31–40 of 227 posts
Semi-related: Thinking about this era I wondered how long it look for AIDS to kill 100,000 Americans. The answer is about 5 years. CoViD did it in 5 months.
It's disturbing that we are being told to learn to live with the virus when there is such a high risk of contraction.
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> The first was to spend billions of dollars hoping to find a cure while certain behaviors continued to spread the virus. And yet here we are, with governments spending billions of dollars to find a cure when we can stop the spread of COVID-19 by reducing certain behaviors. The difference in government response to the (ongoing, btw) AIDS crisis and COVID-19 has a hell of a lot to do with the fact that COVID-19 is not…
Understood. But Covid is of course a different disease, and different in many ways. No consent is required to obtain it from another person. No time spent in private naked. Just be near someone in line at the bus stop and a sneeze. So there's that.
And yet, here we are. It’s a tempting comparison for a lot of people because it’s the worst thing in recent memory.
And that leads to the other thing that gets me fired up - people trivializing HIV as “not as bad” or even sometimes as an example of a “good” public health response. It’s just so different in almost every respect that it’s inevitably insulting.
(Of course this is not directed at you, I’m vehemently agreeing with you I believe. :)
Semi-related: Thinking about this era I wondered how long it look for AIDS to kill 100,000 Americans. The answer is about 5 years. CoViD did it in 5 months.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Regan administration had two options. The first was to spend billions of dollars hoping to find a cure while certain behaviors continued to spread the virus. (what these activists wanted) The second option was to reduce the occurrence of those behaviors, namely intravenous recreational drug use, and unprotected sex with large numbers of sexual partners, which is particularly widespread among homosexual males. The…
The bathouse behaviour is still present. I went to a korean spa in nyc with my kids and ran into a group of young men having an orgy in one of the spas which is not private. I was so embarassed, didnt know what to say to my kids, they saw a live scene. We never talked about it. So, some of that stuborness in behaviour is something rampant in the gay community. They have for example, drug fueled parties and have conti…
Don't straight people do this too? Loaded question - of course they do. People take drugs and have sex. It's a human thing, not a 'gay' thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Understood. But Covid is of course a different disease, and different in many ways. No consent is required to obtain it from another person. No time spent in private naked. Just be near someone in line at the bus stop and a sneeze. So there's that.
Of course it is. And really, one of the things that gets me fired up is that comparing HIV to the current pandemic is that it’s just so lazy, and inaccurate! And yet, here we are. It’s a tempting comparison for a lot of people because it’s the worst thing in recent memory. And that leads to the other thing that gets me fired up - people trivializing HIV as “not as bad” or even sometimes as an example of a “good” publ…
God, please tell this to my coworker. He's a biology teacher at a high school for God's sake, and he's going around saying that we should go back to school because we don't shut down for HIV, and that the novel Corona virus isn't any different. The kicker is he, of course, still wants his soccer team to practice and be able to play their games and such. And he's, sadly, likely going to get his wish. But, seriously, the man is a biology teacher arguing this. It's so damn frustrating, especially as the school won't do anything about it.
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The bathouse behaviour is still present. I went to a korean spa in nyc with my kids and ran into a group of young men having an orgy in one of the spas which is not private. I was so embarassed, didnt know what to say to my kids, they saw a live scene. We never talked about it. So, some of that stuborness in behaviour is something rampant in the gay community. They have for example, drug fueled parties and have conti…
I wish I had the option to downvote, because thinly veiled homophobia is really a disgusting thing to see on a supposedly enlightened site. As if straight people don’t sleep around and have drug-fueled sex parties. And my god, swingers were and are a thing - as if gay men have a monopoly on getting laid. The behavior is not rampant in the gay community; “they” do not have drug-fueled sex parties and fuck for days; th…
I felt like I was re-hearing a church youth pastor sermon from 1985 reading the parent comment.
"When AIDS was funny" https://youtu.be/yAzDn7tE1lU It shows the challenges of the press to have serious conversations about the disease with the Reagan administration.
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> The first was to spend billions of dollars hoping to find a cure while certain behaviors continued to spread the virus. And yet here we are, with governments spending billions of dollars to find a cure when we can stop the spread of COVID-19 by reducing certain behaviors. The difference in government response to the (ongoing, btw) AIDS crisis and COVID-19 has a hell of a lot to do with the fact that COVID-19 is not…
A small number of people can spread a disease far and wide, thereby greatly affecting people who themselves do not take so many unnecessary risks. Choosing to reduce your number of sexual partners is a form of social distancing, and like the lockdown protestors today, the AIDS protestors of the 1980's were upset by the need to social distance, although the gay jokes probably contributed.
You have to be trolling. You can’t honestly believe that people protesting the lack of government action around HIV in the 80s were upset only that they had to “social distance?”
They protested because they had next to no information about the disease, testing was inadequate (and slow), stigma was rampant, and at the end of the day the government was content to let them die rather than search for a cure.
This is an incredibly reductive and insulting take. Don’t make rational arguments at the expense of normalizing what was an extremely cruel response by the Reagan admin.
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Of course it is. And really, one of the things that gets me fired up is that comparing HIV to the current pandemic is that it’s just so lazy, and inaccurate! And yet, here we are. It’s a tempting comparison for a lot of people because it’s the worst thing in recent memory. And that leads to the other thing that gets me fired up - people trivializing HIV as “not as bad” or even sometimes as an example of a “good” publ…
> Of course it is. And really, one of the things that gets me fired up is that comparing HIV to the current pandemic is that it’s just so lazy, and inaccurate! God, please tell this to my coworker. He's a biology teacher at a high school for God's sake, and he's going around saying that we should go back to school because we don't shut down for HIV, and that the novel Corona virus isn't any different. The kicker is h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it is. And really, one of the things that gets me fired up is that comparing HIV to the current pandemic is that it’s just so lazy, and inaccurate! And yet, here we are. It’s a tempting comparison for a lot of people because it’s the worst thing in recent memory. And that leads to the other thing that gets me fired up - people trivializing HIV as “not as bad” or even sometimes as an example of a “good” publ…
> Of course it is. And really, one of the things that gets me fired up is that comparing HIV to the current pandemic is that it’s just so lazy, and inaccurate! God, please tell this to my coworker. He's a biology teacher at a high school for God's sake, and he's going around saying that we should go back to school because we don't shut down for HIV, and that the novel Corona virus isn't any different. The kicker is h…