What if JFK and LBJ survived and contracted HIV

Two men who are to some degree known for their many affairs. They also both travel a lot given their jobs. Let’s say JFK doesn’t get shot and lives longer, while Johnson having avoided the stress of the presidency makes it another decade. However, they both contract the disease at some point in either the 60s or 70s and eventually die from it destroying their immune systems. Potentially getting the disease initially while in the White House.

They go down as the first celebrity deaths from the disease.

What impact would this have on the early years of HIV? Would it get more research earlier? Does it no longer become known as the gay disease, or does it simply create rumors about those twos sexuality?
 
At first, I thought this was a frivolous one. But this is an interesting question. If JFK needed a blood transfusion, and got it that way, it'd be a real doozy on the PR/advocacy side. The best case is some Cold war visit to West or Central Africa where either president decides to enjoy some local "company."

If it's JFK, then Jackie's also a quite goner. With LBJ, his lifestyle is ugly enough, he could well die before becoming symptomatic.

Assuming there's no homosexual affairs known or rumored for either, it probably reduces the stigma of the "gay disease."

Part of the problem is that unless the disease is isolated early, then it becomes a tragic tropical disease or a medical mystery until it's figured out later.
 
Since victims usually die from some other infection, it might not be diagnosed for some time. I recall the report of the 16 year-old rich kid in St. Louis who died in 1969 despite the most advanced treatment available at the time. Tissue samples were frozen and not until the eighties was it announced he had AIDS. Now, if both JFK and Jackie die the same way, their samples would have also been preserved. But unless an earlier outbreak happens, the gay stigma is likely to come before the disease is identified.
 
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