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Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

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Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#81

Post by fortran77 »

drewbug01 wrote: post #38
etrabroline wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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, test…

The stigma from the police was horrific. I attended many an ACT-UP protest in NYC in the 80s. And I was assaulted by people during peaceful protests while cops stood by and did nothing.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#82

Post by djaque »

fortran77 wrote: post #77
redis_mlc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one-inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections. The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults…

Isaac Asimov was so embarrassed to have contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that it wasn't mentioned 'til after his death.

I had no idea that he died of AIDS and that was in the 90s. It's terrifying how recent it was that he would have received public backlash for contracting a disease during a surgery.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#83

Post by redis_mlc »

fortran77 wrote: post #77
redis_mlc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed the AIDS crisis in the newspaper from Day One, starting with one-inch long columns about "mysterious purple lesions called Kaposi's sarcoma" to shrines with hundreds of photos occupying whole sections. The similarity with corona in 2020 is that so little was known, but for years, not months. The difference was that AIDS was 100% fatal until drugs were developed, and AIDS killed a generation of young adults…

Isaac Asimov was so embarrassed to have contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion that it wasn't mentioned 'til after his death.

At the time, some pediatricians used to give moms after birth a pint of blood to "pinken them up" (make their cheeks rosy.)

Of course, that gratuitous pint gave some of them AIDS or liver disease for no useful purpose.

More and more you realize hospitals are the most dangerous place to be, emphasized by corona, but the CDC maintains a list of about 18 infectious diseases rampant in hospitals today.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#84

Post by ekianjo »

sn41 wrote: post #14
bluetwo wrote: post #11

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.

High risk but most infected have close to no symptoms which is nothing like AIDS which used to be a death sentence.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#85

Post by groby_b »

etrabroline wrote: post #7
djaque wrote: post #3

I didn't understand the AIDS epidemic until I listened to a podcast [1] where they interviewed a gay survivor. I can't imagine my friends dying off one by one around me from an unknown specter. The government pretending you didn't exist and ignoring you because it was a "gay problem". Society demonizing you. He said that even after it was understood that AIDS was not transmissible by touch, morgues would refuse to ac…

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…

They did absolutely nothing. Reagan didn't even say the name of the disease for FIVE years.

He did, however, relish that it affected gay men. See e.g. his comment from 1981, "maybe the Lord brought down the plague because illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."

He finally, in 1986, allocated funds - so ridiculously low that congress allocated the five-fold amount. He tried to cut it down before passing that. In 1987, he did cut down the money allocated for research. (Which has sod all to do with drug use or sex - we didn't even know what AIDS really was)

The gay community lost an entire generation of men. Because America had a Republican administration that, during an epidemic, chose to gleefully[1] let people die instead of acting. Meanwhile, they chose to privately help their friends - Reagan helped his buddy Roy Cohn to get experimental drug trial.

The whole "they just wanted to suppress recreational drug use and unprotected sex" is BLATANT retconning. Nobody was aware how it spread, people assumed you could get it through touch, saliva, etc.

Trying to spin this blatant murder of gay people by an administration into a public health concern is frankly disgusting.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#86

Post by 77pt77 »

bluetwo wrote: post #11

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.

Or put it like this.

In NY alone there have been 23K deaths due to covid 19.

911 had about 3K dead.

This was over 7 911 events in a matter of 3 months.

Nationally it's about 33 911s in 3 months.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#87

Post by fortran77 »

djaque wrote: post #12
philistine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not see the problem as a black and white problem with two active solutions. They took a third option: they did nothing until public opinion had shifted and Rock Hudson, Reagan's personal friend, died of the disease. They. did. nothing.

It was worse than that. They laughed and made jokes while they did nothing [1]. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

And remember how they immediately jumped on "Legionaries' Disease" even though it only affected a room full of geriatric legionaries.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#88

Post by Gibbon1 »

bluetwo wrote: post #11

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.

I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that was bitching that the government was spending way too much money on AID's research instead of important things like heart disease.

I read that, looked at their statistics and backed out an estimate of number of years of life lost for AID and Heart disease. And yeah AID's was a really big deal unless you were a sociopathic old white male editor at the WSJ.

Reading what the Wall Street Journal thinks about SARS-COV2 shows they haven't changed a bit in 35 years.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#89

Post by Gibbon1 »

77pt77 wrote: post #86
bluetwo wrote: post #11

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.

Or put it like this. In NY alone there have been 23K deaths due to covid 19. 911 had about 3K dead. This was over 7 911 events in a matter of 3 months. Nationally it's about 33 911s in 3 months.

It's like five jetliner crashes every day for the last three months.

Re: Oldest 'nearly complete' HIV genome found in forgotten tissue sample from 1966

#90

Post by drewbug01 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #73
drewbug01 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. But the homophobia isn’t in the statistics (which the commenter didn’t provide, anyways). The homophobia was in the comments about “destructive lifestyles” and stating that it was because of rampant sexual partners. As I stated, you only have to have sex once (and I don’t believe that statement is controversial) to contract HIV. Please examine your own biases, because if your takeaway from the comment t…

There's no need for the SJW act. Everything said in the previous comments was reported in the press of the day, and you can find stats on those topics. I suppose one lesson from then was that telling people how to behave doesn't work, even if their life is at stake. Having said that, the question is, "What can we learn from the AIDS epidemic to apply to corona today?" Sure, Reagan was slow in tackling AIDS, but it tu…

> There's no need for the SJW act.

It's not an act. It's not fake. An entire generation of people like me were wiped out and the attitudes displayed in the comments I'm replying to are the reasons why - homophobia.

And it is 100% homophobic to imply that gay men are reckless and risking their life, and that they're having sex orgies, or sleeping around constantly. And as I've said in other threads - no one is questioning that gay men are the majority of cases in the US. But that's not what I'm arguing about. It's everything else that gets said alongside that statistic - as though the one true statistic gives the rest a pass.

So it's not an act, and I don't really feel like stopping. I don't want to let harmful, homophobic statements go unchallenged here.

> Everything said in the previous comments was reported in the press of the day

As a parting note, consider that the press reporting homophobic garbage had an impact on public opinion, and ultimately contributed to the crisis. Just because it was reported does not mean it was true, nor helpful, nor good.

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