The way to stop the AIDS plague in the eighties would have been to completely shut down the bath houses.
THEN what would the leftists have said?
In the early eighties David Horowitz proposed exactly that measure. During one visit to San Francisco in the early eighties he gave a speech to a bunch of homosexual activists and other interesed parties concerning the AIDS crisis. He thought he was going to be applauded for coming up with an obvious solution (closing bathhouses) to fighting the disease.
Instead he was stunned at the audience response to his speech. Which was sullen silence followed by angry questions accusing Horowitz and other nasty people of trying to inhibit the gay lifestyle. Horowitz correctly concluded that most gay activists were (1) not playing with a full deck and (2) not serious about stopping AIDS.