WI: HIV not first found in gays?

Not sure if this should go here or chat, but the question is simple. What if instead of being discovered in gay people and being termed GRID (gay-related-immune-deficiency) - HIV is discovered in heterosexuals first? How will this effect how the disease is seen in mainstream media and efforts to limit its spread?

In order for AIDS to spread a person has to have multiple partners (or be infected by the natural reservoir of the virus). It's unlikely to attract attention until it emerges in a promiscuous subculture, so that group would face early stigma instead. If it infects athletes or rock stars it might become a larger public issue, especially since such people are widely followed and have access to the media. Gay people will inevitably suffer disproportionately from HIV and AIDS though simply because of how transmission works.

Delta Force said:

In order for AIDS to spread a person has to have multiple partners (or be infected by the natural reservoir of the virus). It's unlikely to attract attention until it emerges in a promiscuous subculture, so that group would face early stigma instead. If it infects athletes or rock stars it might become a larger public issue, especially since such people are widely followed and have access to the media. Gay people will inevitably suffer disproportionately from HIV and AIDS though simply because of how transmission works.

Click to expand...

I would have thought if it isn't detected in gay men first then the group most likely to be identified as at risk early would be drug users (a group that has substantial overlap with rock stars and athletes of course), in which case AIDS becomes another argument used in the war on drugs. Worryingly, if it gets seen mainly as a side-effect of an activity that's already criminal there may be less incentive in the early years to take the disease seriously, at least until it starts getting into the blood transfusion system through addicts selling blood to raise cash anyway.

One other thought - "gay people" is innacurate. Whereas it's true the risk to promiscuous gay men is very high, the risk to gay men in a faithful and monogamous relationship is probably not significantly higher than that for straight people - and the risk to lesbians is so low that the CDC hasn't been able to conclusively identify a single case of female to female sexual transmission. (This incidentally is an argument I've sometimes used against the "AIDS is God's way of punishing gays" crowd - pointing out that their logic implies God actively approves of lesbians tends to cause a minor mental breakdown...)

I forgot about transmission through blood. If HIV and AIDS come to be identified with illegal drugs it might lead to increased support for the war and drugs. Of course there may be less stigma associated with it if identified in drug users because it would be a bloodborne pathogen instead of an STD. The implications of being bloodborne instead of a uniquely deadly STD might save many people in developed nations who contracted the disease throughout transfusions and other medical procedures. After all, prior to HIV the threat posed by STDs low because they were all treatable or at least non-fatal. Pathogens also don't carry the moral baggage of STDs.

RPW@Cy said:

I would have thought if it isn't detected in gay men first then the group most likely to be identified as at risk early would be drug users (a group that has substantial overlap with rock stars and athletes of course), in which case AIDS becomes another argument used in the war on drugs. Worryingly, if it gets seen mainly as a side-effect of an activity that's already criminal there may be less incentive in the early years to take the disease seriously, at least until it starts getting into the blood transfusion system through addicts selling blood to raise cash anyway.

Click to expand...

The original headline I remember about Aids was "Homosexuals, Haitians, and hemophiliacs". Drug users may have also been in the list. Of these, Haitians was the largest population group, so I suspect it would be something like the Voodoo disease, or some other part of Haitian culture.

Aids was widespread in Africa, but ignored for at least a decade before the USA noticed. It left Africa in two basic ways AFAIK, homosexual sub culture and via travel to/fro Haiti. Hemophiliacs and drug users were secondary victims that help spread it in the local communities. Hemophiliacs through blood transfusions, and drug addicts too poor for new needles who are unlikely to have airfare to the Congo basin.

So if we don't want Grid, we change the fairly small number of people who initially moved it to the west coast of the USA. Seems like it was under 10 airline stewards who were indentified, so something as simple as a little more job discrimination could be enough.

Note: It came in many more ways, but the ways it was noticed was from very few people. They were all clustered together, and a doctor noticed after seeing 3 cases.

Delta Force said:

In order for AIDS to spread a person has to have multiple partners (or be infected by the natural reservoir of the virus). It's unlikely to attract attention until it emerges in a promiscuous subculture, so that group would face early stigma instead. If it infects athletes or rock stars it might become a larger public issue, especially since such people are widely followed and have access to the media. Gay people will inevitably suffer disproportionately from HIV and AIDS though simply because of how transmission works.

Click to expand...

Well there's the number of partners and the risk of the typical sex act itself. Saying this as a queer guy who's switched on with sex-ed a single unprotected encounter involving anal intercourse (which may occur in amongst heterosexuals, granted but is not as common) is going to be higher risk than a single unprotected encounter involving vaginal intercourse.

It might be that there's enough promiscuity amongst heterosexuals that it's possible for an infection like hiv/aids to have a similar cultural effect.

Talking with a biologist friend they'd mentioned how Gonorrhea is really difficult to make a vaccine for simply because of the difficulties the immune system has in even recognizing it let alone responding to it. That and they have both the difficulty of drug resistant strains emerging & the bacteria evolving to be infectious without alerting the carrier by making urination painful. Note that it can actually kill if you don't get it treated, years later it will move to your internal organs & give you grief.

So maybe alter what ends up getting called 'HIV'. Let a super virulent strain of the clap evolve that favours vaginal transmission over oral/anal & there you are, an ATL where HIV primarily affects a vice-versa population.

BlondieBC said:

The original headline I remember about Aids was "Homosexuals, Haitians, and hemophiliacs". Drug users may have also been in the list. Of these, Haitians was the largest population group, so I suspect it would be something like the Voodoo disease, or some other part of Haitian culture.

Aids was widespread in Africa, but ignored for at least a decade before the USA noticed. It left Africa in two basic ways AFAIK, homosexual sub culture and via travel to/fro Haiti. Hemophiliacs and drug users were secondary victims that help spread it in the local communities. Hemophiliacs through blood transfusions, and drug addicts too poor for new needles who are unlikely to have airfare to the Congo basin.

So if we don't want Grid, we change the fairly small number of people who initially moved it to the west coast of the USA. Seems like it was under 10 airline stewards who were indentified, so something as simple as a little more job discrimination could be enough.

Note: It came in many more ways, but the ways it was noticed was from very few people. They were all clustered together, and a doctor noticed after seeing 3 cases.

Click to expand...

Ooh, I like the idea of job discrimination against gays as airline stewards...


As a POD.


If instead of gay flight attendants...

How about promiscuous male straight airline pilots? Or even whoremongering pilots?

Cheap third world prostitutes in Africa and/or Hati, and more expensive call girls when in the states?

Then you have the moral onus landing on prostitution, both workers and customers.

RPW@Cy said:

- and the risk to lesbians is so low that the CDC hasn't been able to conclusively identify a single case of female to female sexual transmission. (This incidentally is an argument I've sometimes used against the "AIDS is God's way of punishing gays" crowd - pointing out that their logic implies God actively approves of lesbians tends to cause a minor mental breakdown...)

Click to expand...

Heh, heh. Love it. Unfortunately logic just doesnt work with most of those people. Still, the momentary confusion, while they try to process it must be fun.

Corbell Mark IV said:

As a POD.


If instead of gay flight attendants...

How about promiscuous male straight airline pilots? Or even whoremongering pilots?

Click to expand...

If you like that POD, make some city in the Congo/Haiti as the Bangkok of Africa/Haiti. Probably need to use Airline Pilots. If I was writing the POD, i think I would go with something like this.

In Kinshasha (or your favorite city in the area), there are a small group of high end brothels (3) that have a small number of workers (under 1000, maybe well over). Aids arrives as OTL, mostly by following truck routes. A small group of pilots (under 15 frequent these joints) and bring it back to the Americas. After all, how many pilots fly the USA to Congo route on a regular basis? You bring it back to some hub city in USA where these pilots also use a lot of prostitutes, go to a lot of wild parties, and do IV drugs. It gets spread around the city, then it is either the "Miami hooker" disease or the "Pilot" disease.

Or it you want it to be less obvious where it came from, these pilots spread it in some tourist city outside of USA with lesser health care, say Bahamas, and it is less clear how it makes it to Miami.

Or you just have the POD with no gay stewardesses, and it simply comes over to the USA from Haiti sometime in the 1980's, maybe early 1990's, probably with immigrants moving back and forth. It was not destined to be know as a gay disease, and a no time after 1960 were the majority of the victims primarily gay in sexual activity. We just did not know about the larger number of Haitians or much larger number of Africans who got it through more vanilla hetero sex.

Also, it is key that it was the third case in a few months that got the doctor to all the work that lead to CDC doing the work. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy. Once case of the skin cancer is "O well, some guy/gal has a bad immune system". Two will likely be "It is just bad luck, odd event" Three triggers work. So it could have been any group that had the cases. It could have been 3 rich white women in their 30's from good Ivy league families that slept with some playboy bi-sexual (mostly straight sex) college girls in Boston, and be the "Harvard" disease. It could have been some flight attendant in Atlanta and be the "colored disease" or "slum disease".

Hell, if the three guys seeking original treatment had just moved around the country, and it was one guy in San Fran, one in Dallas, one in Boston; it is likely years later we figure out what is going on. AIDS could have been the full black death, with some minor POD including not picking it up earlier or minor changes to infectionous nature.

I would argue that AIDS for many parts of Africa is as devastating as the Black Death was for Europe.