OTL, AIDS really emerged as a matter of discourse in the 1980s, despite having jumped to humans decades before. It led to drastic changes in behavior, with an increased focus on "safe sex" and condom use (especially among the gay community), as well as increased condemnations of homosexuality by religious conservatives (including talk about a "gay plague").
What if it had spread earlier, reaching a visible peak in the West during the 1960s? How would the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s react to the earlier spread of HIV? How would social conservatives react? Would the association of the disease with African origin play into the racial tensions of the time? What would be the effect on the infant LGBT movement (the Stonewall riots happened in 1969)?
From a medical perspective, we have developed increasingly effective antiviral drugs that can at least mitigate the disease, such that people living with HIV can survive for extremely long times. How would this research have changed if it was taking place 20 years ahead of OTL (would it be possible? would medical knowledge be more advanced?)?
Furthermore, if the AIDS crisis spread through a newly decolonized Africa that was still at the height of the Cold War-era of proxy wars, how would that effect efforts to control the disease?
What if it had spread earlier, reaching a visible peak in the West during the 1960s? How would the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s react to the earlier spread of HIV? How would social conservatives react? Would the association of the disease with African origin play into the racial tensions of the time? What would be the effect on the infant LGBT movement (the Stonewall riots happened in 1969)?
From a medical perspective, we have developed increasingly effective antiviral drugs that can at least mitigate the disease, such that people living with HIV can survive for extremely long times. How would this research have changed if it was taking place 20 years ahead of OTL (would it be possible? would medical knowledge be more advanced?)?
Furthermore, if the AIDS crisis spread through a newly decolonized Africa that was still at the height of the Cold War-era of proxy wars, how would that effect efforts to control the disease?