How old are you? I ask as it was pretty wide spread rumor that just touching somebody with AIDS could cause transmission. End of the year during my senior year, one of my teachers brought in a guy who had full blown AIDS. He gave a talk about his history and gave some details about the progression of his disease. Though he never said anything, he had a IV connected to his hand, the back somewhere on his body. When he finished, and the class was over, a few of us went up to shake his hand. But it was clear there were several afraid to touch him. This was 1991.
Not too long after that, Magic retired from the Lakers for being HIV positive. When he returned to play in the 1992 ASG, he won the ASG MVP, but the joke was that nobody defended him because HIV. Even in an all-star game, you're supposed to body up on somebody every once in a while. Ain't nobody tryna D up (an HIV-positive) Magic in 1992, lol. And a few years later, NBA players protested when he tried to return to the league. There really wasn't any widespread info that everyone trusted at the time. It is what it is. I think his statement helped to end the idea that only gays get HIV. He was on someone's talk show a few days later and reiterated that point. I remember when a conservative wrote into the local paper's Op-Ed section implying that Arthur Ashe's reputation "would be in tatters once the male players he had propositioned in the locker room started to come forward". Ashe got HIV thru a medical procedure gone wrong, but that's the sort of message they try to push forward when the patient is an articulate, responsible POC. They couldn't really do that to Magic, who despite being both responsible and articulate, is still a bit rougher around the edges than Ashe.
Plus, Magic was pretty famously a very promiscuous heterosexual before he settled down with Cookie. I remember my dad in the mid 80s wondering if you could get HIV if a mosquito went from someone with HIV to you. I said no, he said, how do we know? Now, this at the time wasn’t a stupid response in and of itself. It was like how we reacted to COVID in mid March 2020. But I responded that if that was possible, there would be a ton of HIV positive people with no discernible way of being infected. He didn’t have an answer to that one.
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I remember that, but at that time, at least in my world, it was known that HIV could only be transmitted through bodily fluid (I'm not sure if sweat had been ruled out by then). And I remember that because of the physical nature of the NBA, it was worried the Magic would get cut and there would be on-court transmission. Outside of my world (in which I had medical people), I'm not sure where the myth ended and understanding started. I don't remember the circumstances around Ashe, but was very aware about Magic, being a Lakers' fan and living in LA. But I agree that his announcement did change understanding. Ryan White also had a major impact in that understanding. My family, at the summer gathering on a lake shore in smaller town in rural Wisconsin, had a similar discussion with a similar answer. We did so because of all the mosquitos buzzing around.
Ryan White was probably the most important reason that heterosexuals, generally speaking, started to care. Rock Hudson was another major moment, especially to get people to realize gays in general were not all like the stereotypes they had of us.
Was Robertson a thief too? I assume any blow-dryed preacher with a cornpone accent on the TV is a crook.
Have to be honest, I prefer pizza threadjacks over religious ones. I get no joy or nourishment from religion nowadays.
What I remember most from Ol' Marge was the Billy West imitation of her on Howard Stern. "I had family over in Germany and the economy did very well under Hitler"
The process was eventually studied and reported on in the early early nineties. IIRC the conclusion was twofold: 1. Mosquitos are built to suck blood out, not push it in and 2. The very anticoagulant they do push in, and the mosquito in general, are a lethal environment for the virus in 9 seconds or less. By the time it deploys its proboscis a second time it is no longer infectious.
Candace Owens said something similar. “If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well OK, fine. The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany.” EDIT - I keep looking at her direct quote and keep thinking what an interesting choice of words she chose. As a whole and in 4 separate parts. 1 - Make "Germany great" 2- "ok, fine" part 3- the word "problem" and 4 - the word "dreams"
I wonder how Candace Owens would have fared in Hitler's Germany? Actually, I lie; I don't wonder about it at all.
Seriously? She said that? The profound ignorance displayed by her saying something like that is only equalled by her audience's willingness to gobble it up.