WI: No AIDS

SIV never mutates into HIV, instead remaining a disease only affecting diverse species of simians, but no humans. Outside of virologists, biologists and friends of the African apes, SIV remains pretty much unknown.

What are the wider consequences of this?
 
SIV never mutates into HIV, instead remaining a disease only affecting diverse species of simians, but no humans. Outside of virologists, biologists and friends of the African apes, SIV remains pretty much unknown.

What are the wider consequences of this?

Bigger populations in Southern Africa, that's for sure.

Maybe other STIs and STDs are more widespread, as people practice safe sex less?
 
Call from several lobbies to limit ape/human contacts to avoid a viral transmission, as well many call from medias replacing avian/pig flu?
 
The 80s and early 90s might be less uptight without it. With AIDs, there was an issue of this moral dictation of what to do, and something to back it up. Without it, there's the dictation of that Reaganite era, but who cares.

Just in the real of sex specifically, AIDs put a huge stop on liberated sex that had come up in the 60s and 70s. It used to be whatever you got was cured by a penicillin shot, so the only thing people were worried about was pregnancy, and that was fixed by the pill. Sex became mainstream, and sex became decadent with many people. The kids banged whatever they could whenever they could, the adults had key parties and swinging. AIDs made that go bye-bye. And back to non-sex, it put a stop to a lot of fun/decadent activities by making them more dangerous since sex was usually part of the evening or blood transfer via needles, and where they didn't stop, they took casualties. AIDs was a cold bucket of water on an era of liberation and of more permitted decadence.
 
Well current scientific thinking suggests that HIV emerged in the jungles around the Congo in the early years of the 20th Century, splitting from SIV. The interesting thing is that SIV has existed for 10,000+ years and humans have been in contact with Chimps that carried the virus for most of that time. In short, it wouldn't take a lot to avoid this particular zoonosis

As to effects, difficult to say. Without the early 20th Century zoonosis event some people are going to live who would otherwise have died of AIDS before we became aware of it's existence. Granted the indiviudals concerned probably didn't have a huge impact on history but we can't tell what the butterflies would be in this situation
 
We would still have Freddie Mercury?

Queen would definitely continue their touring and probably get to use I Want It All as the big crowd-grabbing song they always wanted to but couldn't on behalf of Freddie's illness. Plus, he'd almost certainly have performed at the London 2012 opening ceremony. Of course then again he may be a wash-up but I'd prefer to look at things optimistically. Though who knows if, when and how he'd come out of the closet?
 
The 80s and early 90s might be less uptight without it. With AIDs, there was an issue of this moral dictation of what to do, and something to back it up. Without it, there's the dictation of that Reaganite era, but who cares.

Just in the real of sex specifically, AIDs put a huge stop on liberated sex that had come up in the 60s and 70s. It used to be whatever you got was cured by a penicillin shot, so the only thing people were worried about was pregnancy, and that was fixed by the pill. Sex became mainstream, and sex became decadent with many people. The kids banged whatever they could whenever they could, the adults had key parties and swinging. AIDs made that go bye-bye. And back to non-sex, it put a stop to a lot of fun/decadent activities by making them more dangerous since sex was usually part of the evening or blood transfer via needles, and where they didn't stop, they took casualties. AIDs was a cold bucket of water on an era of liberation and of more permitted decadence.

What Aids did was compel a lot of gay and bisexual men to come out of the closet. (Who, moi? Oui, c'est moi!)

And I have a hunch the "sexual revolution" would still have wound down, you know, people getting older. But there would be a lot more gays around, most not out to straight people and the crazies would be bent out of shape, still fuelling a backlash, screaming through tears, "Will somebody PLEASE think of the children!?"

Remember, we had a major child-molestation scare in the eighties. And it would be soooo easy for the crazies to make a false homosexuality-paedophilia "connection".
 
Effects for many African countries would be quite huge :

AIDS-lifeexpectancy.gif

Source: United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision Highlights (2001).

image.php

South African population in 2015, with and without AIDS. Source: UN World Population Prospects: 2006 Revision.
 
Gay rights actually have a more difficult time going forward?

No, probably not.

I just about remember the time before AIDS, things were deffo getting easier, then it got nasty, it got very nasty for a few years. Myself and my then partner ended up moving twice.

Also, a lot of people who could have used their time and energy for gay rights used them to ensure that research got done, that projects were funded and that people were looked after. A lot of others who would have campaigned, well, we remember them through the quilt project and in other ways.

Oddly enough, we might have got weaker rights than we have now, but we would have gotten them earlier.
 
There probably wouldn't be a resurgence in TB. A total lack of or later adoption of Universal precautions in medicine. I remember the days of drawing blood without wearing gloves. Later screening of blood donations for infectious diseases might lead to a greater spread of Hepatitis C. Gay men could still donate blood in the United States. (I'm not sure what the policies are in other countries.) More money spent on other health issues, instead of being disproportionately spent on AIDS research. This could lead to earlier successful treatments to various cancers.

Torqumada
 
We'd still have not only Mr Mercury, but Eazy-E, which would make hip-hop a different place. Speed rap would be somewhat less popular as Bone Thugs N Harmony would never have been popularised by their smash hit 'Crossroads'.

Also, with Tom Fogerty surviving, we may have even seen some sort of CCR reunion by now, who knows?
 
Remember that hiv appeared in humans twice, so its jump to humans is clearly not a highly unlikely event that can easily be butterflied away.

Probably siv jumped to humans dozens or hundreds of times, but stayed confined to specific villages or areas, then died out when the village died.

What REALLY gave hiv its chance was the mass movement of thousands of men into cities, miningcamps, etc, vastly increasing prostitution and mobility. So instead of the virus being confined to one hunter and his wives, or maybe the village if he wasnt faihful, it now got to spread across a continent.
 
Well current scientific thinking suggests that HIV emerged in the jungles around the Congo in the early years of the 20th Century, splitting from SIV. The interesting thing is that SIV has existed for 10,000+ years and humans have been in contact with Chimps that carried the virus for most of that time. In short, it wouldn't take a lot to avoid this particular zoonosis

The earliest case in humans I've come across was back in the 1950s. I'm sure they were earlier cases than that, probably starting with the bushmeat trade.
 
Hiv 1 comes from chimps.

Hiv2 comes from sooty mangabey monkeys, and several of the sub strains appear to be identical to strains in those monkeys. Ie hiv2 by itself seems to have crossed into humans from two to six times.

So avoiding hiv completely is probably asb.

Sorry.
 
Top