[MarkWar]

>Could it be that we know how smallpox is transmitted and how contagious it is to everyone while the probability of contracting AIDS if you are outside of the obvious risk categories is essentially nil?

1) Nobody knew that when the outbreak started -- in Africa AIDS apparently hits heterosexuals as well as gays. 2) A containment strategy would have protected _everyone_, even the people that you would be willing to just write off. 3) In a population of nearly 300,000,000 people, "essential nil" is not the same as zero. If a _traditional_ protection method for dealing with a disease can do better, why put up with ANY needless deaths?

Politics makes strange bedfellows. (Punny.)

Mark W.

[balrog666]

1) Nobody knew that when the outbreak started -- in Africa AIDS apparently hits heterosexuals as well as gays.

Wrongo, the pattern of the spread was obvious at the initial detection - that's why they called it GRIDS - Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Many facts are available on Africa; Africa is not the Western world; the proliferation of AIDS corresponds to malnutrition,ignorance, and the lack of western medical treatment; they get UN funding based on AIDS diagnoses.

But note that there is no definitive clinical definition of AIDS even in the USA. Check the CDC web site - the official diagnosis of AIDS is based on inferential analysis of other present disease(s), probable past HIV infection, and lifestyle. And that definition came from political activism not science.

2) A containment strategy would have protected _everyone_, even the people that you would be willing to just write off.

But "everyone" wasn't at risk. I would have loved to watch the liberal news broadcasts on a hypothetical Reagan-imposed public health policy of "round up the gays and heroin addicts and put them in camps". Even now, the idea makes me laugh.

3) In a population of nearly 300,000,000 people, "essential nil" is not the same as zero.

I agree. Too many such infections were either preventable (gay and hard drug lifestyle choices) or too expensive to avoid (hemophiliacs and blood-product users).

If a _traditional_ protection method for dealing with a disease can do better, why put up with ANY needless deaths?

See above. Even the government can't kidnap thousands of otherwise rational thinking people and put them in concentration camps just for their own good (even to cure them).