Yes, if you’re in your twenties or thirties and dying of pneumonia, it’s likely that something has severely weakened your immune system. It wasn’t phony statistics that made AIDS such a big issue.
Phony stats made it a big issue. If every person was tested for HIV and it was discovered that even 20% of the population was positive it would indicate the HIV was not a particularly dangerous virus. But we will ever know because only sick gay people are tested and even then they only are diagnosed with AIDS if they have at least 1/27 politically defined illnesses or diseases.