Thread by @RPLerias

The HIV pandemic was first suspected in 1981 when cases of a rare form of pneumonia started to pile up. By then, the people who were dying had, on average, become infected 10 years earlier, in 1971.

Now imagine that you are in 1971. The people getting infected with HIV then suffer flu-like symptoms for a few days and than recover. NOONE dies from the acute infection.

If doctors had known about the HIV virus then, what conclusions would they have reached? Some people got ill for a week or two with this virus, others barely had a sniff. No deaths. They would have concluded it was pretty mild.

Better still, those already infected seemed to have acquired immunity and didn't suffer the acute symptoms if they got infected again. They would have probably imagined that herd immunity would happen once everyone was infected.

It would only be years latter, when the first people started to die, that they might suspect something was up. But even then, people died 'with HIV and not 'from' HIV. Kaposi sarcoma, pneumonia, chronic diarrhea... it wouldn't look like HIV was responsible.

But that reality would still be years away in 1974. 3 years after the 1971 boom in HIV infection, most people still felt and looked fully recovered from the virus, so much so that people wouldn't care if they got infected.

There would be no public health insistence on wearing condoms or safer sex. In 1974, HIV would have been thought of as a mild, benign virus. AIDS was still years away.

I guess you have long realised where I'm trying to get. For SARS-COV-2 we are in 1974, 3 years after the infection became widespread. And governments are telling people to stop 'wearing condoms' (masks) and to have as many unsafe 'sexual' (social) encounters as they wish.

But we already know how the HIV infection turned out in the long term, the development of AIDS and premature death. But for COVID, 'AIDS' is already coming up much sooner. Strokes, hepatitis in children, diabetes, you name it, COVID is causing it already, and it's still 1974...

Can you imagine what the SARS-COV-2 pandemic will look like in 1981?

PS - this thread was written over a year ago, in April 2022, but that Twitter profile was deleted and the thread with it. I thought it was worth retweeting it. I only changed the year 1973 to 1974 to match the fact a year as since passed.

@Popart2015 If you want this conversation to go anywhere I ask you to be clearer.

Worth reading:

@glengtoot So, yes, both are true. The immune system also takes a lasting hit, leading to opportunistic infections.

@thedesmodes I wouldn't have found this lost thread without your help. Thank you! 💪