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HankScorpio-vs-World t1_jd1lcd8 wrote

The “Hype” over HIV and its prevalence in the news of the 80’s was simply that it was newly detected, spreading expediently, had no treatment and nobody knew the scale of how big the “underlying threat” was already hidden in society.

So governments especially in the UK embarked on unprecedented awareness campaigns to slow the advance of the disease through education. Part of that education campaign was to get across the deadliness of the disease before it became a “pandemic”. The problem was nobody knew how long people had been infected before they became sick, and died. With awareness of the disease and more importantly a test for its presence, therapies could be developed, like most illnesses if detected early prognosis is normally better. It’s worth remembering it was the immunodeficiency that enabled other diseases to kill those with HIV.

These education campaigns have been effective at slowing the growth of the disease in the UK population and there have been treatments developed that prolong the lives of many sufferers. So public education and press interest in the disease has waned as it has become part of everyday medicine. Estimates are 0.2% of the population in the uk are affected but that’s still a a massive 100,000 people estimated but is one of the lowest rates in the world and outside the top 100. But it’s worth remembering in the early days of the illness it was only when people got really sick were they even aware that they may have it which is one of the reasons why it was so deadly, by the time they were diagnosed it was often too late to do anything.

What was of concern is how many “well” people had HIV undetected in the population and where that number was able to grow in places like Africa it went out of control. Some places in Africa run at excess of 20% of the population being affected and bigger countries like South Africa have a lower % infected about 12% but that’s still more than 70,000 people dying each year. The deadliness of this disease should not be underestimated even today. It’s just in many countries the rate of infection has been well contained and is less in the news.

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Necessary-Lack-4600 t1_jd301h8 wrote

>The “Hype” over HIV and its prevalence in the news of the 80’s was simply that it was newly detected, spreading expediently, had no treatment and nobody knew the scale of how big the “underlying threat” was already hidden in society.

Pretty sure that the fact that HIV was associated with promiscuous sex, gay relationships and drug abuse had at least as much to do with the "hype factor".

Edit: I mean in terms how the press was eager to pay attention to it. That kind of "hype".

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[deleted] t1_jd354k0 wrote

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Coomb t1_jd3didl wrote

It is not true, has never been true, and probably never will be true that all genders and all sexual orientations are equally at risk from HIV. I don't at all doubt that government health material has emphasized that HIV infection is a risk for everyone, not just for gay men, but I do doubt that it has ever said both sexes and/or all genders and sexual orientations are equally at risk.

Setting aside blood transfusion and related risks (e.g needle sticks, needle sharing) because, although very significant early in the pandemic, they are relatively unimportant as a method of transmission at the moment, one look at the relative risk of sexual behaviors will tell you that there is a certain group of people which is considerably more likely to be infected by HIV if exposed to an HIV positive person.

Taking insertive penile-vaginal intercourse as the index risk, since it's the lowest meaningful transmission risk at 4 infections per 10,000 exposures to a known infected source, relative risks are:

  • Insertive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse: RR = 1
  • Receptive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse: RR = 2
  • Insertive [Penile-]Anal Intercourse: RR = 2.75
  • Receptive [Penile-]Anal Intercourse: RR = 34.5

Note that the absolute transmission risk is arguably quite low. Even if you are the receptive partner in penile anal intercourse with a partner who is both HIV positive and not on suppressive drugs, the risk per sexual contact is only about 1.4%. This is, of course, why frequency and diversity of sexual contacts is also a major epidemiological factor.

You can see that there's one specific sexual activity here which is an order of magnitude riskier than the others, which is being the receptive partner in penile-anal intercourse. This activity is much, much more common among men who have sex with men (MSM) than among any other group of people. It's absolutely true that there are both men and women who have contracted, and will continue to contract, HIV from participating exclusively in vaginal sex. But the risk of any given encounter is much lower, and combined with the fact that men who have sex with men tend to have much more frequent sex and much more diversity in sexual partners, it's hard to imagine we will ever live in a world where HIV infection and AIDS diagnosis are not both grossly disproportionately common among MSM.

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HankScorpio-vs-World t1_jd4edgi wrote

That’s not what I’m saying, just that was the message put out by the government in the uk at thee time, the education system was giving the same advice to students at the time. At that point nobody knew any of the data you describe and the advice from authorities was simply don’t have sex without a condom. A lot has changed in 40 years knowledge is very different today. 👍🏻

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Necessary-Lack-4600 t1_jd43ocp wrote

I grew up at around the same time and you seem to have forgotten that the press - not government education, the press - loved to write about the relation between AIDS and sex, especially among gay man. Whether that's a good or bad thing is another story, but the press loving sex stories is as ancient as hot water.

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