WI: Earlier Outbreak of HIV/AIDS?

Seeing as it came from Africa, more racist White people?:(

Possibly Britain goes Nazi on the Africans to "cleanse the AIDS infected bloods of the nigga:rolleyes:", in which case my mother would never had existed.:mad:
 

HueyLong

Banned
Its not anymore linked to Africa than to the myriad of diseases that made their way out of there in OTL.

Besides, by the time there are deaths, you can't find the Patient Zero. After all, we can't even find the Patient Zero and back then, unexplained deaths are much easier to come by. (And any outbreak will likely be thought to be something else netirely due to decreased immunity)
 
Seeing as it came from Africa, more racist White people?:(

Possibly Britain goes Nazi on the Africans to "cleanse the AIDS infected bloods of the nigga:rolleyes:", in which case my mother would never had existed.:mad:

Lots of terrible diseases came from the tropics in OTL (malaria, yellow fever, etc.) and we never killed people because of that. It's just what the Distinguished English Explorer expects. Besides, it'd be ages before they pinpointed it to Livingstone's arrival, if at all - they may think it's just a mysterious disease. In any case, I highly doubt that the British would associate "Terrible Disease" to "They all have it", as the African population would be quite clearly not dropping dead of AIDS. Colonial abuse, maybe...

Sadly, though, with a POD this far back and this far-reaching, your mother probably wouldn't exist anyway. The butterfly effect and all that.
 
2 things to know about HIV: It's mostly transmuted through blood. You get it mostly from anal sex (receiving) or from rough vaginal sex.

I have read that western/southern Africans like their women to be dry when they have sex (the article I read recorded someone saying that it's like she is making water, it seemed to revolt the guy). So the chicks use some kind of herb to keep themselves from producing much lube.

No lube = lots of bleeding which leads to higher transmission rates of HIV.
This coupled with a real distaste for using condoms leads to real problems in Africa. Cultural traditions tend to create lot of stupid crap like this in almost all cultures.


So lots hookers may not lead to all that many more cases in Europe unless it got into the homosexual population in a big way. Even then it’s not going to be a pandemic, just another disease like tuberculosis that kills a lot of people, but does not really destroy the world.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Not that I am going to claim to be a Victorian sex expert, but anal sex was a pretty common way for hookers to not get pregnant and still have clients.

In any case, semen does transfer it just as well. So there may be more outbreaks among women when it first occurs.

And secondly, you presuppose that the number of homosexuals was lower. I don't really believe that it was. They were just less visible..... which actually makes it more likely for them to spread it on to women.
 
2 things to know about HIV: It's mostly transmuted through blood. You get it mostly from anal sex (receiving) or from rough vaginal sex.

I have read that western/southern Africans like their women to be dry when they have sex (the article I read recorded someone saying that it's like she is making water, it seemed to revolt the guy). So the chicks use some kind of herb to keep themselves from producing much lube.

No lube = lots of bleeding which leads to higher transmission rates of HIV.
This coupled with a real distaste for using condoms leads to real problems in Africa. Cultural traditions tend to create lot of stupid crap like this in almost all cultures.


So lots hookers may not lead to all that many more cases in Europe unless it got into the homosexual population in a big way. Even then it’s not going to be a pandemic, just another disease like tuberculosis that kills a lot of people, but does not really destroy the world.
Oh yes, because the wests culture is superior:mad::rolleyes:
 

HueyLong

Banned
Oh yes, because the wests culture is superior:mad::rolleyes:

There are definite instances where primitive traditions have helped the spread of HIV. But there are instances where the Catholic Church or Western Christian charities hasn't done much to help either.
 
There are definite instances where primitive:)mad:grr) traditions have helped the spread of HIV. But there are instances where the Catholic Church or Western Christian charities hasn't done much to help either.
Not primitive, different:rolleyes:

Where did he say this? Answer: he didn't. A traditional African approach to sex has merely backfired unfortunately when coupled with a Western approach to sex (no condoms) and a modern illness.
True, I misread it, causing me to lash out unneccasarily on a guiltless person.
 
I have read that western/southern Africans like their women to be dry when they have sex (the article I read recorded someone saying that it's like she is making water, it seemed to revolt the guy). So the chicks use some kind of herb to keep themselves from producing much lube.

I'm from Southern Africa, and I like my women as wet as any Westerner. Go stereotypes! :rolleyes:
 

HueyLong

Banned
Not primitive, different:rolleyes:

No, most definitely primitive. I really, really hate the PC crowd. Not all cultures have equal status, they just don't.

Latching on to primitive ideas has helped hasten the spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The whole virgin sex thing (exaggerated, but still), Levantine and polygamist marriages, the very low status of women, fetisheurs hawking traditional medicines and rejecting condoms, etc.....

Not that it all lies there. Many "westernized" cities boast very high prostitute populations, for example. And, as said, the Catholic Church still follows its primitive ideas against contraception.
 
AIDS could have been common

AIDS could have been common in the 19th century; it is just that it was not distinguished from the common infections that cause the victims to die. As diseases go, AIDS is not very easy to transmit in the absence of needles and blood transfusions. The chance of transmission from female to male in conventional sex where the man's skin is not broken, is low.

What AIDS there was could have "died out" of the mainstream after World War I as overall sanitation and hygiene improved. Without the antibiotics that become popular after World War II, the disease would not have been diagnosed.
 
ISTM that the main effect would be lots of dead prostitutes dying from pneumonia. But would we recognize that?
 
Prior to antibiotics and modern medicine, AIDS would have not been distinguished from pneumonia, blood poisoning or any other common infection. LOTS of people died of pneumonia before antibiotics.

Postings on this thread describe sexual fetishes that induce abrasion and blood exchange. Sure, these would transmit the disease readily, but they do not represent the risk to the mainstream population.

Sex was a taboo subject in conversation in the 1950's and earlier. Even into the fifties, American women sometimes did not learn the "facts of life" until their wedding night. They had no idea what the adult male body looked like when prepared for a woman.

Going back to 1900, there were "sex guides" for married women that described a "proper" way to engage in conception without the indulgence of pleasure. The couple wore garments in bed and bare skin did not make contact, beyond the "essential" parts. Proper people did not French kiss. That practice remained unknown to many adults well into the sixties and later.

There is evidence that AIDS had indeed been around in previous generations; it just was not diagnosed. There was a case of a teenage boy who kept developing infections and eventually died in the mid 1960's. The doctors thought the case was unusual, because conventional medicine at the time should have cured the infections. They froze tissue samples after the patient died. A sample was thawed and tested in the 1990's, and the results indicated AIDS.
 
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