Many years ago, 60 minutes had a show on Patient Zero, the person who started the AIDS epedemic. He was Gaeton Dugay, a flight attendant for a Canadian airline. He was alleged to have had sex with a monkey and then spread it to San Francisco gay bath houses. And from there it snowballed.
I remember that show but I think the theory is that the flight attendant had gay sex with an African while in Europe, and that’s what infected him with HIV. The virus might have gotten into the African blood by either sex with the monkey or (more likely) infection after butchering an infected monkey.
But Gaetan was pretty promiscuous, so sex with a monkey I wouldn’t put it past him.
What a name!
Ew.
The first transfer mostly likely originated from butchering a monkey, after all, blood is far more infectuous than e.g. vaginal fluid. And then it spread through Africa for 50 years or so before the media reported the first cases in the US.
Gaetan was more of a mathematical example that helped understand the rapid spread of HIV / AIDS in the US back then. Him being “patient zero” is a myth, however. By that time African immigrants had already brought HIV to Haiti and there was enough sex tourism to and immigration from Haiti for HIV / AIDS to enter the US at several points.