[LearsFool]

This epidemic could’ve been contained with proper medical procedure - namely, quarantine of the infected.

Unfortunately, medicine (like many of the other sciences) has been co-opted. Francis Bacon would be ashamed of modern science.

[wolf78]

This epidemic could’ve been contained with proper medical procedure - namely, quarantine of the infected.

With all due respect, this is a pipe dream / an urban legend.

a.) For most patients the latency period from primary infection to progression to AIDS is anywhere between ten weeks and ten years. So if you quarantine patients that become sick NOW, you still have plenty of infected that won't become symptomatic for years.

b.) Other than popular belief, HIV in the US didn't have a single point of origin. Even if you quarantined all San Francisco in the 1980s, the virus would still be present, as it had already entered the population through the Carribean.

So you would have to use military force to test EVERYONE, i.e. 250 million Americans. And then you would still have had the problem of early generation tests with a diagnostic gap of a few weeks from date of infection.