HIV is, fundamentally, a very different pathogen to COVID. In the 80s HIV was a death sentence: if you were infected with HIV, sooner or later it would develop into AIDS and you would die. However, a relatively small proportion of the population was infected, and it wasn't very transmissible (you had to have sex or other transfer of body fluids, such as a blood transfusion). Nowadays, HIV treatments have improved to the extent that in developed countries most people receiving treatment can expect to lead a fairly normal and full life, and to live a normal lifetime (ignoring other causes of death that might intervene). I'm not sure what the story is in less developed countries, but I imagine it's not as encouraging.

COVID has never close to that deadly, but is far more transmissible. It's that high transmission rate that has seen so many people die, even though these represent a small fraction of those infected. And this time, nobody is being vilified for their sexual preference, or their gender identity, or any other characteristic that is fundamental to who they are and over which they may not have had much if any agency. You might argue that drug addicts have agency but they don't have very much once they're hooked.

No, with COVID, people are being vilified for wilful ignorance, which is a choice: a conscious decision, and one that - in this case - has a substantial negative impact on their surrounding community and the world at large.

I can't tell you how effective, or not, that vilification is, but I can tell you that a lot of people - myself included - who are fully vaxxed, boosted, and will gladly accept further vaccinations (and would also welcome effective treatments for those who are sick), are getting enormously fed up of having restrictions placed on our lives which, to a non-trivial extent, are being propagated as a result of people who are spreading misinformation and choosing not to get vaccinated. I'm not old - somewhere in the middle - but the remaining count of the best years of my life is finite and even in the best possible case very limited, so I'm getting sick to death of people telling me what I can and can't do with them.

I even agree with you that pointing fingers and calling names won't change anything, but it doesn't matter. Lots of people have had their fill and the anti-vaxxers are a convenient, and frankly not entirely unjust, target for their rage and frustration, which pays to a key point: the rest of us, the "vaxxed and done", or whatever you want to call us, will eventually tire of allowing the lowest common denominator to set the agenda. That's not a threat: it's just a reality, just who we are. Eventually we'll tire of the yoke and throw it off.