Fiasco: The AIDS Crisis | Episode 1 | Gay Plague

Comments · 181

• ZE

  @zeddeka · 2 months ago

  In 2016, the scientist Michael Worobey conducted genetic analysis of old blood samples. While it&apos;s likely that HIV came to the USA a number of times over the years without talking hold, Worobey was able to analyse how the strain that did take hold, HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B, arrived in the USA, and when. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; In the 1960s, The Congo became independent and needed skilled workers from French speaking countries, so many Haitians went to work there. In c. 1965, one single person brought HIV back from The Congo to Haiti, most likely one of the Haitian workers. It then started to spread in Haiti, and around the Caribbean, overwhelming through heterosexual sex. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; In around 1969, it was then taken from Haiti or the Caribbean to New York by one single person again. It is not clear who brought it, whether it was a Haitian, an American who&apos;d been to Haiti and returned, someone from the Caribbean, or perhaps through infected blood that the USA was importing from Haiti at the time. Worobey found definitively that the oldest samples of HIV+ blood that he found in the USA had HIV which had descended from strains which had previously been circulating in Haiti.<br> &nbsp; &nbsp; HIV then seems to have circulated in New York&apos;s poor communities, but nobody noticed because New York was in a state of collapse at the time, many of those people had no access to health care, and the symptoms of AIDS can look much like other diseases, particularly in women, who tend not to get Kaposi&apos;s Sarcoma. In 1977, there was a wave of deaths in New York&apos;s junky community, earning the nickname &quot;Junky Flu&quot;. It&apos;s now believed to have been AIDS. Similar symptoms were being noted in men&apos;s and women&apos;s prisons around New York, getting the nickname there of &quot;Rikers Island Syndrome&quot; after one of the New York Prisons.<br> &nbsp; &nbsp; Some doctors who were prominent in the early years of AIDS in New York were later to say that, with hindsight, the earliest cases of AIDS that they had seen with were in women with drug habits. Indeed, the earliest transmission of HIV in the USA that can be confirmed with any reasonable certainty was from a woman who was a junky, whose child was later found to have AIDS. He was born in 1977 and both he and his mother died of AIDS a few years later. It was only when otherwise healthy young men in the gay community started to get ill that anyone really paid any attention. As someone put it, &quot;Gay men had there own newspapers to raise the alarm. Junkies didn&apos;t.&quot;<br> &nbsp; &nbsp;In 1976, HIV was then taken by one person yet again from New York to San Francisco, where it started the epidemic there. It was around that time also that HIV was taken from New York to Georgia. It was this strain that the so called &quot;Patient Zero&quot; had, confirming that he was not the source of HIV in the USA. From New York, HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B then also spread to Europe and Australia. Worobey&apos;s work is all online, for anybody who wants further information.

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• OD

  @Ode2Ash · 1 year ago

  That story about the bird at the end is bone chilling. Bless those men for facing both bigotry and their own mortality years before their time.

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• RO

  @Rodmic-hd9pn · 2 years ago (edited)

  I was a new graduate from Nursing-school. I had 2 uncles who had AIDS &nbsp;die from IVDA. I chose to work on the AIDS UNIT. IT WAS 1987. It was a spiritual experience. Many of them were discarded by family

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• JG

  @jgkidd82 · 2 years ago

  Glad I got the chance to listen to this podcast. I was born the year after the CDC first reported on the cases in the MMWR in 1981 so I wasn&apos;t really around to understand the gravity of what was going on back then.

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• SC

  @ScotchCherokeeGirl · 7 months ago (edited)

  I was a teenager when the Aids epidemic first began and I followed it in the news and years later read Randy Shilts&apos; book so I know who all these people interviewed are. The story Dr. Guinan told about getting a needle stick while obtaining a blood sample in 1981 and not knowing whether she had it until 1985 really struck me. I was a nurse for 20 years and can&apos;t tell you how many blood sticks and IVs I did. Thankfully I didn&apos;t ever get any needle sticks and HIV is the #1 reason I was always so careful.

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• CE

  @cesaroso863 · 3 years ago

  Amazing, really appreciate all the effort in compilation of the testimonies of several actors of these first days of the epidemic that continues surround the world

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• TH

  @thebandit666 · 2 years ago

  So many thanks for covering this issue. Rest in power, Nurse Bobbi ❤❤

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• LE

  @leptonsoup337 · 2 months ago

  Wow. Bobbi is a great example of what a truly outstanding human being is. When confronted with something that was frightening, he grabbed a microphone and spread knowledge.

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• MA

  @matthewjones1959 · 2 years ago

  Wow. I&apos;m a historian who writes about HIV/AIDS (specifically music and the AIDS crisis), and I teach a course at Oklahoma City University about music and HIV/AIDS. Just discovered this series, and it&apos;s quite good! Can&apos;t wait to share with my students.

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• JA

  @jacquelinegrayden4706 · 2 years ago

  Cant stop listening, so well put together

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• SI

  @simonbailey8814 · 2 years ago

  Some great contributions from those who were there in this documentary.

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• MA

  @mariamack4798 · 1 year ago (edited)

  This is an excellent, informative series. My mum was a sexual health nurse in England during the 80s and 90s and cared for many people with HIV. Thanks for your research.

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