texan12 said:

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Who here was worried more about this virus during the 80's compared to corona? If the country was on lockdown after Magic Johnson said he was positive would that have been socially acceptable as it is now?

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Most of us never had anything to worry about from HIV.

Marcus Aurelius said:

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I was a student / resident / fellow during HIV explosion. At UTSW / Parkland - out of 10 admits 7 were AIDS related. If you told me we would conquer HIV then i would have been skeptical. From medical side we had as much fear of it as it was a death sentence at the time.

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Also from what I hear, no one knew how it spread initially either. So a lot of fear on the unknown. Kind of like now it seems.

Thanks for the reply!

My mother-in-law apparently gave someone mouth-to-mouth resuscitation right while the HIV/AIDS story started breaking.

I wouldn't say she's still seriously "shaken" by it, but she clearly gets upset when telling the story and even with what we know today, even it were a family member, I think she'd have a hard time doing the same thing.

I remember the first impressions of AIDS . . then called "Gay Cancer" . . . . .as being incredibly scary but your chances of getting it were all on you. If you did get it, it was a death sentence. COVID is scary as well but most folks realize that if you do get it the odds are your case is going to be mild.

Even in the 90s, there was this fear of a random hook up turning into an incurable and lethal disease. There were urban legends of AIDS Mary . . .you spend the night with a woman and when you wake up she is gone but ""Welcome to the AIDS Club" is written on the bathroom mirror.


Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, etc. . . he media played up famous gay men dying of the disease. It wasn't until Magic Johnson carrying on with life that society seemed to relax a bit.

I was on campus at the time of AIDS being an unknown death sentence and it stunted a lot of the students. Not only Reagan but Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority agenda added stress to the local social scene. Recall the beginning of the AIDS quilts memorializing the many lost souls. The gay stigma was attached but AIDS was becoming rampant in the hetero communities as well. Magic Johnson was the one who put a known face on it and that brought about the many who finally realized the despair of the disease.

We have had teacher training on handling blood ever since this era. Good idea to be careful anyway, this is why we have to watch the same video every year and take a quiz on it.

panamamyers00 said:

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There were 38,000 new cases in 2016. Close to 75% were homosexual males. So 1% of the population made up 75% of new cases. There is a reason they ask you if you have had homosexual sex as a man when donating blood.
It is possible to get it as a heterosexual, but it is much, much more unlikely. You have to either be extremely unlucky or have sex hundreds and hundreds of times in an unprotected name with a known HIV positive of the opposite sex. I'm in my 40s and until 10 years ago I though if you had sex unprotected with someone who was positive it was a done deal. You then had it. I didn't realize that odds are 2500 to 1 that you get it even if the other person is known to be positive. Not that this information changed my lifestyle at all.

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I'm uh....aware of the statistics

If he was refusing to acknowledge it, how could he also have been encouraging that it was only among a certain group?

Also, if you're aware of the statistics, and given the anecdote you shared, wouldn't those seem to reinforce the idea it's most impactful in certain groups?

Not trying to reinforce the notion that those groups are "deviant" at all, to each their own, but numbers dont lie.

Windy City Ag said:

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I remember the first impressions of AIDS . . then called "Gay Cancer" . . . . .as being incredibly scary but your chances of getting it were all on you. If you did get it, it was a death sentence. COVID is scary as well but most folks realize that if you do get it the odds are your case is going to be mild.

Even in the 90s, there was this fear of a random hook up turning into an incurable and lethal disease. There were urban legends of AIDS Mary . . .you spend the night with a woman and when you wake up she is gone but ""Welcome to the AIDS Club" is written on the bathroom mirror.


Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, etc. . . he media played up famous gay men dying of the disease. It wasn't until Magic Johnson carrying on with life that society seemed to relax a bit.

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Ashe got it from a blood transfusion.

As did Ryan White.

Uncle got it from a blood transfusion in 86/87. Watching what it did to him is seared into my brain.

Son of one of my best friends has hemophilia (he high school age) and when he was diagnosed his docs said that many hemophiliacs our age (46 now) and older died from AIDS due to clotting factor being procured through the blood supply vs synthetic now.

Quote:

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Ashe got it from a blood transfusion.

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That is right . . .he was also hetero. My bad.