There was a lot of confused thinking going on at the time, especially as AIDS was seen as a ‘gay disease’. Diseases do not work that way, but shades of Medieval thinking that bubonic plague was a disease of the immoral. Lead later to the catastrophe in Sub-Saharan Africa. When I was in South Africa in the mid 2000 on a UK Foreign Office mission to support SA schools, we were told that in some communities 45% of the population had AIDS. And that misinformation was leading to heart breaking stories like the belief that sex with a virgin would cure it… Will not repeat the stories I was told of where that lead, but they are at least as bad as you can imagine and probably worse.
There was a lot of confused thinking going on at the time, especially as AIDS was seen as a ‘gay disease’. Diseases do not work that way, but shades of Medieval thinking that bubonic plague was a disease of the immoral. Lead later to the catastrophe in Sub-Saharan Africa. When I was in South Africa in the mid 2000 on a UK Foreign Office mission to support SA schools, we were told that in some communities 45% of the population had AIDS. And that misinformation was leading to heart breaking stories like the belief that sex with a virgin would cure it… Will not repeat the stories I was told of where that lead, but they are at least as bad as you can imagine and probably worse.