ABSTRACT

The Trump administration had not planned for the distribution of vaccines prior to the advent of the Biden administration. As a result, the Biden administration had to construct a new a federal presence that would coordinate what the states were going to do. The analogy is that if there was no federal presence in terms of planning for COVID issues impacting LGBTQIA+ people, then it is not surprising that little planning was done at the state and local levels. The impacts of the pandemic on the LGBTQ community have been largely ignored by the non-LGBTQ populace. In this pandemic, it was primarily LGBTQIA+ advocacy organizations and leading academic organizations that performed the function of identifying the impacts of the pandemic. As usual, when LGBTQIA people are faced with an epidemic that disproportionately impacts them, LGBTQIA organizations will step forward, analyze the problem, and proactively take steps to try to deal with the issue.