AIDS more infective:notifiable & quarantinable

[Dunash]

WI AIDS/HIV really was more infective: that it really could be caught from kissing, sneezing, bathing & toilet seats, albeit not easily, & that contracting it meant ultimately certain death.

Would the current social paradigm of absolute moral tolerance, equality & sexual relativism have been overridden by restricted walled in colonies of the infected, like the old time leper colonies to save humanity? Or would any move against sufferers still be viewed as a sanctionable, actionable, punishable crime of discrimination against a minority?

 

[Grey Wolf]

WI AIDS/HIV really was more infective: that it really could be caught from kissing, sneezing, bathing & toilet seats, albeit not easily, & that contracting it meant ultimately certain death.

Would the current social paradigm of absolute moral tolerance, equality & sexual relativism have been overridden by restricted walled in colonies of the infected, like the old time leper colonies to save humanity? Or would any move against sufferers still be viewed as a sanctionable, actionable, punishable crime of discrimination against a minority?

No, IMHO.

If it was more infective it would have been noticed earlier and probably treated by the WHO in the same way as an outbreak of smallpox is. The numbers at the start would have been small, and quarantinable. Its because it was not obviously so infective that it took a long time to identify and deal with it, by which time it was loose in the population

Grey Wolf

 

[ljofa]

If HIV were more virulent then we'd either be completely dead by now or it would have been contained. Although biology isn't my forte, a particularly virulent virus has to have a short incubation period and it kills the host quite quickly. If HIV does come from equatorial Africa (and not the laboratory as some people think) then it would run out of hosts before eventually dying out.

 

[tom]

My understanding is that AIDS' problem is its long incubation period during which it is infectious, so it spreads before the person gets sick. If it were casually communicable, we would all be dead now.

 

[Faeelin]

My understanding is that AIDS' problem is its long incubation period during which it is infectious, so it spreads before the person gets sick. If it were casually communicable, we would all be dead now.

Of course, for reasons of biological science, it's hard to get a disease that lasts a long time that's casually communicable.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I'm inclined to agree that AIDS' problem is its long incubation period...a person can go spreading it for some time before it physically incapacitates him/her. Ebola, Marburg, or the other African "scary diseases" kill the victim before they can get very far and in the later stages, its mode of transmission actually hurts it (many people wouldn't mind being near someone w/ flu-like symptoms, but when a person starts gouting blood everywhere, things change).