Isn't AIDS a contagious disease? Or HIV positive?
HIV is the disease, AIDS is the result. It's contagious, not rampantly so, but anal sex is more than enough to break all the barriers to transmission. This is part of the reason why homosexuals constitute a majority of HIV infections even though they are a tiny minority of the whole population - HIV doesn't transmit nearly as well through heterosexual sex.
Uhh, the common cold is a "contagious disease." Shall the government put everyone with a cold under house arrest?
Quarantine is still the approach for reportable contagious diseases. Diphtheria, whooping cough, plague and smallpox are reportable diseases for which quarantine is commonly enforced.
HIV should be a reportable and quarantined disease. There is no cure and it generally culiminates in AIDS followed by some wretched disease that attacks the immune compromised individual. Kaposi's sarcoma and certain forms of pneumonia are common. HIV is transmissible, thus infected individuals should be removed from contact with uninfected individuals. That may seem a harsh point of view, but HIV infection is a guaranteed death sentence. It brings astronomical medical bills to stave off the inevitable. The burden for those bills falls on healthcare insurance rates for everyone, hospital billing rates to cover bad debts and taxpayer subsidies. Everyone loses.
Sadly, we live in a time when homosexuality has become a behavior with special protection granted by gutless politicians. The consequence is that HIV/AIDS went wild in the homosexual and injectable drug abuser communities. It is hopelessly out of control in the U.S. Outside the U.S. the problem is worse. Other varieties of HIV that are easily passed through heterosexual sex are rampant in Africa and southeast Asia. Ditto for China.
This latest STD, Lymphogranuloma venereum, produces itchy, fiery blisters in the affected area. My microbiology professor made a pretty big deal about it in 1973. It's not new, just having a big outbreak in a large, very promiscuous group.