Regarding Reagan. The issue is that it took 3 years for Surgeon General Coop to pursuade Reagan of the importance of issuing a national alert to every household about the dangers of this new disease. It wasn’t until the death of Rock Hudson, whom I guess he knew, that Coop was able to do what could have saved thousands of lives if it had been done earlier. I remember the day I received it in the mail and thought, well, it’s about time. I guy I knew who knew I was medically literate and following this issue asked me if I thought it was safe for him to date a guy who was HIV positive, since the guy had a letter from his Doctor saying he did NOT have AIDS. I said, “are you (and especially this criminally irresponsible doctor) crazy? HIV IS THE DISEASE, AIDS is merely the symptom.
I don't know that it would have made much difference at that point. That's assuming anyone would have followed the advice. Gay men certainly didn't. The gay political organizations spent their money and political capital trying to hide the facts and convince the country that it was a heterosexual disease and would be an epidemic in the hetero population. They (and their media sycophants) tried to politically destroy anyone that spoke the truth about AIDS.
That's where this whole BS about "HIV positive wasn't really AIDS" came to be.
Point being? No one listened. HUNDREDS of thousands of lives would have been saved if the gay organizations had actually cared enough to educate gay men and not tried to blame the disease on Reagan and Republicans while insisting it was primarily a hetero disease. These people were sacrificed on the alter of liberalism, plain and simple. Same mindset the left has about profiling in fighting terrorism.
30 years later we still have San Francisco liberals encouraging the practices that spread AIDS by allowing the gay bath houses. We still have the left pushing for gay blood donation.
Liberals are responsible for many, many thousands more AIDS deaths that could theoretically been saved by anything the Reagan Administration might have done. They hated Reagan, they would not have cooperated with anything that helped AIDS victims if it came from him.