Who remembers AIDS in the 1980s?

I was wondering if anybody who lived in that decade could perhaps shine some light on the AIDS epidemic and the public reaction to it.

I was born in the 80s, but raised in the 90s-millenium. I`ve seen the ridiculous reactions and govt-fear-spreading with SARS and now H1N1, and those have barely killed anyone.

I am doing research on floatation tanks and discovered part of the reason they died off in popularity/usage was because of unrational/unjustified public fear of contracting AIDS through its use (in public float centers). There were other big reasons, but for the sake of the thread I am just investigating one aspect.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Born in 1976, and yes I do

Were similar tactics being employed in order to generate fear, as they are now? How was the public reacting to it, was it a huge news story?

Yes the AIDS issue was presented in the same light. Look up the issues surrounding Magic Johnson of the LA Lakers. This is about the time the PTB lost support from the public.

I was only a little girl so it's vague. The first time I remember hearing about it was when they were interviewing hemophiliacs who contracted HIV after receiving blood transfusions. It was on a news show similar to 20/20.

I was only maybe 5 years old at the time so it's hard to remember. But I have seen older documentaries today that were made in the 80's and people were pretty panicky worried they could get it from kissing and shaking hands, etc.

Good luck.

It was supposed to kill everyone.

The planned measures of dealing with it ranged from leper colonies to tattooing the infected with little symbols on their feet to warn any possible partners. Something I'm sure quite a few people now living with HIV had wished been enacted.

For a while it wasnt known how people got it. That was fun. People thought just touching a gay guy would transmit it. All sorts of paranoia and hate born of ignorance and fear sprung from that.

There was the whole quilt thing. All sorts of benefits and "we are the world" type events. Too many "after school specials" to count.

It was a circus.

By comparison it's as if today nobody cares. Like it's been cured or something. More fuss is made over breast cancer.

Oh, one of my favorites was kicking around the idea of banning boxing because the fighters might bleed on one another.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by thisguyrighthere]

In the 80's you could get infected just by loocking at someone with HIV/AIDS , they did not know what they were up against. The people was terryfied. I dont know what kind of scaretackticks-(wrong spelling) you are reffering to,... use a condom when having sex????

reply to post by nemazasho


When I was a senior in High School we told a lot of Rock Hudson AIDS jokes. Back then it seemed remote. It seemed like what it was for a good while in the 80s,a Gay and Haitian disease.

fohn.net...

In 1981, the first cases of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) were identified among gay men in the United States, acquiring the designation, GRID
(Gay-Related Immune Deficiency); however, scientists later found evidence that the disease existed in the world for some years prior, i.e., subsequent analysis of a blood sample of a Bantu man, who died of an unidentified illness in the Belgian Congo in 1959, made him the first confirmed case of an HIV infection. Source: CNN In an article, "1959 and all that: Immunodeficiency viruses," by Simon Wain-Hobson of the Pasteur Institute in Nature (Volume 391, 5 February 1998, pp. 532-533), Wain-Hobson wrote: "Where did HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] come from? Both of the AIDS viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2, originated in Africa... As is often the case with microbes, a jump from one species to another is probably to blame... chimpanzees (for HIV-1) and sooty mangabeys (for HIV-2)... When did the AIDS epidemic begin?... the Big Bang seems to have occurred around, or just after, the Second World War. Emerging microbial infections often result from adaption to changing ecological niches and habitats." Cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP, a lung infection) and Kaposi's sarcoma (a rare skin cancer) were reported by doctors in New York and Los Angeles in 1981, then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began tracking a growing population of young men, women, and babies, whose immune systems were nearly destroyed. Late in 1982, the condition began to be referred to as AIDS. Source: American Red Cross For a few at first, their awareness of AIDS began with the publishing of a little noticed entry on page two of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of June 5, 1981, where a strange outbreak of killer pneumonia was spreading among gay men. Since this report, AIDS has graduated from a seemingly local phenomenon to a global epidemic

I remember it very well, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area from the late eighties to two-thousand, during the early eighties they were not testing blood and people were getting AIDS from tainted blood..check out the article above and related links.

I was 17 in 1987 when the HIV virus was declared a serious health risk, and there was a school function scheduled for education on the disease.

Most, as HS kids do, acted silly. Because, they got to talk openly about s e x.

It was odd, but heterosexuals seemed to feel immune, and the gay community felt it restricted to I.V. drug users. And, the gals knew they had a TOUGH (female anatomic area). I can still see that poster in my mind on the door of the auditorium. Note, however, women run the same risk, and share the infection rate, as do non-homosexual males.

Water was considered a transmitter, as you spoke of; and many on the football team and other sports would start rumors of someone, and they would get banned from the pool, showers, etc.

C. Everett Coop was the lead in spreading the word on HIV/AIDS and would be worth looking into if your interested in information in early years before epidemic/pandemic proportions were attained.

It's rather sad, but someone will knowingly pass this disease to their/other's child due to being distraught. Which, in my mind, is rarely mentioned but should be. As, this young person will die before reaching their 20's often. And, it is a very lonely, miserable death.

I wonder how many babies where not born due to the AIDS Plaque, so those people would be 20 somethings now. hum, I wonder. any way I saw the doctor admiting that they were responsible for Aids and its a really sad disease. usually admitted murderers are arrested... is doctors immune.?
well if not now - they sure will be if healthcare passes.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by Anti-Evil]

reply to post by passingthought


AIDS never really hit close to home to Me,until one of My friend's Mom died of Aids in 1993(She was a Nurse and got stuck with an contaminated needle).

I remember it well, I was in my early 20`s and my best friends brother got AIDS, he was gay. He was about 19, he died about 2 years later from what they called it back then was ARC, Aids Related Complex, not even full blown AIDS. They had no drugs to stop the slow of it and he really died from an infection becuse his immune system was so weak. It was very lethal back then and was almost certainly a death sentence. People who had it usualy died within a few years.


[edit on 23-2-2010 by Iamherefornow]

reply to post by nemazasho


Well...you'd go to sleep with the local rock station on (wxrt)...and then you'd be jarred awake around 2:00 AM with a soft, cooing female voice discussing things like: "...it takes a huge amount of bloodletting to contract the lethal virus, you have to tear the rectal tissues, and even then, your chances of becoming infected are slim...." This was circa 1985. She assured us that it was only spread through homo activity. It used to be that when you tuned to a station for 'fine rock', it would remain 'fine rock' not shape shift when you'd fallen asleep. From that moment on I never monitored to media activities unless I was awake. I would never leave the radio on again, nor listen to it stupidly, as if they could somehow 'complete' the life experience in me. Also, recall that Dungeons and Dragons was popular, and the rules for aids™ pretty much mirrored the style of play. No...my trident is being wielded by a 2nd degree reincarnation of a vaporized ghost, so it CAN penetrate your wizard skinned armor... The cops were invited to play as well. I saw a poster in a police station that had the 'do not touch' crossing out a syringe, a piece of poo, and a skinny guy with a mad look...

Soon there were a lot of medical programs featuring aids™, and rock bands were all over it, generally agreeing, conforming, assimilating, making a name for themselves. I recall putting dozens of albums in the common area of my apartment complex, being disgusted with the endorsements. Bono, Genesis, anyone who'd stepped in to the limelight wearing the red ribbon. All celebs in hollywood were in agreement with whatever they heard on the news, and there were some rough patches which required the jews to have 'aids™ wallpaper' which would serve as a backdrop for the big red carpet events. As such, celebs didn't have to be photographed personally endorsing the ruse, yet there was no apparent discord as they smirked and accepted their prizes, with aids wallpaper doing to job they were uncertain of taking credit for. People started buying bottled water so there'd be no more aids™ in their water. A bunch of scientists were discredited for not going along with the program. Eventually an entire plane carrying aids™ elite was downed, due to a video game or something, in the console of the planes entertainment center. Also, the lbgt (les gay bi trisexual) community was slapping stickers all over the place. You'd show up for a job at a posh condo complex and right outside the door there would be a huge (2 by 3 feet) sticker saying: IF YOU INTEND TO LICK, KISS, OR SUCK ON AN ANUS OR GENITALIA, YOU MUST USE A DENTAL DAM OF HIGH QUALITY LATEX RUBBER! I was even brought to a few 'parties', the purpose of which was to spread the word of 'aids™', as if it were a tupperware offering, or like they used to spread 'communism' during the cold war. Another thing that was spreading like a gasoline fire was the expression 'take care'.

Athletes were forced to wear red ribbons on their shirts during tennis matches. Once, a health and fitness magazine featured a lady who's tested positive, but somehow cured herself. There was a hockey slut who caught aids™ and who threatened to out a few dozen players in the NHL. Then ryan white established the first in many footholds which would set legal precedents involving aids™brand discrimination. Soon they started saying aids™ isn't just for homos anymore, on all the jewish media outlets. Joan Rivers sponsored a book which was distributed in drugstores which taught you what to do if you knew someone with aids™. Her picture was on the back cover, and she found it very informative and an invaluable aid for learning to live with people who were dying, without catching it yourself. More lawsuits arose, and eventually the jews made it a capital crime to run around with aids™, having sex. Some poisonous cocktail which was around for 40 years was finally rebranded and used to 'treat' anyone who had caught an inferior immune system. Nobody ever suggested that perhaps by effing a person with a healthy system, that you could catch that as well.... Some movies started using mosquitoes as a tongue in cheek reference to the hoax, you know, slapping at a bug, showing all this blood, and then saying 'dam..all these mosquitoes..., I think it would be fun to videotape ourselves doing our friends up the butt....' Usually this was in pornos. The video cameras were the size of bazookas. The media assured us that since mosquitoes have a special enzyme which dissolves the 'virus', that there was no way to catch it unless you had sex with someone. My trident is being wielded by a second degree reincarnated vaporized ghost so it CAN.... They started spraying thick heavy clouds of poisonous bug killer all summer long. Then, we had mysteriously long periods of rain and flooding, making mosquitoes rather abundant. There was a lot going on. I wish I could recall all the names of the stars who'd helped roll out the marketing scheme. There are some excellent sites which discuss the hoax, the intentions, and the reasons behind it, but the media tribe plays on, still showing reruns of movies and serials which helped the hoax become two or three actual holidays on the calendar. Usually they try to show these films at the beginning of Fall, and Spring. Doctor House even looked for aids™ in the Holy Water, in one episode. Naturally, no Catholics stood up against it, because of all the child porn freaks there. Aids™ is an unisolateable chimera. It is, as you may have guessed, an ever-ready tech weapon ready to accept whatever bullet they say kills ya. I'd guess that the intention is to handily off anyone who interrupts the new world order. They have graduated to electronic weapons, since then, and it should give them some breathing room to redesign a new killer, such as Baxter's deliberate contamination of the vaccines for the next jew trick 'bird flu', which we narrowly escaped when healthcare was rejected. They will always do what they do.

Hey-Forrest Gump's on again, it has aids™ references all over it. After that, you can enjoy Philadelphia. (Hanks was instrumental on getting 'er done, as was Geffen, and a guy named Benneton ran entire series of aids™ advertisements backing his line of ratty clothes).





[edit on 23-2-2010 by davidmann]

[edit on 23-2-2010 by davidmann]

[edit on 23-2-2010 by davidmann

[edit on 23-2-2010 by davidmann]

Actually, it was the opposite.
During the Reagen years, it was barely mentioned but quite scary nonetheless...It was considered a gay disease back then and in the 80s, gays were freaks deserving of death in many peoples eyes...

Once Reagen left, then actual discussions started...tolerance was slowly starting to grow and with that, more light was being shown...suddenly it went from a gay disease to a gay and junky disease...oh, and some loose women.

It was the loose woman thing that concerned many straights (erm...many straight men have had a few episodes with more friendlier than normal women)...so, more light was shined on it.

It wasn't really till the 90s when it was considered for what it was...a freaking plague.

But anyhow, in the 80s, there was no fear mongering, no worrying, barely even news about it beyond crazy liberal channels saying there is something bad going on here...address it please.

Well being a gay man who came out in the 80's I do remember it very well.

People were pretty much encouraged to stay away from people like me, and shout slurs and simple disrespect at any chance they got.

Even though I didn't have AIDS, or any other sort of disease I was treated like a lepper for a good while, until I moved out of the country for a few years and found that Europe had a very much more "mature" reaction to the whole ordeal.

The Band Marches On, was pretty much the nail in the coffin for homosexuals living in the 80's as it painted every one of us as people who WANTED to get infected with HIV and spread it around to kill people.

So sad...

I am very happy those days are gone.

~Keeper

I graduated in 1992, and I remember the 80s pretty well. I was from a small town, and like others have said, it was considered to be a "homosexual" disease. Hetero's at the time pretty much ignored it.

I remember the rumors that it was spreading through the ghettos via the CIA. I remember when Magic Johnson came out that he had it, and then it became a mainstream topic, but he admittedly slept with 100's or 1000's of woman, so it still didn't scare the average hetero.

I remember the rumors that the government didn't publicize it enough. It certainly did not get the press that H1N1 got. It was probably 10 years before it was finally brought up in schools and in average conversations.

It really hit home with me when Rocky V star and Boxer Tommy Morrison announced that he had it. I lived very close to him, and we had spoken on a couple of occasions, and we had supposedly shared some girlfriends. I kind of freaked out at that point. I called the hotllines and at the time the tests were not so good. It could take as much as a couple of years for an infected person to test positive, so it was anybody's guess when Tommy actually contracted it!

I was tested and it relieved me a little, but I still sweated bullets for a couple of years and my sex habits certainly changed instantly!! Not only that, but all of my buddies sex habits changed instantly as well. Condoms became un-negotiable the minute Tommy's press conference hit the TV sets!!

reply to post by nemazasho


Many politicians attempted to abide by simply rounding up anyone who tested positive for aids™. One guy is from Britain, and I think he is the same guy who is now telling the truth about global warming, calling it a hoax. Huckabee wanted a quarantine for all 'victims', as did Pat Buchanan, if memory serves. It's hard to find this out these days, because the googleman serves and protects those who serve the nwo.

I was a young teen in the early 80s and the recent climate change and swine flu scare reminds me of the ozone layer and aids hype. I also remember my school friends and I saying we would never have children because a nuclear war with the U.S.S.R. was imminent thanks to the media and mad max type movies. I very rarely watch TV anymore

A new world bible was printed which said that aids was 'God's punishment', on the very first page. Most christians went along with this. I remember finding one of these on a beach, in Evanston Il, and setting it on fire, page by page, while a little girl asked me what I was doing. I told her. Nearby some small study group was reading a book, in the nude, titled 'the meaning of Hitler'. Cops were wandering about, but nobody was getting arrested.

You really didn't find too many people who came right out and called it a hoax. Butthole Surfers 'Pepper' was big that year, and girls hadn't yet fallen for the shaved look yet.

Since tivo is so capable of recording so many hours, I believe it would be good keep records, because it looks like the nwo is starting a new aids push, again, since so many of their plans have fallen apart. They can always count on christians and jews to obey.