An ‘underclass’ made vulnerable to disease, then blamed for outbreaks

When Michael Johnson went on trial in Missouri in 2015, accused of having “recklessly” exposed several other men to HIV, he embodied what journalist Steven W. Thrasher describes as the “viral underclass.”

The young man had only one ally — his public defender — writes Thrasher in an important new book, “The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide.” That lone supporter was an overwhelmed, underprepared lawyer who erroneously referred to Johnson in remarks to potential jurors as “guilty” of charges that could send the 23-year-old to prison for life.

The prosecutor, for his part, aggressively portrayed Johnson, one of few Black students at the suburban St. Louis university he and some of his accusers attended, as a public health menace. The jury found Johnson guilty under a 1988 state law stating that people with HIV who fail to disclose their status to sexual partners could face felony charges. And the judge ultimately sentenced the young man to 30 years in prison longer than the state’s average sentence for second-degree murder.

As a journalist for outlets including BuzzFeed, Thrasher delved into Johnson’s case over several years. In “The Viral Underclass,” the story provides the narrative through line for Thrasher’s argument: that the “isms” that define so much of life in America - racism, ableism, capitalism - have not only caused some to suffer disproportionately, and unnecessarily, but have also led society to blame individual “bad actors” for viruses’ devastating toll.

In other words, members of the viral underclass are not only most likely to contract diseases such as HIV and covid-19, they are also disproportionately punished for it, a process that largely absolves the country’s classist and racist policies and institutions.

Thrasher borrows the term “viral underclass” from a 2011 statement by Sean Strub, a longtime activist for LGBTQ equality, who coined it as a way of acknowledging the discriminatory effects of legal sanctions and other policies around HIV. Such practices resulted “in the creation of a viral underclass of persons with rights inferior to others, especially in regard to their sexual expression,” Strub wrote.

In broadening the scope of this concept, Thrasher shows that such logic can be self-reinforcing. Instead of fighting for a more affordable and equitable healthcare system that would expand access to HIV drugs and dramatically lower the risk of transmission, for instance, we lock up lone men like Johnson who have faced various challenges, including, in his case, dyslexia and economic hardship. In Thrasher’s telling, Johnson serves as a convenient scapegoat for society’s sins.