Posted on 10/30/2016 6:43:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The alleged “Patient Zero” of the American AIDS epidemic — a French Canadian flight attendant named Gaétan Dugas, who died of AIDS in 1984 — was exonerated last week.
Genetic sequencing of blood samples stored since the 1970s showed that the strain infecting him had circulated among gay men in New York for several years before he arrived here in 1974. Therefore, although he had hundreds of sexual partners in several cities, he did not introduce the virus to North America; he was a victim before he was a vector.
The revelation, some AIDS experts said, proved that the epidemic’s early days had been overshadowed by a witch hunt. Terrified Americans wanted someone to blame.
Federal health officials said homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin users were all victims — thus effectively calling them all carriers. Many individuals felt the sting of suspicion, including Ryan White, a 13-year-old hemophiliac bullied and barred from middle school after he contracted H.I.V. from a blood-clotting factor.
Mr. Dugas’s name emerged when Randy Shilts, a journalist who himself later died of AIDS, published his best-selling history of the epidemic, “And the Band Played On.” Through interviews, he found the real name of the mysterious “Patient O,” for “outside California,” in a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linking 40 men with AIDS on two coasts. Although Mr. Shilts never claimed that Mr. Dugas was the nation’s first case, alarmist journalism during his book publicity tour created the image of a libertine who, as one headline screamed, “Gave Us AIDS.”
The debunking of the Dugas myth raises a moral question: Is it right to hunt down the first case in any outbreak, to find every Patient Zero?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Again,sorry. ‘
No problem——that must have been quite a stressful time for you folks in the medical field.
.
>>Everyone else couldn’t have cared less.
This isn’t accurate. It wasn’t until the late ‘80s when the heterosexual/non-drug user link to AIDS was essentially refuted. During most of the ‘80s the media and the gay crowd were doing everything they could to get the idea across that everyday Americans were at high risk.
The NY Slime has no ethics, no morality. Their only intent is to obfuscate everything; the Slime is always on the wrong side of every issue. Never let the truth get in the way of the agenda.
“Blood from Bill Clinton’s AIDs infected state prisoners?”
Hardly—San Francisco-—1983
.
The first thing that comes go mind after reading this is do they have a pc reason for the exoneration? “Patient Zero” can easily become “patient letter-o” for changing history. “Outside California” takes California off the hook for developing something that makes Hitler’s holocaust look puny. Particularly letting off the hook the left such as the ACLU and the Democrats and their media who wouldn’t accept any measures go curtail the spread.
You had Jesse Helms calling for a quarantine of San Francisco so maybe they need to fix the narrative to make it look like that wouldn’t have saved tens of millions of lives. They demonized Bells for that like no politician has ever been demonized, and the narrative was that it wasn’t the behavior that was the problem but rather the lack of government to spend enough money to find a cure for what their behavior wrought.
Stressful for sure.I was Administration so I didn't have direct patient contact.However,although many "civilians" don't know this needle sticks and other kinds of exposures are not uncommon in acute care areas of hospitals...ERs,ICUs,ORs,etc.When a physician,surgeon or nurse experienced a needle stick in our ER their fear was so thick you could cut it with a knife.One of the nurses I worked with *did* contract both HIV *and* Hep C from a needle stick during a code.
And the politically incorrect facts how Africans made AIDS go from monkeys to humans remains un mentioned.
That may be true but that effort,IIRC,failed because the methods of transmission had been clearly established by the early-mid 80's.
Arkansas was selling infected prisoner blood worldwide in those years. Lots of non gay people became infected with AIDS because of it.
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3732
“Big deal if he wasn’t the very first first in America The evil bastard added contempt for the lives of others on top of being a colossal pervert.”
I think he was the first and his name is being removed because it’s not PC
Yet more people die from heart disease and cancer and it is still debatable the causes. However, we know exactly what causes AIDS and HIV and it is completely preventable.
Anything the Gaystapo wants? Sure, I can see that. The left is chock full of those who go along to get along.
The other day someone seemed to say in a post that we were and are somehow obligated to treat the diseased when our duty should have been to round up and isolate the infected ASAP, to the best of our ability, while it was still a mysterious disease associated with homosexuals.
Even today we should quarantine the infected, no exceptions, and as for treatment: let those whose own behavior caused them to get the disease pay for it themselves (or pay for it with money from those giving out of their own means for that purpose) and reserve public monies only for those who were truly their victims (like aforementioned blood receipients).
But the poofters and civil libertarians made it into a civil rights issue and basically ensured the plague would run as out of control as possible.
Maybe it was some Muslim having a sexual emergency?
In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same
At home there are seventeen-year-old boys and their idea of fun
Is being in a gang called ‘The Disciples’
High on crack and totin’ a machine gun
—PRINCE, Sign of the Times
We didn’t know initially that HIV was fairly difficult to transmit and that it would stay largely in the high risk groups. What if it had been as easy to catch as herpes?
Lots of people were afraid.
I was very glad my sexual island had no bridges to the mainland.
If AIDS/HIV had been treated like a medical/public health problem ( like TB, Typhoid, etc.) from the beginning, many, many lives would have been saved.
If it were discovered that Christians were the 'Patient Zeroes' causing 'Male-Pattern-Baldness' the entire media, intelligentsia and glitterati (except for Hair Club For Men) would form the lynch mob.
Random aside: it’s been suggested that the ability to grow facial and body hair may indeed be related to MPB.
So maybe the comic was right: we don’t lose hair so much as it moves around?
And rightfully so!
Re: If AIDS/HIV had been treated like a medical/public health problem ( like TB, Typhoid, etc.) from the beginning, many, many lives would have been saved.
Your observation was brought out in the book referenced in the NYTimes article, “And the Band Played On” by Randy Shilts. Politics and political correctness allowed the disease to spread and kept potential victims from being warned or even informed of risk factors. But if the entire AIDS epidemic were to start today, it is clear to me that the even greater level of political correctness would have resulted in an even greater epidemic.
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