Thread by @Ryan_Mac_Phd

Virus pandemics: are they a surprise? No.
I'm an HIV scientist 👋 HIV's emergence into the human population and the subsequent 1980's HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the most consequential events in modern medical history. There's a lot we can learn from it.
So what happened? (1/9)

HIV spilled over into the human population from the ancestral Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) in the late 1800s/early 1900s. This is akin to SARS-CoV-2, which emerged into the human population from a non-human reservoir (likely bats). (2/9)

Human-to-human transmission of HIV occurred "under the radar" for the next ~70 or so years. In the late 1970s/early1980s, healthcare workers began noticing young adults succumbing to pneumonia and/or developing cancerous lesions with low white blood cell counts. (3/9)

Physicians and researchers suspected a virus was causing a depletion of white blood cells, leading to an immunosuppressed state (an impaired immune system response). A few years later in 1983, their suspicions were confirmed with the identification of HIV. (4/9)

Between the time of HIV's emergence and it's identification, stigmatization was rampant. AIDS was first referred to as "GRID" - standing for Gay related immune deficiency. The federal government didn't take the outbreak seriously and even joked about it being a "gay plague" (5/9)

Fast forward to today, there are ~38 million people living with HIV worldwide. Annually, HIV/AIDS accounts for > 750,000 deaths.
So what can we learn about SARS-CoV-2 pandemic from the HIV/AIDS pandemic? A lot actually. (6/9)

Similar to HIV, SARS-CoV-2 spilled over into the human population. The current administration didn't take SARS-CoV-2 seriously when cases began mounting and has recently shifted into bigotry for the same reason the Reagan admin did: they weren't prepared. (7/9)

To summarize, an unserious and flat-footed response helped drive the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and we're seeing history repeat itself with SARS-CoV-2.
How/when will this end? I don't know.
But I do know that viral pandemics have occurred and will continue to occur. (8/9)

How we respond to viral pandemics plays a major role in how bad they ultimately become. (9/9)

Tagging fellow Tar Heel and historian @KevinMKruse to see if he has anything to add from the historian's perspective.

#SARSCoV2 #HIV