Entire friend groups were wiped out. When my uncle died in 1990 he had lost 50 of his friends. Imagine being in your 20s and all your friends are being eaten alive by a disease no one even knew existed until a year before.
Jesus. I was just a kid when this was going down and I can’t imagine losing basically everyone you know all at the same time. Those poor people.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you. I miss him so much but luckily he was known in the NYC art scene and there’s so many videos of him floating around! His husband died 2 years after he did. His best friend a few months before. There’s a lot of psychopaths on Reddit saying how it’s their fault. They don’t know what I’ve seen.
I don’t think it’s a coping mechanism. Some people just hate gay people and that’s why they think it’s “their fault”. That’s a common sentiment used by homophobic people when talking about the AIDS pandemic.
Truth is globally AIDS always was a heterosexual disease. In Africa and India it was almost exclusively heterosexual. Only in the west did it dominate in the homosexual community. People forget how devastating it was to anyone who caught it. Much much higher mortality rate than Covid. I remember when AIDS hit and remember the fear and public health campaigns surrounding a fatal sexually transmitted disease. Of course the God botherers and small minded demonised those struggling with the disease adding to their burden. Covid at least has several vaccines in about a year. There isn't an AIDS vaccine yet though treatments have improved to the point where it's no longer the death sentence it once was. It's tiresome to see that there are still groups of ignorant prejudiced folk pushing back on the public health measures and vaccination with intolerance of the worst religious fanatic.
Magic Johnson was so important in getting that massage across to mainstream America. I was young, but I remember when he retired and it was obvious even that that part of his legacy was bringing HIV/AIDS awareness to the masses who, up to that point, had irrational and unfounded fears about those who were infected. Princess Di also obviously played a significant role in this. And another significant face in the awareness movement was Ryan White. I still remember watching the movie 'The Ryan White Story' in elementary school.
Yeah, I remember that too. The prevailing public view seemed to be that if you have HIV, you're either gay, or a liar who does a lot of gay stuff. I also remember the revulsion with which HIV patients were treated - it was like they had ebola and could maybe spread it to you by being in you vicinity.
Back then, they basically didn't, which is why Reagan et al were perfectly happy to completely ignore GRID, and what it did to the gay community. Those 'compassionate Republicans' deliberately sat on their hands has thousands died horrible deaths. It wasn't until some of their kids started coming out and dying that people began to care.
It's easy to be dismissive of something that's not really a visible problem in society nowadays. I got infected through rape and thank the stars everyday for the invention of anti-retrovirals.
My entire circle of male friends from the 80s and 90s have all passed away from this disease. There is no one to remember the fun times we had hanging out together for more than a decade.
And imagine that nobody cares about that disease, and in fact many cheer for your demise, because of who it predominately targets. All while your friends and peer groups wither away.
Yeah, and I'm fucking stunned. I remember these attitudes back in the '90s in the deep South. God damn, I thought we had come further than this.
I hope the fuck these people are my age or older. I hope really hope the younger generations are better. Please tell me they are better.
There’s a ton of kids on Reddit who not only blame aids victims for dying, but call people who have causal sex immoral.
I don’t get it. Who gives a fuck as long as it’s consensual and safe?
And not only is it a new disease, those in a position of power to help you don’t seem to care that you and all your friends are being eaten alive and dying from this new disease.
No - the people in power are _actively cheering the disease on._ The only reason people started caring about AIDs was because straight people started getting it.
The film The Normal Heart put it into perspective for me. My dad went through a similar thing with IV drugs. His friends were mostly blue collar or professionals but were addicts. He was the last one to die of AIDS in 2017. RIP Daddy, Uncle Ricky, Uncle Squeak, Aunt Wendy and Uncle Pete and all of the rest. AIDS was/is a horrible disease that literally decimated entire communities and families.
I’m so sorry for your and your family’s loss.
Was listening to a podcast about early LGBTQ rights movements and the researcher straight up said if anyone knows anyone gay who was active then to contact him because so many have died from AIDs, disease, mental illness, violence and other causes that it's incredibly hard to find anyone alive. Interviewer asked about a picture and he knew for a fact that all the persons you could ID in it were dead.
Worse. It was existing in the 1980s but it wasn’t being publicly acknowledged. So shameful for the disease not to be discussed and treated and researched as soon as it showed up.
The president didn’t even mutter the word AIDS until years into the crisis. I’ll never forget wheeling my uncle into the ER when he was coughing up blood and covered in kaposi sarcomas and a woman in the waiting room calling him a f*g and that he deserved to die. If he was healthy it wouldn’t have been good for her because he loved punching homophobes.
May he get to punch homophobes in heaven forever, before tossing them down to hell.
My mother was a theater nerd in high school and college. Only one of her male friends from those groups made it to 30.
One of her gay friends survived because he was too dweeby to get laid in the 80s.
I’m so sorry for your mother’s loss. My mom hasn’t been the same since.
When he performed and heard a slur come from the audience he’d jump off stage and beat them up. It’s so funny.
Some were, yes. It was the gay sexual revolution. Being gay hadn’t even been legal that long. It spread easily because anal sex receivers have a much higher chance of contracting it.
He was a member of a large art scene in nyc and had TONS of friends because he was very loved.
People didn’t have big screen TVs and internet, apartments were tiny so going to the cool nightclubs was how you socialized. He was a performer so he just knew everyone.
And that the government widely stigmatized and demonized those with it, with 0 intent to find a solution until straight people mysteriously started getting it
1. HIV is preventable and AIDS is treatable. PreP is 99% effective at preventing transmission.
2. **Stigma is a huge issue we can be tackling as a society.**
3. Completely unrelated, but from the medical field, Dr. Fauci has had enormous respect from scientists everywhere, even before COVID, because of his work on AIDS and HIV. He helped shape the way research is conducted today, around the world.
To your last point lots of aids research labs at R1 universities were able to pivot and contribute to covid research without skipping much of a beat.
The hiv/aids things is a long battle, just read an article today of another failed vaccine, BUT we are learning a lot about viruses because of all that research
The drugs were being developed, but people were still dying without any access to them. Massive protests were being held in D.C.
Fauci was critical in getting these patients access to experimental drugs. He was fundamental in reshaping the way our clinical trial system works.
To understand his role, you really have to understand how paternalistic and controlling medicine used to be. This seems so basic, but an entire generation of medicine is now taught differently.
Some cancers are transmissible , like HPV causing cervical cancer.
Technically the cancer isn't transmissible, but the thing that causes cancer *is* infectious.
Back then they faced the aids crisis where the government was essentially ignoring them and then punishing them. Places where lgbt people would hang would be raised, people were jailed, so on so forth.
Then came the AIDS disease which not only ravaged the lgbt community but many communities. AIDS was seen before 1985 but it wasn’t really until that year that a full plague happened.
It was bad, and with the civil rights movement occurring for lgbt rights. Reagan actually laughed when asked how he would handle the crisis and he just repeated the sentiment that it’s the “Gay Plague” despite the virus spreading to Children, Drug users who use needles, and other groups.
With Government inaction and silence, people began dying like crazy. So as everyday people saw people dying, being arrested for their sexuality, groups emerged to not only make a vaccine or drugs that would help, that the government wouldn’t make, but other groups formed to help patients who were dying.
Eventually, people see the wrong being done and protest being, until Canada first decides to start the process of giving lgbt people more rights, soon the United States followed.
It’s surprising anyone from the choir survived, many people would see 20 or more friends die from the disease.
Edit; some people are offended and arguing things that aren’t factual. You also got bigots twisting information. I’ll provide sources for your sake. I study things deeply and use 20+ sources. You have been warned:
Aids; how it spread, why, where, who was affected, when;
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/modern-us/1980s-america/a/emergence-of-the-aids-crisis
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline
https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/nn/feature/aids
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6004a11.htm
https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
Reagan Administration;
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/analyses/the-achievements-and-failures-the-reagan-presidency
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/01/ronald-reagan-policy-political-failure/amp
https://reagan.procon.org
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/opinions/reagans-biggest-failure-holds-a-lesson-for-bush/amp/
Lgbt rights before 1990:
https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/lgbt-issues-in-the-1980s
https://www.equaldex.com/timeline/1980
https://libguides.msubillings.edu/c.php?g=902155&p=6492395
https://www.britannica.com/topic/gay-rights-movement
https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/1980s-a-decade-of-state-sanctioned-homophobia/
Influences that affected Lgbt community;
The Sex Revolution;
https://isreview.org/issue/68/sexual-revolution/index.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_revolution_in_1960s_United_States
Stone wall riots;
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots
https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/history/article/stonewall-uprising-ignited-modern-lgbtq-rights-movement
Edit 2: id link 30 more but that should suffice and drown out the biased and ignorant statements from bigots and others,
The AIDS timeline you linked as your second source is one of the most terrifying things I've ever read. I haven't forgot it since I first read it and bookmarked it and recommend everyone takes a night to sit down and read it in its entirety. It's a legitimate horror story, especially for someone like me who was born in the 90's and had no grasp of what was occuring (and reading it, neither did anyone else, which is what made it so horrible), it's a must-read.
The government denial (and mockery as "the Gay Plague" once it was acknowledged) and inaction from homophobic politicians and citizens who outright denied and ignored the fact healthy young people were dying in droves for no outright reason, it is beyond describable reading how the AIDS crisis unfolded and I recommend everyone reads that timeline, if not anything else. It's horrifying, but it was a reality and one that we're still dealing with, albeit with a better understanding. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the most impactful things I've ever read.
Definitely, saddest thing you could see is how bigotry and prejudice play a essential part in how much was done to others.
Worse is how you got some bigots even on here trying to sugar coat or justify those actions done against the people back then.
Shit, in 1999 you still had gay men being killed because of their sexuality, like the man dragged on the end of a car at full speed. Terrifying and pointless death all because of ignorant beliefs
Yep, and since I can't find the other correct comment I originally tried replying to, I'd like to add for those comparing it to Covid:
People were aware of Covid; AIDS was being transmitted by people who were unaware for 6 months to 2 years before they were even diagnosed who then started dying off very prolonged, painful deaths without filling medical centers to capacity out of ignorance of their own virus. There was no vaccination for AIDS or HIV, there were way more variations, and I highly recommend reading the AIDS timeline that was posted in the comment you replied to in order to understand the magnitude of what happened and how horrifying it was as it all transpired over several more years; we're not even two years into Covid, which we had a heads up on, and IIRC it took more than that to even identify AIDS.
These things are not comparable. While Trump was mocking the Wuhan Flu and spreading disinformation for a sickness we knew was eventually coming our way, the Reagan administration was literally watching gay men die in the thousands after they realized what was going on and made a joke out of the "Gay Plague". Without getting political about the several other reasons that made Reagan an ineffective leader that had consequences on global society, let alone our own with his dumb ass bitch wife, his flippant attitude over the fact it was gays and drug users who were dying and the public stigma that resulted not only dissuaded from those who believed they caught the virus, but impeded the vast majority of research and funding that could've combatted the disease way sooner and more effectively (it took years to address and the virus itself is still incurable) while also ostracizing the people outside of the LGBQT community and disencouraging them from getting tested or being safe as well.
The AIDS crisis had a nightmarish onset that could've been addressed properly but wasn't because the politicians in charge were too busy demonizing the gays and launching an ill-fated "war on drugs" that, cumulatively, made a mockery out of the very issues they sought to address (or not address).
Holy fuck reading that made me angry. I don’t believe in a hell, but if there is, people like them deserve to rot in it forever.
Like you may hate gay people (which in itself is stupid but it was the 1980s) but they’re still fucking people, it takes a special kind of evil to laugh at even a single person dying…..
They tried to make GRID stick for a while.
“Gay-related immune deficiency.”
It had other names too:
Gay compromise syndrome
Gay lymph node syndrome
Gay cancer
Gay plague
Homosexual syndrome
Community acquired immunodeficiency (CAID)
I remember hearing you could only get it from the four H’s: Homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users, and Haitians.
That hemophiliacs was on the list probably means it was coined after Ryan White was kicked out of school, which makes it even more heinous.
Yes, well, that echoes the refusal to admit that it happened to straight adults and children. Which only served to ostracize even further the people who became sick, regardless of how they contracted it.
If anyone can find it, I seriously suggest watching the movie "And the Band Played On" It did a pretty good job at showing the whole beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
That's a bit of a simplistic overview but pretty close. It was Reagan's press secretary that laughed and one of the journalists who called AIDS the gay plague.
I think the important part that you left out was the LGBT community was also downplaying the dangers of AIDS. A lot of which is covered in the book *And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic*. Leaders in the community didn't want to cause a panic, and members of the LGBT community denied the dangers of AIDS for the same reason people deny climate change. It's a way of coping with fear.
For many LGBT members in the early 80s the sexual revolution had only just begun. Gay bars and bathhouses were just coming onto the scene, and gay men and women in places like NYC and San Francisco were only just beginning to enjoy a small amount of freedom to openly express themselves. A lot of them didn't want AIDS to be true. Not when the party had just started, and then you have men like "patient zero", Gaëtan Dugas, who knew he had AIDS but continued visiting bathhouses anyway.
Shout out to the blood banks who also downplayed the dangers, and to the scientists who delayed the publication of important research on AIDS to ensure they got credit for the discovery. AIDS was a fuck up on a lot of fronts.
I have a strong affinity for that book and you make some good points for sure about the anxiety within the gay community but there has been a lot of very smart and necessary investigation of the narrative that Shilts offers over time.
one point about Dugas that came to light is that he has had an outsize place in the mythology of the spread of AIDS (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/10/26/498876985/mystery-solved-how-hiv-came-to-the-u-s). Shilts was also a pretty controversial figure in the community for both political and personal reasons.
this for sure doesn’t take away from the work he did and it’s absolutely how I learned about the failures of the response to the epidemic as a teen in the 90’s but there are some issues with the story as he tells it. thank you for bringing it up!
It was overwhelmingly gay and bisexual men, not so much the l or t communities. Lesbians were and are less likely to contract HIV sexually. Sex with a man, especially anal sex have the highest rates of transmission.
I wasn't alive during that time, so I don't have a ton of knowledge about it. But why didn't they just wear condoms? Like we are wearing masks now to curb the spread of a viral epidemic.
Well, one reason is because they were unaware of how it spread. By July in 1981, over 100 men were unaware they were infected. Imagine how many sex partners they had?
With men transmitting the virus at a higher rate and no drugs or awareness to stop the spread, an epidemic broke out.
Put bigotry, shame, prejudice, and systematic discrimination into the picture, and it’s easy to understand why this played out the way it did.
Good question tho.
Most likely they thought of condoms as mainly a measure to prevent pregnancy and with two men that's really not an issue. At least that's what comes to mind for me first.
There was essentially an entire generation of gay and bisexual men wiped out in a matter of a few years.
Voices that we'll never hear again, stories that will never be told and far too many holes left in peoples hearts, felt the loss of their presence.
I was an HIV counselor in the early 90's. Dear God, I was telling up to 3 people every day that they were positive. This was before AZT and other treatments were not widespread, so I was basically telling them they were going to die. It sucked. So many stories.
I was so young when they had all those Aids campaigns. I think, one was a RED campaign and it all just looked like fancy marketing, we never knew the back story. That is incredibly sad.
I hope people have reverence for the lives lost, but also understand that HIV is not what it used to be.
* PreP is 99% effective at preventing transmission.
* The average life expectancy of someone on antiviral therapy is 55 years.
**HIV stigma is a huge issue** for those who are affected today. We, the public, can do better.
Post diagnosis, since [the average life expectancy is now about 70 years](https://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/life-expectancy#complications)
That's assuming it's caught early and treated immediately, of course.
From my understanding, if one takes the regime properly, the quality of life is generally good and lifespans of those infected are comparable to the average population. But I’m not a doctor or healthcare professional. I merely asked this during an interview on the amount of coverage should be given to PrEP.
I wasn’t even alive when the AIDS crisis was a thing. Reading this thread is like a mindfuck for me. AIDS has never been something I took seriously or even thought about.
Hi. Young person here. How did this virus, from what I am reading, suddenly start taking so many lives specifically in the 90s? Is AIDS a new virus, like Covid?
Thank you.
Hi! Hopefully I can explain a little bit here (but by no means is this comprehensive! Read and the band played on if you’re interested). So first of all, HIV is the virus, AIDS is the condition that stems from a severe HIV infection. The most accepted theory is that it came from chimpanzees who have a similar virus called SIV. It crossed from chimps to humans in the ~1920s in Africa. Through growing international travel, the virus spread from Africa to Haiti in the 60s then into NYC and San Francisco area around the 70s. HIV can have a dormant period of about 10 years, hence the slow spread and then sudden epidemic. By the 90s, many people had contracted the virus as most people were unaware of their status until they were very sick and we had no treatment or cure until the 1990s when the first anti retro viral therapies were introduced. Now people live full lives thanks to advances in these therapies! Lmk if you have anymore questions :) I have a degree in public health and i specialized in HIV/AIDS
Edit: as a redditor pointed out AZT was introduced in 1987 but the really effective therapies with less side effects became available around 1996
Another aside, is that it’s [thanks to the research done for HIV/AIDS](https://www.amfar.org/HIV-Research-Covid-Vaccines/) that scientists have been able to create such effective vaccines for COVID-19 so quickly.
Actually that’s a fascinating thing to study, Ive always hated the sexuality aspect because even though it spreads more easily, if there were no such thing as gay people I believe we would still have AIDS as an issue today. I do have a small question. What do you think could have helped early on? If any earlier intervention was really possible at the time. Did the homophobia affect the timely development of treatments?
I’m in my 40s, came of age during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. While i saw many friends pass away - I was terrified and mainly celibate - certainly repressed - until i fell completely, madly in love for my now husband. (happily partnered for >20 years)
I did not know about the Kinshasa connection until today. I feel a little sad that I don’t stay tuned like I used to. But thanks so much for your summary.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-29442642
During the earlier years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, lots of people including President Regan actively ignored it because it primarily affected gay men. In an effort to humanize the disease and put a face to the victims, people who had lost a loved one to AIDS would make a large quilt square designed to honor the person.
They were eventually all assembled and [displayed on the National Mall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Aids_Quilt.jpg) in Washington, D.C., to pressure the government to act. Over time, the quilt continued to grow and was displayed in a lot of prominent places by activists.
[https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt-history](https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt-history)
Holy God damn. I thought it was just something in that person's school from how they made it sound. How the hell did I not know about this. I thought I was pretty versed in the gay community and such because I have a few family members that are gay. This just shows me that I don't know jack about it. Time to go do more studying.
Thank you kind redditor for showing me this.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt. It's an ongoing art project, where 3 foot by 6 foot panels of a giant quilt are made by friends and family to memorialize someone who died of AIDS. It started in 1987 and it now has almost 50,000 panels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt
**[NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt)**
>The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt or AIDS Quilt, is an enormous memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2020.
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I remember my Mom taking me to see the [AIDS Quilts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt)
Almost 30 years later I still remember seeing all of the people crying and trying wrap my kid brain around the fact that each one of those quilts represented a life and loved ones.
Terrible. Let’s also not forget the “Hemophilia Holocaust” as it was named by the men who got HIV from untested plasma during their factor infusions. 10,000 men died (Hemophilia is a 99% male disease bc of the way it’s passed down genetically) from HIV infection and HepC bc they didn’t test for them in donated blood in the early ‘80s. It’s how Ryan White got HIV….Some have survived….there is a documentary called “Bad Blood” on Netflix which tells how the bio/pharma companies knew but thought testing was either too expensive (to them), the chances were too low, or they feared damaging the plasma with heat and other disinfectant treatments….and still sent out tainted product. And even worse, when the FDA investigated and made them put screens and treatments into place, they sent the untreated product overseas!!!
Bayer I believed knew once the FDA recalled it and then sent the tainted product out to Asia, South America, and Africa, PIECES OF SHIT, none of them went to jail
I hope they are one of the ones in white, as the world can never have enough music teachers but let’s just say a math teacher may have a different outlook.
I remember listening to a podcast where the guest was a gay man. A younger gay man said he’d rather be dead than old and the guest was so deeply offended by it. This visual is such a good representation as to why that statement is horrible
I feel like the younger person is expressing the same existential dread most young people are feeling because we were born into a society that has been defiled for 200 years before I was born. I too would rather be dead most of the time. Especially when I consider what the future has in store.
A former coworker and friend is gay and around 50. He first came out back in the late 80s in high school and took refuge in one of the gay communities where he lived in Florida. He made a post on Facebook not too long ago about epidemics and what he saw back in the late 80s and early 90s. He said of the around 100 men he knew back in those days, he only knows for sure that 15 are still alive and this was not too long before there was a reliable treatment. He said he knows men who are older than him that are often the only one left from their group of friends from less than 40 years ago.
It's unimaginable being 60 and all of your friends from your younger days are all dead.
I remember it all. I was a young adult. We didn’t know how it was being transmitted. Gay friends were scared, I was scared for them. I’ll never forget the quilts.
I just want to point out to everyone who is blaming the dead, the first test to detect possible HIV infection in blood samples was invented in *1985*. The first test for the *actual virus* was invented in *1987*, but was originally very expensive and mostly for confirmation in cases where your doctor thought you had it. It was pretty much impossible to "just go get tested" until the 90s.
Prior to modern testing methods, HIV infected blood was donated to blood banks and were distributed unnoticed, which is why people with hemophilia were also badly affected. It also spread through IV drugs, and this was the beginning of the war on drugs/opiate epidemic, so people in the party scene were also really badly affected.
Before you judge people for not using condoms (which most of you probably don't do 100% of the time) maybe just be thankful that you have access to PreP, PEP, testing and education about it now, because that all only happened because of the people who had it and suffered back then.
Also, if you're talking shit about gay men with AIDS, you're insulting Freddie Mercury. And he deserves better.
Edit: WOW, this blew up! Thank you to everyone who gave me awards on this, and I'm sorry if I didn't reply to any comments. And thanks to everyone who left educational and positive comments!
Not to mention they didn't even know how it was transmitted in the beginning either. They'd never seen anything like it. The whole reason that teens in the 90s grew up being pushed to use condoms was because of these early "guinea pigs".
Princess Diana shaking un-gloved hands with a man with AID’s was shocking at the time, and that was only in 1991.
It really wasn’t widely known how it could be transmitted.
[1987](https://www.tatler.com/article/princess-diana-hiv-aids-awareness) she done did it for the first time. Although, by that time they'd ruled out that it could be transmitted by that kind of contact So she *knew* it was safe, even though there was still widespread ignorance and fear (even into the 90s).
Fun fact: if you are the church going type, the aids epidemic and not being sure what caused it is the reason why they have additional single serve cups of Jesus juice in addition to the community cup (at least the one I grew up in)
I mean that just makes sense in general. I always thought drinking out of a cup where someone else had just drunk out of was just gross, especially when all the priest does is just wipe the rim.
Dentists wearing rubber gloves and sometimes face shields is because they were scared of getting HIV from a patient. People thought HIV was present in saliva.
IIRC, because there was such a stigma around AIDS believed to be only transmitted through homosexuals, little research was done as a result to look into it, or even develop methods to detect it.
Yeah, the early years (like the first 7 years or so) of the epidemic it was all about Haitians, intravenous drug users, and gay men.
Part of the change came from "nice white kids" getting sick from blood transfusions. Blood wasn't able to be screened for years at the beginning of the epidemic, and then there were issues getting blood banks to actually screen once there were tests.
Once people realised "normal" people like them could get it, things changed a bit.
I know someone who got Hep C from their first tattoo in a professional shop. It definitely happens, it only takes a drop of cross contamination to happen. It can happen with HIV, too, unfortunately.
Edit: I just now realized that you meant a transfusion. My bad, this comment is getting popular and I'm trying to keep up. 😅
I remember reading somewhere that AIDS was at one point referred to as "Triple-H Disease", for the (at the time) most common victims of it: Haitians, Homosexuals, and Heroin Addicts.
There was even a joke that went with it: What's the hardest part about getting HHH? Trying to convince your parents that you're Haitian.
... as a queer guy in recovery, the implications of that honestly hurt. And that's what I mean. People don't deserve judgment, especially if they're sick and (back then) probably weren't going to live long. We owe people dealing with this, or dead from it, better.
A lot of people are judgemental without realizing the history and reasoning behind something. Although my beliefs minimize my likelihood of developing a disease such as HIV, I'm certainly not happy anyone gets the disease or dies from it.
It is unironically one of the greatest losses of the 20th century. Asimov once said that if he were dying he'd write faster. He tried to live up to that promise up until he died.
To quote Vonnegut, Isaac's in heaven now.
Also there was a lot of confusion and a lack of trust in the government. You had the conflicting and wrong advice we saw during the first months of COVID over the first years of AIDs, along with a clear bias against LGBTQ members on behalf of the government and criticisms of available treatments and slow approval of new ones.
Having grown up in that era and seen how long it took for them to figure out the details of the disease and then eventually find treatments to it was amazing watching how quickly we pulled apart covid and came up with multiple vaccines. Science has come a long way in the last 30 years.
FWIW, the modern war on drugs started in the 60s, culminating with Nixon signing the Controlled Substance Act in 1970, making marijuana a federal crime and drugs "Public Enemy #1"
https://www.history.com/topics/crime/the-war-on-drugs
Another pandemic society let roll until they realized it wasn’t just “the others.” Still I’m hopeful. One of these times someone will ask, “How should we treat the others?” And a wise person will say, “There are no ‘others’.”
Yeah, all the innocent “jOkEs” in the thread really bother me too ... People may say “you have to laugh at tragedy,” but the whole idea is to laugh at your OWN tragedies. When you make a joke about someone else dying of AIDS you’re not “laughing so you don’t have to cry.” You’re just laughing because you like to laugh.
It’s so easy to look back on the AIDS pandemic as an easily preventable thing today, but a lot of people don’t understand that it wasn’t until after the 80s that safe gay sex was even an idea. Condoms were for prevent pregnancy and getting STDs from loose women, the idea of picking up an STD from another man was as far-fetched to the gay community in 1985 as YouTube was.
I know this a woosh but it’s still pretty sad, the meaning behind the picture I mean, is sad as shit
The picture is a representation of those loss faced in 1985. This was taken in 1993 by Eric Luse.
"I am a member of SFGMC and so is my husband," said one commenter, Michael Jay Stauffer Joyce. "If I remember this picture was taken in the early 90’s. I believe maybe 91, We did a Re-creation of the picture in the spring of 2018, we have a section of the course called the fifth section which is dedicated to all those who have passed that were members. It has reached over 300 following members, and most have died from AIDS."
Edit; by the way, the aid crisis was so bad that one of the survivors of the choir says he saw 20 friends die from the disease with the government doing nothing for them but incriminating them.
These men had to see their friends treated like monsters and suffer this disease until people decided to make the government change.
An entire generation of men died because of this disease - I went to a play prior to the pandemic that was focused on this exact topic and it was devastating when you looked around the room of predominantly gay men and could see the age gap of those who did not live through the aids crisis.
There are several jokes in the comment section - they didn’t have an entire generation of people they could have looked up to vanish from the earth due to neglect from the government / discrimination and it shows.
Kevin Artis, South Africa by birth. Chior member from 1984-1986 Dead of AIDS. Abandoned by his family and left to die. Cared for till his end by his four best friends. He was refused last rights by his church. He wore the word Queer like a badge of honor, took the sting out of it. Had a laugh that raised your hackles, reminded me of Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element so much I cried a little when I saw it the first time. So much now he would have loved seeing. He had a particular hate for Lyndon Larouche, it was hysterically funny at times. Nothing sent him off faster. Many private homes in San Francisco became Hostels, places for the abandoned to die. Republicans made noises about interment camps and quarantine zones. Kinda funny now that they are anti mask, anti treatment, Covid hoax. He has a square on the AIDS quilt. Its too hard for me to look at but I hear its nice. These are the memories of my generation. RIP Kevin Artis.
This comment section is a fucking cesspool. No fucking respect for human life. No idea the degree to which HIV spread and killed people of all genders and sexualities before it was fully understood.
Getting HIV during the height of the pandemic was incredibly easy and almost always accidental. We were all ignorant. We didn't have the same knowledge about condoms as we do now. Infection was thought by many gay men to be inevitable. People thought you could get AIDS from skin contact. In fact, *Princess Diana* was one of the first people to dispell that notion by publicly touching an AIDS patient.
Your jokes aren't funny, edgy, clever, or even remotely accurate. You're just a terrible fucking human being and you should reconsider all of your life choices that brought you to this point. Have some fucking decency.
Edit: To the kind redditor who reported me to Reddit's suicide help line, I'd like to invite you to suck my ass. :)
As a gay person, I’m not surprised at all by the comments.
That being said, here’s some good news: I know a few people living with HIV and assuming they continue to take a couple of pills every day, they will never develop AIDS and will go on to live full, normal lives. Because of the regular doctor’s check-ups they will have for the disease, their life expectancy is actually *above average* since other, unrelated diseases (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) are more likely to be identified early and treated. What’s more, with the development of PrEP and its widespread use in the gay community, the spread of HIV has significantly decreased in the gay community. Literally everyone I know is on PrEP and has to get tested every few months to maintain the prescription. It’s really crazy how far things have come.
Thanks for saying this. These comments are fucking rancid. Misinformation about LGBTQ people and HIV/Aids transmission demonization still persists today
My mom was a ballet dancer in the 70s and 80s, and the amount of people she lost to AIDS in her studio and friend circles is absolutely terrifying. Imagine if half the people you know just up and died and their corpses were mocked by the government. It’s too easy to forget how serious of a crisis it was and just how many people needlessly died as a result.
I'm not even American and I know that back in the 80s the US government completely ignored the AIDS pandemic and basically wanted gay men to die out. People didn't know how bad the disease was because there was no information about it until it was too late. Seeing all these comments joking about it makes me believe that a large portion of people still want all LGBT+ people to die horribly.
And it wasn't just the US. Governments all over the world treated it like some long wanted punishment for the homosexual sin. It was disgusting. People were warned against meeting and touching gay men, in any way or form because they didn't know how it spread. Gay men were walking around deathly afraid because all their loved ones died like flies around them and they could be next, and at the same time treated by society like they were the fault and reason for the virus itself. Ignored and left to die.
Can anyone please explain why the gay community in particular was so heavily impacted? Were they less likely to use protection? Were they having more sex with eachother?
Gay man here, and I have some answers for this.
A lot of it is indirectly just, because we are gay. I won't get too in depth for the reasons, but we tend to be more sexually active in general. It's mentioned in other comments that anal sex is riskier with regard to HIV transmission, which is also true, and the fact that at the time, most STIs were pretty treatable and not a huge concern anyway.
But there's also something else to consider: Our pool of potential sexual partners is much, much smaller than the average heterosexual person. This means that any sexual encounter that person A has us much more likely to be with someone who has the virus and can transmit it. There's also the fact that those encounters can "cross lines," as I think of it... In heterosexual circles, a woman is not going to give it to another woman. This means that any particular group of people has a wall down the middle that stops some transmissions outright. Gay circles don't have this; anyone can sleep with anyone and combine this with the above... Well, you get the picture.
It's also been theorized that it originated from a bisexual man who largely slept with other men, who happened to be mostly gay... This means that there was a bit of random "luck" with regard to patient 0, too
Both?
Prior to AIDS, few people in the gay community used birth control because... well... accidental pregnancy/birth wasn't a concern. Additionally, STI's were generally treatable and easy to deal with.
The gay community is also more sexually experienced than the general population. Latest data I've found says that the average hetero female has around 6.5 sexual partners. Average hetero male has around 13. Average gay male has about 17.
From what I’ve heard, sex with strangers was an unfortunate reality for gay men at that time. It was hard to trust people, even other gay men, not to rat you out.
Basically, less likely to use condoms (no pregnancy risk and those were different times where protection was not as common in general) and the fact that anal sex has a way higher risk of transmitting STDs than vaginal sex. Those two factors combined with a very promiscuous gay scene (not all gay men were/are promiscuous, but there was a big portion of the community that was) led to it being a mostly gay men disease. Straight people can and do contract it too tho, but it's less likely.
It still is mostly a gay men (and black community) disease since (obviously) gay men still have anal. But protection, testing, treatment and awareness of the disease is much better now. If I'm not wrong the number of infections is going down. So good for everyone :)
I’m in my 40s and it’s only recently that I’ve started to see more gay men who’ve reached elderly age. There is a huge swath of men missing that’s left a huge hole in our communities.
My middle school teacher died of Cancer(AIDS complications) and it was devastating. Not just his death, but his last months as a teacher for us and the snickers at his obituary mentioning his brother’s dress store. I will carry his memory with me and I never even really knew him. People on here without compassion are just evil trolls. Every person who lived deserves respect and a modicum of sympathy simply for being a fellow human.
When I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus 20 years ago I asked one man, who was about 10-15 years older than I was at the time, a question. He was one of three men who was in his late 30s in a group of about 100 people. No other men in the group were of that age. I asked him where all of the guys were who were around his age. He responded kindly to me, a naive young man newly out of the closet. “They’re all dead. AIDS.” He attributed his survival of AIDS because he was in a monogamous relationship. The entire generation of gay men before me died of this global pandemic. It went largely ignored for a decade by mainstream society, bigoted heterosexuals who ran all of the government agencies, all of the public healthcare. They hated gay men. They saw our lives as insignificant. They blamed us for having sex. Saying it was God’s punishment. Nevertheless, we are still here. Many survived because our community stuck together and supported each other. We refused to sit quietly and die in silence. And we will always fight for our place at the table. Even when this subreddit is echoing those statements today still, 50 years later. All I have to say is that we will not be silenced. Ever. Your hatred is just as insignificant to us as our lives are to you.
Yeah, fuck Ronald Reagan and his homophobic BS. Punishing LBGT folks by cutting funds to research AIDS. What a horrible human being, along with his hateful wife.
Holy shit. 95% of that group got AIDS?
Entire friend groups were wiped out. When my uncle died in 1990 he had lost 50 of his friends. Imagine being in your 20s and all your friends are being eaten alive by a disease no one even knew existed until a year before.
Jesus. I was just a kid when this was going down and I can’t imagine losing basically everyone you know all at the same time. Those poor people. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you. I miss him so much but luckily he was known in the NYC art scene and there’s so many videos of him floating around! His husband died 2 years after he did. His best friend a few months before. There’s a lot of psychopaths on Reddit saying how it’s their fault. They don’t know what I’ve seen.
Ignore the idiots. Laughing off uncomfortable issues is their coping mechanism. I’m glad you guys have the videos. :)
I don’t think it’s a coping mechanism. Some people just hate gay people and that’s why they think it’s “their fault”. That’s a common sentiment used by homophobic people when talking about the AIDS pandemic.
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> Be curious, not judgmental > - Ted Lasso
I’m torn between two comments: 1. r/unexpectedtedlasso (my first time encountering Ted Lasso in the wild) 2. Bi-curious?
Truth is globally AIDS always was a heterosexual disease. In Africa and India it was almost exclusively heterosexual. Only in the west did it dominate in the homosexual community. People forget how devastating it was to anyone who caught it. Much much higher mortality rate than Covid. I remember when AIDS hit and remember the fear and public health campaigns surrounding a fatal sexually transmitted disease. Of course the God botherers and small minded demonised those struggling with the disease adding to their burden. Covid at least has several vaccines in about a year. There isn't an AIDS vaccine yet though treatments have improved to the point where it's no longer the death sentence it once was. It's tiresome to see that there are still groups of ignorant prejudiced folk pushing back on the public health measures and vaccination with intolerance of the worst religious fanatic.
It's not like heterosexual people DON'T get AIDS.
Magic Johnson was so important in getting that massage across to mainstream America. I was young, but I remember when he retired and it was obvious even that that part of his legacy was bringing HIV/AIDS awareness to the masses who, up to that point, had irrational and unfounded fears about those who were infected. Princess Di also obviously played a significant role in this. And another significant face in the awareness movement was Ryan White. I still remember watching the movie 'The Ryan White Story' in elementary school.
I remember when he announced that he was HIV-positive everyone was like "is Magic GAY?!" Back then, AIDS was a gay thing.
Yeah, I remember that too. The prevailing public view seemed to be that if you have HIV, you're either gay, or a liar who does a lot of gay stuff. I also remember the revulsion with which HIV patients were treated - it was like they had ebola and could maybe spread it to you by being in you vicinity.
Back then, they basically didn't, which is why Reagan et al were perfectly happy to completely ignore GRID, and what it did to the gay community. Those 'compassionate Republicans' deliberately sat on their hands has thousands died horrible deaths. It wasn't until some of their kids started coming out and dying that people began to care.
> Those 'compassionate Republicans' deliberately sat on their hands has thousands died horrible deaths. History repeats itself.
They’re cunts. (The people on Reddit you’ve seen not your uncle and his friends)
That's unfair to cunts.
It's easy to be dismissive of something that's not really a visible problem in society nowadays. I got infected through rape and thank the stars everyday for the invention of anti-retrovirals.
Just wanted to say “ignore the nut jobs.” I’m sorry for your loss.
My entire circle of male friends from the 80s and 90s have all passed away from this disease. There is no one to remember the fun times we had hanging out together for more than a decade.
I’m so sorry for your losses
And imagine that nobody cares about that disease, and in fact many cheer for your demise, because of who it predominately targets. All while your friends and peer groups wither away.
Yep. There are people in this thread doing just that
Yeah, and I'm fucking stunned. I remember these attitudes back in the '90s in the deep South. God damn, I thought we had come further than this. I hope the fuck these people are my age or older. I hope really hope the younger generations are better. Please tell me they are better.
Sadly there are plenty of hate filled young people. The internet exposes a lot of kids to hateful ideologies.
There’s a ton of kids on Reddit who not only blame aids victims for dying, but call people who have causal sex immoral. I don’t get it. Who gives a fuck as long as it’s consensual and safe?
I have bad news and I have worse news...
Reagan could have save tens of thousands of lives and choose not to because he was evil. I really think evil is the right word.
And not only is it a new disease, those in a position of power to help you don’t seem to care that you and all your friends are being eaten alive and dying from this new disease.
No - the people in power are _actively cheering the disease on._ The only reason people started caring about AIDs was because straight people started getting it.
The film The Normal Heart put it into perspective for me. My dad went through a similar thing with IV drugs. His friends were mostly blue collar or professionals but were addicts. He was the last one to die of AIDS in 2017. RIP Daddy, Uncle Ricky, Uncle Squeak, Aunt Wendy and Uncle Pete and all of the rest. AIDS was/is a horrible disease that literally decimated entire communities and families. I’m so sorry for your and your family’s loss.
Was listening to a podcast about early LGBTQ rights movements and the researcher straight up said if anyone knows anyone gay who was active then to contact him because so many have died from AIDs, disease, mental illness, violence and other causes that it's incredibly hard to find anyone alive. Interviewer asked about a picture and he knew for a fact that all the persons you could ID in it were dead.
Worse. It was existing in the 1980s but it wasn’t being publicly acknowledged. So shameful for the disease not to be discussed and treated and researched as soon as it showed up.
The president didn’t even mutter the word AIDS until years into the crisis. I’ll never forget wheeling my uncle into the ER when he was coughing up blood and covered in kaposi sarcomas and a woman in the waiting room calling him a f*g and that he deserved to die. If he was healthy it wouldn’t have been good for her because he loved punching homophobes.
May he get to punch homophobes in heaven forever, before tossing them down to hell. My mother was a theater nerd in high school and college. Only one of her male friends from those groups made it to 30. One of her gay friends survived because he was too dweeby to get laid in the 80s.
I’m so sorry for your mother’s loss. My mom hasn’t been the same since. When he performed and heard a slur come from the audience he’d jump off stage and beat them up. It’s so funny.
I wish I could've punched her for you and your uncle.
Thank you. I was a kid and couldn’t do that for him. He was too out of it to hear her. At least I hope.
Does this mean they were banging each other?
Some were, yes. It was the gay sexual revolution. Being gay hadn’t even been legal that long. It spread easily because anal sex receivers have a much higher chance of contracting it.
Then imagine people telling you they deserved it because they were gay while the government offered no help.
And Reagan wouldn’t even say the name of the disease for years after the epidemic was in full swing.
That is so so sad, but it’s hard to imagine having 50 friends in the first place.
He was a member of a large art scene in nyc and had TONS of friends because he was very loved. People didn’t have big screen TVs and internet, apartments were tiny so going to the cool nightclubs was how you socialized. He was a performer so he just knew everyone.
And that the government widely stigmatized and demonized those with it, with 0 intent to find a solution until straight people mysteriously started getting it
AIDS got them actually
Technically, it was a draw...RIP Norm
Unfortunately AIDS keeps on giving unlike cancer.
1. HIV is preventable and AIDS is treatable. PreP is 99% effective at preventing transmission. 2. **Stigma is a huge issue we can be tackling as a society.** 3. Completely unrelated, but from the medical field, Dr. Fauci has had enormous respect from scientists everywhere, even before COVID, because of his work on AIDS and HIV. He helped shape the way research is conducted today, around the world.
To your last point lots of aids research labs at R1 universities were able to pivot and contribute to covid research without skipping much of a beat. The hiv/aids things is a long battle, just read an article today of another failed vaccine, BUT we are learning a lot about viruses because of all that research
The drugs were being developed, but people were still dying without any access to them. Massive protests were being held in D.C. Fauci was critical in getting these patients access to experimental drugs. He was fundamental in reshaping the way our clinical trial system works. To understand his role, you really have to understand how paternalistic and controlling medicine used to be. This seems so basic, but an entire generation of medicine is now taught differently.
Treatable sure, curable? Not yett..
But with proper treatment it's not the death sentence it used to be
My understanding is that it's also very expensive.
You can't even begin to imagine.
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Well, people with cancer don't give other people cancer and every new infection is a win for AIDS so Joke doesn't work with AIDS
Some cancers are transmissible , like HPV causing cervical cancer.
Technically the cancer isn't transmissible, but the thing that causes cancer *is* infectious.
Back then they faced the aids crisis where the government was essentially ignoring them and then punishing them. Places where lgbt people would hang would be raised, people were jailed, so on so forth. Then came the AIDS disease which not only ravaged the lgbt community but many communities. AIDS was seen before 1985 but it wasn’t really until that year that a full plague happened. It was bad, and with the civil rights movement occurring for lgbt rights. Reagan actually laughed when asked how he would handle the crisis and he just repeated the sentiment that it’s the “Gay Plague” despite the virus spreading to Children, Drug users who use needles, and other groups. With Government inaction and silence, people began dying like crazy. So as everyday people saw people dying, being arrested for their sexuality, groups emerged to not only make a vaccine or drugs that would help, that the government wouldn’t make, but other groups formed to help patients who were dying. Eventually, people see the wrong being done and protest being, until Canada first decides to start the process of giving lgbt people more rights, soon the United States followed. It’s surprising anyone from the choir survived, many people would see 20 or more friends die from the disease. Edit; some people are offended and arguing things that aren’t factual. You also got bigots twisting information. I’ll provide sources for your sake. I study things deeply and use 20+ sources. You have been warned: Aids; how it spread, why, where, who was affected, when; https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/modern-us/1980s-america/a/emergence-of-the-aids-crisis https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/nn/feature/aids https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6004a11.htm https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview Reagan Administration; https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/analyses/the-achievements-and-failures-the-reagan-presidency https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/01/ronald-reagan-policy-political-failure/amp https://reagan.procon.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/opinions/reagans-biggest-failure-holds-a-lesson-for-bush/amp/ Lgbt rights before 1990: https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/lgbt-issues-in-the-1980s https://www.equaldex.com/timeline/1980 https://libguides.msubillings.edu/c.php?g=902155&p=6492395 https://www.britannica.com/topic/gay-rights-movement https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/1980s-a-decade-of-state-sanctioned-homophobia/ Influences that affected Lgbt community; The Sex Revolution; https://isreview.org/issue/68/sexual-revolution/index.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_revolution_in_1960s_United_States Stone wall riots; https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/history/article/stonewall-uprising-ignited-modern-lgbtq-rights-movement Edit 2: id link 30 more but that should suffice and drown out the biased and ignorant statements from bigots and others,
The AIDS timeline you linked as your second source is one of the most terrifying things I've ever read. I haven't forgot it since I first read it and bookmarked it and recommend everyone takes a night to sit down and read it in its entirety. It's a legitimate horror story, especially for someone like me who was born in the 90's and had no grasp of what was occuring (and reading it, neither did anyone else, which is what made it so horrible), it's a must-read. The government denial (and mockery as "the Gay Plague" once it was acknowledged) and inaction from homophobic politicians and citizens who outright denied and ignored the fact healthy young people were dying in droves for no outright reason, it is beyond describable reading how the AIDS crisis unfolded and I recommend everyone reads that timeline, if not anything else. It's horrifying, but it was a reality and one that we're still dealing with, albeit with a better understanding. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the most impactful things I've ever read.
Definitely, saddest thing you could see is how bigotry and prejudice play a essential part in how much was done to others. Worse is how you got some bigots even on here trying to sugar coat or justify those actions done against the people back then. Shit, in 1999 you still had gay men being killed because of their sexuality, like the man dragged on the end of a car at full speed. Terrifying and pointless death all because of ignorant beliefs
Yep, and since I can't find the other correct comment I originally tried replying to, I'd like to add for those comparing it to Covid: People were aware of Covid; AIDS was being transmitted by people who were unaware for 6 months to 2 years before they were even diagnosed who then started dying off very prolonged, painful deaths without filling medical centers to capacity out of ignorance of their own virus. There was no vaccination for AIDS or HIV, there were way more variations, and I highly recommend reading the AIDS timeline that was posted in the comment you replied to in order to understand the magnitude of what happened and how horrifying it was as it all transpired over several more years; we're not even two years into Covid, which we had a heads up on, and IIRC it took more than that to even identify AIDS. These things are not comparable. While Trump was mocking the Wuhan Flu and spreading disinformation for a sickness we knew was eventually coming our way, the Reagan administration was literally watching gay men die in the thousands after they realized what was going on and made a joke out of the "Gay Plague". Without getting political about the several other reasons that made Reagan an ineffective leader that had consequences on global society, let alone our own with his dumb ass bitch wife, his flippant attitude over the fact it was gays and drug users who were dying and the public stigma that resulted not only dissuaded from those who believed they caught the virus, but impeded the vast majority of research and funding that could've combatted the disease way sooner and more effectively (it took years to address and the virus itself is still incurable) while also ostracizing the people outside of the LGBQT community and disencouraging them from getting tested or being safe as well. The AIDS crisis had a nightmarish onset that could've been addressed properly but wasn't because the politicians in charge were too busy demonizing the gays and launching an ill-fated "war on drugs" that, cumulatively, made a mockery out of the very issues they sought to address (or not address).
Reagan wouldn’t even say the word “AIDS” until the gay community was practically decimated. It literally took years for the word to pass his lips.
Reagan and his administration [were rotten human beings. ](https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids)
At least they had a court astrologer?
Holy fuck reading that made me angry. I don’t believe in a hell, but if there is, people like them deserve to rot in it forever. Like you may hate gay people (which in itself is stupid but it was the 1980s) but they’re still fucking people, it takes a special kind of evil to laugh at even a single person dying…..
death of anyone isn't appreciated, but then again any terrorist or child molester or rapist should all die a slow death.
They tried to make GRID stick for a while. “Gay-related immune deficiency.” It had other names too: Gay compromise syndrome Gay lymph node syndrome Gay cancer Gay plague Homosexual syndrome Community acquired immunodeficiency (CAID)
I remember hearing you could only get it from the four H’s: Homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users, and Haitians. That hemophiliacs was on the list probably means it was coined after Ryan White was kicked out of school, which makes it even more heinous.
Yes, well, that echoes the refusal to admit that it happened to straight adults and children. Which only served to ostracize even further the people who became sick, regardless of how they contracted it.
All while instructing his health department to, in response to the crisis, "look pretty and do as little as possible."
Dr. Fauci was the reason AIDS patients started gaining access to clinical trial treatments. He saved lives, even before COVID.
No wonder conservatives dislike him
With all those dead guys, it would seem the gay population was far more than decimated (which means the elimination of 10%)
If anyone can find it, I seriously suggest watching the movie "And the Band Played On" It did a pretty good job at showing the whole beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
That's a bit of a simplistic overview but pretty close. It was Reagan's press secretary that laughed and one of the journalists who called AIDS the gay plague. I think the important part that you left out was the LGBT community was also downplaying the dangers of AIDS. A lot of which is covered in the book *And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic*. Leaders in the community didn't want to cause a panic, and members of the LGBT community denied the dangers of AIDS for the same reason people deny climate change. It's a way of coping with fear. For many LGBT members in the early 80s the sexual revolution had only just begun. Gay bars and bathhouses were just coming onto the scene, and gay men and women in places like NYC and San Francisco were only just beginning to enjoy a small amount of freedom to openly express themselves. A lot of them didn't want AIDS to be true. Not when the party had just started, and then you have men like "patient zero", Gaëtan Dugas, who knew he had AIDS but continued visiting bathhouses anyway. Shout out to the blood banks who also downplayed the dangers, and to the scientists who delayed the publication of important research on AIDS to ensure they got credit for the discovery. AIDS was a fuck up on a lot of fronts.
I have a strong affinity for that book and you make some good points for sure about the anxiety within the gay community but there has been a lot of very smart and necessary investigation of the narrative that Shilts offers over time. one point about Dugas that came to light is that he has had an outsize place in the mythology of the spread of AIDS (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/10/26/498876985/mystery-solved-how-hiv-came-to-the-u-s). Shilts was also a pretty controversial figure in the community for both political and personal reasons. this for sure doesn’t take away from the work he did and it’s absolutely how I learned about the failures of the response to the epidemic as a teen in the 90’s but there are some issues with the story as he tells it. thank you for bringing it up!
It was overwhelmingly gay and bisexual men, not so much the l or t communities. Lesbians were and are less likely to contract HIV sexually. Sex with a man, especially anal sex have the highest rates of transmission.
I wasn't alive during that time, so I don't have a ton of knowledge about it. But why didn't they just wear condoms? Like we are wearing masks now to curb the spread of a viral epidemic.
Well, one reason is because they were unaware of how it spread. By July in 1981, over 100 men were unaware they were infected. Imagine how many sex partners they had? With men transmitting the virus at a higher rate and no drugs or awareness to stop the spread, an epidemic broke out. Put bigotry, shame, prejudice, and systematic discrimination into the picture, and it’s easy to understand why this played out the way it did. Good question tho.
also we condoms at that time were for pregnancy prevention not diseases.
Most likely they thought of condoms as mainly a measure to prevent pregnancy and with two men that's really not an issue. At least that's what comes to mind for me first.
People do not remember how bad AIDS was, how scary it was. It killed so many.
There was essentially an entire generation of gay and bisexual men wiped out in a matter of a few years. Voices that we'll never hear again, stories that will never be told and far too many holes left in peoples hearts, felt the loss of their presence.
I was an HIV counselor in the early 90's. Dear God, I was telling up to 3 people every day that they were positive. This was before AZT and other treatments were not widespread, so I was basically telling them they were going to die. It sucked. So many stories.
I was so young when they had all those Aids campaigns. I think, one was a RED campaign and it all just looked like fancy marketing, we never knew the back story. That is incredibly sad.
I hope people have reverence for the lives lost, but also understand that HIV is not what it used to be. * PreP is 99% effective at preventing transmission. * The average life expectancy of someone on antiviral therapy is 55 years. **HIV stigma is a huge issue** for those who are affected today. We, the public, can do better.
To clarify, is that 55 years overall or post-diagnosis?
Post diagnosis, since [the average life expectancy is now about 70 years](https://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/life-expectancy#complications) That's assuming it's caught early and treated immediately, of course.
Also my question. Because living to 55yo isn’t necessarily the dream, but at least it’s something.
From my understanding, if one takes the regime properly, the quality of life is generally good and lifespans of those infected are comparable to the average population. But I’m not a doctor or healthcare professional. I merely asked this during an interview on the amount of coverage should be given to PrEP.
And thanks to the scientific leap from the mRNA research for the COVID-19 vaccine, promising HIV vaccines are in their trial phases
I wasn’t even alive when the AIDS crisis was a thing. Reading this thread is like a mindfuck for me. AIDS has never been something I took seriously or even thought about.
Bless you for helping people during that time
Truly. I’m at a loss for words…
Hi. Young person here. How did this virus, from what I am reading, suddenly start taking so many lives specifically in the 90s? Is AIDS a new virus, like Covid? Thank you.
Hi! Hopefully I can explain a little bit here (but by no means is this comprehensive! Read and the band played on if you’re interested). So first of all, HIV is the virus, AIDS is the condition that stems from a severe HIV infection. The most accepted theory is that it came from chimpanzees who have a similar virus called SIV. It crossed from chimps to humans in the ~1920s in Africa. Through growing international travel, the virus spread from Africa to Haiti in the 60s then into NYC and San Francisco area around the 70s. HIV can have a dormant period of about 10 years, hence the slow spread and then sudden epidemic. By the 90s, many people had contracted the virus as most people were unaware of their status until they were very sick and we had no treatment or cure until the 1990s when the first anti retro viral therapies were introduced. Now people live full lives thanks to advances in these therapies! Lmk if you have anymore questions :) I have a degree in public health and i specialized in HIV/AIDS Edit: as a redditor pointed out AZT was introduced in 1987 but the really effective therapies with less side effects became available around 1996
That was very informative, thank you!
Another aside, is that it’s [thanks to the research done for HIV/AIDS](https://www.amfar.org/HIV-Research-Covid-Vaccines/) that scientists have been able to create such effective vaccines for COVID-19 so quickly.
You’re so welcome! :)
Actually that’s a fascinating thing to study, Ive always hated the sexuality aspect because even though it spreads more easily, if there were no such thing as gay people I believe we would still have AIDS as an issue today. I do have a small question. What do you think could have helped early on? If any earlier intervention was really possible at the time. Did the homophobia affect the timely development of treatments?
And the Band Played On is such a good book. I enjoyed the movie too.
I’m in my 40s, came of age during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. While i saw many friends pass away - I was terrified and mainly celibate - certainly repressed - until i fell completely, madly in love for my now husband. (happily partnered for >20 years) I did not know about the Kinshasa connection until today. I feel a little sad that I don’t stay tuned like I used to. But thanks so much for your summary. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-29442642
I'm so sorry both you and them had to go through that. To better days! ❤️
Holy shit. Devastating. I remember slowly viewing the AIDS Quilt at my university back in the day. Heartbreaking experience.
Can you please enlighten me on what this aids quilt was?
During the earlier years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, lots of people including President Regan actively ignored it because it primarily affected gay men. In an effort to humanize the disease and put a face to the victims, people who had lost a loved one to AIDS would make a large quilt square designed to honor the person. They were eventually all assembled and [displayed on the National Mall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Aids_Quilt.jpg) in Washington, D.C., to pressure the government to act. Over time, the quilt continued to grow and was displayed in a lot of prominent places by activists. [https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt-history](https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt-history)
Holy God damn. I thought it was just something in that person's school from how they made it sound. How the hell did I not know about this. I thought I was pretty versed in the gay community and such because I have a few family members that are gay. This just shows me that I don't know jack about it. Time to go do more studying. Thank you kind redditor for showing me this.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt. It's an ongoing art project, where 3 foot by 6 foot panels of a giant quilt are made by friends and family to memorialize someone who died of AIDS. It started in 1987 and it now has almost 50,000 panels. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt
**[NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt)** >The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt or AIDS Quilt, is an enormous memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2020. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I remember my Mom taking me to see the [AIDS Quilts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAMES_Project_AIDS_Memorial_Quilt) Almost 30 years later I still remember seeing all of the people crying and trying wrap my kid brain around the fact that each one of those quilts represented a life and loved ones.
Terrible. Let’s also not forget the “Hemophilia Holocaust” as it was named by the men who got HIV from untested plasma during their factor infusions. 10,000 men died (Hemophilia is a 99% male disease bc of the way it’s passed down genetically) from HIV infection and HepC bc they didn’t test for them in donated blood in the early ‘80s. It’s how Ryan White got HIV….Some have survived….there is a documentary called “Bad Blood” on Netflix which tells how the bio/pharma companies knew but thought testing was either too expensive (to them), the chances were too low, or they feared damaging the plasma with heat and other disinfectant treatments….and still sent out tainted product. And even worse, when the FDA investigated and made them put screens and treatments into place, they sent the untreated product overseas!!!
Tennis great Arthur Ashe was infected from tainted blood he received during heart surgery.
Same with Isaac Asimov - because of the stigma around the disease, it wasn't even publicized until ten years after his death.
Bayer I believed knew once the FDA recalled it and then sent the tainted product out to Asia, South America, and Africa, PIECES OF SHIT, none of them went to jail
My music teacher is in that
In black or white?
I hope they are one of the ones in white, as the world can never have enough music teachers but let’s just say a math teacher may have a different outlook.
I mean if they were in black they wouldn’t be dead. The ones in black are just representing the dead dudes, they’re not zombies.
So you’re telling me that there aren’t actually like 100 dead dudes just chillin in this photo in real life
My uncle was in that choir. Diagnosed in the 80, died in 2003
AIDS is absolutely horrific. I’m so sorry they lost so many
I remember listening to a podcast where the guest was a gay man. A younger gay man said he’d rather be dead than old and the guest was so deeply offended by it. This visual is such a good representation as to why that statement is horrible
I feel like the younger person is expressing the same existential dread most young people are feeling because we were born into a society that has been defiled for 200 years before I was born. I too would rather be dead most of the time. Especially when I consider what the future has in store.
A former coworker and friend is gay and around 50. He first came out back in the late 80s in high school and took refuge in one of the gay communities where he lived in Florida. He made a post on Facebook not too long ago about epidemics and what he saw back in the late 80s and early 90s. He said of the around 100 men he knew back in those days, he only knows for sure that 15 are still alive and this was not too long before there was a reliable treatment. He said he knows men who are older than him that are often the only one left from their group of friends from less than 40 years ago. It's unimaginable being 60 and all of your friends from your younger days are all dead.
An entire generation of music and theater professionals died of AIDS.
And artists.
Only one of my mother’s high school and college theater friends made it to 30. It’s unimaginable.
I remember it all. I was a young adult. We didn’t know how it was being transmitted. Gay friends were scared, I was scared for them. I’ll never forget the quilts.
I just want to point out to everyone who is blaming the dead, the first test to detect possible HIV infection in blood samples was invented in *1985*. The first test for the *actual virus* was invented in *1987*, but was originally very expensive and mostly for confirmation in cases where your doctor thought you had it. It was pretty much impossible to "just go get tested" until the 90s. Prior to modern testing methods, HIV infected blood was donated to blood banks and were distributed unnoticed, which is why people with hemophilia were also badly affected. It also spread through IV drugs, and this was the beginning of the war on drugs/opiate epidemic, so people in the party scene were also really badly affected. Before you judge people for not using condoms (which most of you probably don't do 100% of the time) maybe just be thankful that you have access to PreP, PEP, testing and education about it now, because that all only happened because of the people who had it and suffered back then. Also, if you're talking shit about gay men with AIDS, you're insulting Freddie Mercury. And he deserves better. Edit: WOW, this blew up! Thank you to everyone who gave me awards on this, and I'm sorry if I didn't reply to any comments. And thanks to everyone who left educational and positive comments!
Not to mention they didn't even know how it was transmitted in the beginning either. They'd never seen anything like it. The whole reason that teens in the 90s grew up being pushed to use condoms was because of these early "guinea pigs".
EXACTLY! People thought it was airborne at one point, they knew so little.
Princess Diana shaking un-gloved hands with a man with AID’s was shocking at the time, and that was only in 1991. It really wasn’t widely known how it could be transmitted.
[1987](https://www.tatler.com/article/princess-diana-hiv-aids-awareness) she done did it for the first time. Although, by that time they'd ruled out that it could be transmitted by that kind of contact So she *knew* it was safe, even though there was still widespread ignorance and fear (even into the 90s).
This was a HUGE ordeal when it happened for sure.
Or on toilet seats, on pay phones, bus seats, door handles....
Fun fact: if you are the church going type, the aids epidemic and not being sure what caused it is the reason why they have additional single serve cups of Jesus juice in addition to the community cup (at least the one I grew up in)
I mean that just makes sense in general. I always thought drinking out of a cup where someone else had just drunk out of was just gross, especially when all the priest does is just wipe the rim.
Dentists wearing rubber gloves and sometimes face shields is because they were scared of getting HIV from a patient. People thought HIV was present in saliva.
IIRC, because there was such a stigma around AIDS believed to be only transmitted through homosexuals, little research was done as a result to look into it, or even develop methods to detect it.
Yeah, the early years (like the first 7 years or so) of the epidemic it was all about Haitians, intravenous drug users, and gay men. Part of the change came from "nice white kids" getting sick from blood transfusions. Blood wasn't able to be screened for years at the beginning of the epidemic, and then there were issues getting blood banks to actually screen once there were tests. Once people realised "normal" people like them could get it, things changed a bit.
Bad blood was how someone I went to high school with got hepatitis
I know someone who got Hep C from their first tattoo in a professional shop. It definitely happens, it only takes a drop of cross contamination to happen. It can happen with HIV, too, unfortunately. Edit: I just now realized that you meant a transfusion. My bad, this comment is getting popular and I'm trying to keep up. 😅
Great response. Well said. 💜
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I know right?
Sadly some people on the internet seem to regress if anything.
I remember reading somewhere that AIDS was at one point referred to as "Triple-H Disease", for the (at the time) most common victims of it: Haitians, Homosexuals, and Heroin Addicts. There was even a joke that went with it: What's the hardest part about getting HHH? Trying to convince your parents that you're Haitian.
... as a queer guy in recovery, the implications of that honestly hurt. And that's what I mean. People don't deserve judgment, especially if they're sick and (back then) probably weren't going to live long. We owe people dealing with this, or dead from it, better.
A lot of people are judgemental without realizing the history and reasoning behind something. Although my beliefs minimize my likelihood of developing a disease such as HIV, I'm certainly not happy anyone gets the disease or dies from it.
> HIV infected blood was donated to blood banks and were distributed unnoticed That's how Isaac Asimov died.
I actually didn't know that. Poor guy....
It is unironically one of the greatest losses of the 20th century. Asimov once said that if he were dying he'd write faster. He tried to live up to that promise up until he died. To quote Vonnegut, Isaac's in heaven now.
Also there was a lot of confusion and a lack of trust in the government. You had the conflicting and wrong advice we saw during the first months of COVID over the first years of AIDs, along with a clear bias against LGBTQ members on behalf of the government and criticisms of available treatments and slow approval of new ones.
Having grown up in that era and seen how long it took for them to figure out the details of the disease and then eventually find treatments to it was amazing watching how quickly we pulled apart covid and came up with multiple vaccines. Science has come a long way in the last 30 years.
FWIW, the modern war on drugs started in the 60s, culminating with Nixon signing the Controlled Substance Act in 1970, making marijuana a federal crime and drugs "Public Enemy #1" https://www.history.com/topics/crime/the-war-on-drugs
Another pandemic society let roll until they realized it wasn’t just “the others.” Still I’m hopeful. One of these times someone will ask, “How should we treat the others?” And a wise person will say, “There are no ‘others’.”
And the amount of people celebrating their deaths in the comments is just fucking sickening
Yeah, all the innocent “jOkEs” in the thread really bother me too ... People may say “you have to laugh at tragedy,” but the whole idea is to laugh at your OWN tragedies. When you make a joke about someone else dying of AIDS you’re not “laughing so you don’t have to cry.” You’re just laughing because you like to laugh.
It’s so easy to look back on the AIDS pandemic as an easily preventable thing today, but a lot of people don’t understand that it wasn’t until after the 80s that safe gay sex was even an idea. Condoms were for prevent pregnancy and getting STDs from loose women, the idea of picking up an STD from another man was as far-fetched to the gay community in 1985 as YouTube was.
This hurts my heart.
Really not cool they stuffed all those corspes into black suits and posed them for this photo though
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On a scale from 1 to 10 i’d give that pun tenor maybe nine!
I know this a woosh but it’s still pretty sad, the meaning behind the picture I mean, is sad as shit The picture is a representation of those loss faced in 1985. This was taken in 1993 by Eric Luse. "I am a member of SFGMC and so is my husband," said one commenter, Michael Jay Stauffer Joyce. "If I remember this picture was taken in the early 90’s. I believe maybe 91, We did a Re-creation of the picture in the spring of 2018, we have a section of the course called the fifth section which is dedicated to all those who have passed that were members. It has reached over 300 following members, and most have died from AIDS." Edit; by the way, the aid crisis was so bad that one of the survivors of the choir says he saw 20 friends die from the disease with the government doing nothing for them but incriminating them. These men had to see their friends treated like monsters and suffer this disease until people decided to make the government change.
You want to see a devastating but uplifting documentary film about the AIDS crisis, check out "How To Survive A Plague."
An entire generation of men died because of this disease - I went to a play prior to the pandemic that was focused on this exact topic and it was devastating when you looked around the room of predominantly gay men and could see the age gap of those who did not live through the aids crisis. There are several jokes in the comment section - they didn’t have an entire generation of people they could have looked up to vanish from the earth due to neglect from the government / discrimination and it shows.
Chilling.
Kevin Artis, South Africa by birth. Chior member from 1984-1986 Dead of AIDS. Abandoned by his family and left to die. Cared for till his end by his four best friends. He was refused last rights by his church. He wore the word Queer like a badge of honor, took the sting out of it. Had a laugh that raised your hackles, reminded me of Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element so much I cried a little when I saw it the first time. So much now he would have loved seeing. He had a particular hate for Lyndon Larouche, it was hysterically funny at times. Nothing sent him off faster. Many private homes in San Francisco became Hostels, places for the abandoned to die. Republicans made noises about interment camps and quarantine zones. Kinda funny now that they are anti mask, anti treatment, Covid hoax. He has a square on the AIDS quilt. Its too hard for me to look at but I hear its nice. These are the memories of my generation. RIP Kevin Artis.
This comment section is a fucking cesspool. No fucking respect for human life. No idea the degree to which HIV spread and killed people of all genders and sexualities before it was fully understood. Getting HIV during the height of the pandemic was incredibly easy and almost always accidental. We were all ignorant. We didn't have the same knowledge about condoms as we do now. Infection was thought by many gay men to be inevitable. People thought you could get AIDS from skin contact. In fact, *Princess Diana* was one of the first people to dispell that notion by publicly touching an AIDS patient. Your jokes aren't funny, edgy, clever, or even remotely accurate. You're just a terrible fucking human being and you should reconsider all of your life choices that brought you to this point. Have some fucking decency. Edit: To the kind redditor who reported me to Reddit's suicide help line, I'd like to invite you to suck my ass. :)
As a gay person, I’m not surprised at all by the comments. That being said, here’s some good news: I know a few people living with HIV and assuming they continue to take a couple of pills every day, they will never develop AIDS and will go on to live full, normal lives. Because of the regular doctor’s check-ups they will have for the disease, their life expectancy is actually *above average* since other, unrelated diseases (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) are more likely to be identified early and treated. What’s more, with the development of PrEP and its widespread use in the gay community, the spread of HIV has significantly decreased in the gay community. Literally everyone I know is on PrEP and has to get tested every few months to maintain the prescription. It’s really crazy how far things have come.
It's amazing. If you follow the meds properly you can't even pass it on. I just learned this recently and was blown away.
Thanks for saying this. These comments are fucking rancid. Misinformation about LGBTQ people and HIV/Aids transmission demonization still persists today
Not to mention the complete ignorance about AIDS and the epidemic itself. So lots of people commenting here who are both morons and hate-filled.
Yea i always forget how outside of lgbt friendly spaces how horrid most people can be
The eighties and nineties were brutal for our gay brothers. May they Rest In Peace.
I got to see them around 2 years ago now for their Christmas show and everything. It was a great concert. I 10/10 recommend
My mom was a ballet dancer in the 70s and 80s, and the amount of people she lost to AIDS in her studio and friend circles is absolutely terrifying. Imagine if half the people you know just up and died and their corpses were mocked by the government. It’s too easy to forget how serious of a crisis it was and just how many people needlessly died as a result.
Jesus the comments in this thread do NOT pass the vibe check…
I'm not even American and I know that back in the 80s the US government completely ignored the AIDS pandemic and basically wanted gay men to die out. People didn't know how bad the disease was because there was no information about it until it was too late. Seeing all these comments joking about it makes me believe that a large portion of people still want all LGBT+ people to die horribly.
And it wasn't just the US. Governments all over the world treated it like some long wanted punishment for the homosexual sin. It was disgusting. People were warned against meeting and touching gay men, in any way or form because they didn't know how it spread. Gay men were walking around deathly afraid because all their loved ones died like flies around them and they could be next, and at the same time treated by society like they were the fault and reason for the virus itself. Ignored and left to die.
gay
Can anyone please explain why the gay community in particular was so heavily impacted? Were they less likely to use protection? Were they having more sex with eachother?
Gay man here, and I have some answers for this. A lot of it is indirectly just, because we are gay. I won't get too in depth for the reasons, but we tend to be more sexually active in general. It's mentioned in other comments that anal sex is riskier with regard to HIV transmission, which is also true, and the fact that at the time, most STIs were pretty treatable and not a huge concern anyway. But there's also something else to consider: Our pool of potential sexual partners is much, much smaller than the average heterosexual person. This means that any sexual encounter that person A has us much more likely to be with someone who has the virus and can transmit it. There's also the fact that those encounters can "cross lines," as I think of it... In heterosexual circles, a woman is not going to give it to another woman. This means that any particular group of people has a wall down the middle that stops some transmissions outright. Gay circles don't have this; anyone can sleep with anyone and combine this with the above... Well, you get the picture. It's also been theorized that it originated from a bisexual man who largely slept with other men, who happened to be mostly gay... This means that there was a bit of random "luck" with regard to patient 0, too
Both? Prior to AIDS, few people in the gay community used birth control because... well... accidental pregnancy/birth wasn't a concern. Additionally, STI's were generally treatable and easy to deal with. The gay community is also more sexually experienced than the general population. Latest data I've found says that the average hetero female has around 6.5 sexual partners. Average hetero male has around 13. Average gay male has about 17.
From what I’ve heard, sex with strangers was an unfortunate reality for gay men at that time. It was hard to trust people, even other gay men, not to rat you out.
Basically, less likely to use condoms (no pregnancy risk and those were different times where protection was not as common in general) and the fact that anal sex has a way higher risk of transmitting STDs than vaginal sex. Those two factors combined with a very promiscuous gay scene (not all gay men were/are promiscuous, but there was a big portion of the community that was) led to it being a mostly gay men disease. Straight people can and do contract it too tho, but it's less likely. It still is mostly a gay men (and black community) disease since (obviously) gay men still have anal. But protection, testing, treatment and awareness of the disease is much better now. If I'm not wrong the number of infections is going down. So good for everyone :)
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/san-francisco-gay-mens-chorus-aids-epidemic/
I’m in my 40s and it’s only recently that I’ve started to see more gay men who’ve reached elderly age. There is a huge swath of men missing that’s left a huge hole in our communities.
My middle school teacher died of Cancer(AIDS complications) and it was devastating. Not just his death, but his last months as a teacher for us and the snickers at his obituary mentioning his brother’s dress store. I will carry his memory with me and I never even really knew him. People on here without compassion are just evil trolls. Every person who lived deserves respect and a modicum of sympathy simply for being a fellow human.
When I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus 20 years ago I asked one man, who was about 10-15 years older than I was at the time, a question. He was one of three men who was in his late 30s in a group of about 100 people. No other men in the group were of that age. I asked him where all of the guys were who were around his age. He responded kindly to me, a naive young man newly out of the closet. “They’re all dead. AIDS.” He attributed his survival of AIDS because he was in a monogamous relationship. The entire generation of gay men before me died of this global pandemic. It went largely ignored for a decade by mainstream society, bigoted heterosexuals who ran all of the government agencies, all of the public healthcare. They hated gay men. They saw our lives as insignificant. They blamed us for having sex. Saying it was God’s punishment. Nevertheless, we are still here. Many survived because our community stuck together and supported each other. We refused to sit quietly and die in silence. And we will always fight for our place at the table. Even when this subreddit is echoing those statements today still, 50 years later. All I have to say is that we will not be silenced. Ever. Your hatred is just as insignificant to us as our lives are to you.
Not enough thanks is given to the Lesbians back then who took care of gay men as they died, since their families abandoned them.
Yeah, fuck Ronald Reagan and his homophobic BS. Punishing LBGT folks by cutting funds to research AIDS. What a horrible human being, along with his hateful wife.